Seaside Soul Searching

OCEAN SEA

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

237 pp., $23

Woven together with haunting languge and a bizarre story line, Ocean Sea centers around four lost souls staying at a seaside inn, each hoping that the ocean's therapeutic power will heal their spiritual wounds. The characters are a mixture of precocious children and wizened adults who all offer trite commentary on the book's constant effort to present deep and soul-searching questions. Perhaps the most ridiculous characters are the two men: Professor Bartleboom, who tries to measure the end of the infinite sea, and Plasson the painter who tries to paint where the sea begins. As Bartleboom combs the beach with his measuring stick and Plasson paints on a white canvas with seawater, the reader can only laugh at Baricco's overly solemn attempts at symbolism. Of all the characters, Ann Deveria has the greatest potential for sparking the reader's interest. She is an adulteress whose husband has sent her to the ocean to "cool the passions" and forget her lover. Unfortunately, she remains underdeveloped along with the rest of the characters and only comes across as stale and unreal. Then there is the 15-year-old girl trying to cure a strange psychological malady with sea bathing. Though she becomes involved with an older man in the novel's only love scene, the description fails to be either erotic or touching.

Despite the intriguing characters, Baricco never manages to develop a plot or instill any warmth in the story. In attempting to sound poetic, the bizarre rhythm of the novel is instead cold and-self-consciously intellectual. The characters are presented in such an obscure way that they never seem real to the reader, and the entire story passes in a dream-like blur of images and events.

Baricco attempts to take the reader to a fantasy world along with the characters, and at times his haunting style does create an ocean-like rhythm. But when the inn elevates from the ground and disappears on the final page, the reader is left unsatisfied and even unsure of what thebook was all about in the first place.