It’s hard to tell whether [the characters'] differences are temperamental, cultural or generational, because everything we see is such a highly compressed artefact of the way Lynch narrates. Time, subjective and objective, particularly interests him. It moves so slowly for the men in the boat, he assures us ... Lynch’s lyrical, deceptively sympathetic prose softens...but never evades ... This could easily have been one of those novels about what it is to be a man ... Instead, it turns into something more lyrical but at the same time colder and more shocking, much more self-aware ... Lynch demonstrates a control over his ideas that comes from a pure lyrical telling, a speech act that, if you let it, will take you anywhere. Beyond the Sea is frightening but beautiful.
... the stark, mesmerizing book reads like an existential argument between...irreconcilable truths, a Beckett play bobbing in the open water ... If the two characters seem schematically opposed—will versus fate—Mr. Lynch takes pains to confuse their relationship, changing it from mood to mood into something bitter, paternal, generous or adversarial. The novel’s foundations are like the ocean, too unfixed and unfathomable to allow the philosophical disputes to advance in a linear fashion. Both men appear courageous or cowardly, insane or transcendently wise, depending on the angle of the sunlight—as if the immensity of the setting renders even the firmest distinctions indistinct ... Mr. Lynch’s prose style is suitably rationed and sun-cured ... Though bare and isolated, this fine book contains multitudes of experience.
Lynch manages to transform a news story into a universal tale of friendship and endurance and love ... Beyond the Sea is elemental. It is a story sliced to the bone. It compels the reader to look unblinkingly at matters of life and death, at the heart of what it means to be fully human. Lynch puts the reader on that small boat in the blank Pacific, implying that in a profound sense we are all there and must face the same questions that Bolivar and Hector are forced to face.
... a richly imagined re-telling of the [true] story that gives it the timeless aura and allegorical undertones of an ancient Greek myth ... At times Lynch can be even more economical with language than Hemingway; often he simply states the bald facts of the situation and leaves the reader to infer what the characters’ thoughts might be ... rest assured that there are moments of raw passion aplenty. This is a book that will leave you feeling thoroughly wrung out by the final page, but also happy to be alive.
... absorbing ... Lynch’s concern is not only the minutiae of survival or men battling the elements, although his account of these is exciting and persuasive. His main interest lies in the existential struggle within: how men handle themselves in extremis ... Although the book’s concerns are more existential than environmental, we get plenty of attendant detail of birds and fish with plastic in their stomachs.
Lynch takes a panga boat lost at sea and fashions it into a story that seems to inhale and exhale with the very days and nights experienced on Earth ... From the onset, Lynch’s work seems reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Of course, a similar setting is produced in Beyond The Sea, but Lynch’s form is also evocative of Hemingway’s style—both writers use short, deliberate sentences and ditch commas in spots where a conjunction might be present, and, as a result, relay a more natural and flowing narrative effect. Lynch’s writing, though, is more steeped in modernism as he does not include quotation marks in his dialogue, relying on periods even if a sentence is not grammatically complete ... Lynch writes with such precision of language and attention to exactness that finding the truest words appears to be something else that he has in common with Hemingway ... the best type of reading experience—one where nearly everything propels thinking. It grips the reader with large and unanswerable questions: What is true? What is knowing? What is meaning? Yet, somehow, Lynch provides exactly what seems to be impossible—answers.
As their hopes of rescue fade, these characters begin to examine the lives they left behind, recovering distant memories and confronting past traumas. They also build a friendship that is artfully portrayed by Lynch, who resists the temptation to romanticize their connection, instead spotlighting its volatility, fractiousness and intensity ... Almost every line, pared down to its essential components, seems cut short by an omission, haunted by something unsaid. Large gaps between the paragraphs entrench this sense of pervasive silence. At times such muteness feels like it’s been lifted straight from Beckett—without the humour and self-consciousness. But when Beyond the Sea evades this derivative modernist register, its pages are alive with elegance and insight.
This is a spare and often precise novel. It attains a certain lyricism that is a testament to Lynch’s restraint and eye for a sharp image. Observing the stasis and sudden event of life on a lost boat, far at sea, it takes on a dreamlike, even hallucinatory quality towards the end, and earns this through the clarity of its vision ... However, Beyond the Sea’s mirroring of the stasis of being stuck at sea—of time blurring and slowing, of long days passing uneventfully—sometimes lags, and the prose itself is not enough to carry the book ... Lynch’s writing is, in places, a little florid. This isn’t always a bad thing (there are times when the language attains a poetic intensity that is unusual and well-earned); however, at times this tendency towards slightly purple prose leads him to make awkward constructions ... What Lynch gives us is a good story, though it is not gripping enough in its plot for the story alone to make it memorable. Its prose is lucid, but is not concerned with depth of thought in a way that would excuse the lack of event. This is not to say that the novel isn’t solid, or that it isn’t enjoyable, but it does mean that the capacity for the narrative to make a lasting impact is unfortunately limited.
... [a] grim, lyrical novel ... While some may find the constant talk about 'will' and the existential philosophizing tiresome, the day-to-day struggles of Bolivar and his companion are vividly realized, and the conflict between a human being and his harsh environment is distilled to its essence.
Irish novelist Lynch...is at his most memorable when relating the details of sea life and survival ... But Lynch’s characters are less impressive than these details, perhaps because they seem too-perfectly-constructed foils for one another ... And though Lynch at times beautifully encapsulates the harshness of life on the ocean...his sentences are too often stilted, overstylized, and full of half-profound sentimentality ... A story of remarkable endurance at sea conveyed unremarkably.
... haunting ... The initial quick pacing gives way to languid, sparse chapters in which the men explore their relationships, values, and spirituality ... Lynch's enchanting tale reveals the stark beauties that come from struggling to live at the mercy of the natural world.
