After  many years spent living in Seoul, a young man called Harold drifts back to  Australia and rents a room above a fish and chip shop called The Sea  & Us.  Who he meets and what he experiences there propels him  to question his own yearnings and failings, and to fight for meaning and a  sense of place that can only be reached by facing what is lost.        By turns electric, tender, and hopeful, The  Sea & Us is a gem of literary imagination. Catherine  de Saint Phalle brilliantly captures disparate characters  and their  common human desire for community and connection. Long after the  last  page closes, ‘we can hear the bell tinkle. Someone wants some  fish and chips.’