[Heel n Toe]

The Sea by John Banville

Masterful writing... not a quick read, but if you enjoy good descriptive storytelling, you might give it a go. I'm 3/4 of the way through it and sometimes it bogs down a bit with words I don't know, but I get what they mean through context and move on. Not gonna look 'em up.

A portion of an Amazon review just to get you interested (or not):

The Sea is a work of superb artistry, but this doesn't become clear until you're well into the book.

The story is told in the first person by Max Morden, an art critic of no great reputation, whose wife, Anna, has recently died of cancer. In his grief, Max flees to the small seaside town where as a boy he summered with his parents. He deliberately puts up at the same boarding house where his childhood friends, the Graces, used to stay. In the first part of the book, Max tries to articulate how he feels about Anna's death and slowly unfolds the tale of his youthful entanglements with the Grace twins, Chloe and Myles.