The Sea by John Banville.

This book, a Man Booker prize winner, is told in a most interesting voice. The narrator was able to make me very intensely sad for reasons that were not entirely clear and at the same time he speaks in a very rationale unemotional voice. His great love for his wife was a contrast to his distance from others -- his daughter, in particular. It is a lavishly descriptive book and evokes a distant youth, two things that were successful and very appealing. He withheld information until the end that changed everything, an unforgivable sin in my view.