John Banville

Ghosts, by John Banville

Cindy — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 01:17:34 +0000

Almost impossibly, Ghosts is the sequel to The Book of Evidence. As if there ever could be a sequel. And yet, there is.

And what an enigmatic and otherworldly sequel it is. We enter a world where we see every single tree clearly while feeling we have no idea about the layout and structure of the forest. A cleverly constructed world of appearances and transformations, with changes and shifts and strange occurrences. What is told is actually just a story about a day. No ordinary day, and no ordinary people, of course. But still, just a day, and an outing, so to speak.

“The book opens with a shipwreck on an island where there is a strange singing in the air. As the stranded castaways make their way toward the refuge of the island’s reclusive savant, it begins to look as though we might be in for a version of The Tempest, reflecting those aspects of the play expressed by the title of the Singspiel that Mozart was planning at the time of his death, Die Geisterinsel.” – Michael Dibdin, The Indepedent

What ensues is a meeting with an odd medley of castaways from a day outing who have washed ashore a remote island. They are led by Felix, the “lord of the streets.” And they are of the strange types that populated The Book of Evidence and Mephisto – Faustian, otherworldly, ideal typical, perhaps even godlike. It is perhaps the strangest or oddest cast of characters ever.

We meet an art expert with exceedingly dubious credentials, Professor Kreutnaer, along with his lovelorn assistant Licht. Additionally, we have an ex-convict, quite familiar to us now, the newly released Freddie Montgomery, as the first-person narrator. And having assembled the cast, Banville allows the hilarious narrator to take off and deliver a mass of observations in a stream-of-consciousness-like manner.

Oh. And did I mention that the island is haunted? Of course it is, for this is John Banville at his playful best! Ghosts is witty, odd, sarcastic, wild, and very curiously constructed. The second installment of John Banville’s Freddie Montgomery trilogy is a marvel. But it is a book that doesn’t make all that much sense unless The Book of Evidence has already been read – so do not start with this one. But when you have, quickly move on to this stylistic novel and read it. Then reread it. For Ghosts is John Banville at his surrealistic and stylistic best, and this is a book that require several readings to fully reveal itself!

Interesting – John Banville

Cindy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:26:23 +0000

John Banville in Guardian (1.15.2011): Franz Kafka’s other trial

John Banville in Guardian (11.28.2009): My hero: Ben the labrador

The Independent (11.5.2010): One Minute With: John Banville, novelist

Guardian (7.22.2008): John Banville

Christine Falls, by Benjamin Black

Cindy — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:39:42 +0000

Among the crime novels by Benjamin Black (aka John Banville) that have been published so far, Christine Falls is my personal favorite. It is as much fiction and literature as it is crime fiction – very lyrical, slow paced, with a number of wonderful conversations, remarkable observations and outstanding story telling. The novel is set in 1950s Dublin and Boston – a Dublin that is masterfully described in bits and pieces with a dank and fog-draped atmosphere that pervades everything, a city that oozes existential dread and breeds melancholy. The descriptions are masterful and amazing.

We follow Quirke, the complex, melancholic and conflicted coroner in 1950’s Ireland. His background, it turns out, is somewhat special. As a child, he was rescued from a Catholic orphanage by Judge Griffin and raised alongside his own biological son, Mal. However, over time the two sons have started to resent one another and the distance between them has grown.

Mal is involved in a cover-up of the death of a girl named Christine Falls. The cover-up is detected, by coincidence, by Quirke. Doing an autopsy, Quirke finds that Christine Falls did not die of pulmonary embolism, as Mal wrote in his report. What is Quirke to do with what he believes is the truth about the Christine Falls case? And – should he pursue the case and learn more, or let it rest? It seems Quirke has less of a choice than he initially thought – whether he can let the case go or not is not the question – the case, he feels, will not let him go. And thus, once more Quirke becomes an accidental detective.

Benjamin Black masterfully lets the tension build, and allows the details to play out, knowing very well that the anticipation of violence often is more frightening than the action itself. Or, as chess grandmaster Nimzowitch stated it: The threat is often more effective than its execution. And, indeed, there is relatively little violence in the novel itself – even though it is present as a distinct possibility in most of the book. Christine Falls is superbly composed, almost like a grand-master game of chess!

The plot itself is somewhat convoluted. The big, overall plot involves some corruption, some conspiracy and the Catholic Church, and isn’t all that plausible. Yet, it’s not less probable in any way than most plots in crime fiction books. However, the details of the plot concerns misplaced love, jealousy, abortions, unwanted children, failed ambitions and similar problems – which are all very plausible in the context provided by Benjamin Black, and all are elegantly described and exploited. And the plot twists and turns, as it should. Additionally, irrespective of the quality of the plot, the writing and use of effects are so great in this book that the plot does not really occupy the driver’s seat, at least not for me. Rather, I was fascinated by the psychological insights in this book as well as by the writing.

Christine Falls is a truly fascinating read! An excellent, real vintage Benjamin Black!

The Lemur, by Benjamin Black

Cindy — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 17:40:33 +0000

The Lemur is a short, slim new novel from John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black. While his Christine Falls and The Silver Swan were both set in Dublin in the 1950s, this is instead a tale set in modern day New York.

The main character of The Lemur is John Glass. He is a famous investigative journalist who has grown soft through his marriage into money. Now he has settled down to write the biography of his father in law for a fee of one million dollars. In this dark and mysterious tale Glass meets with and hires a man he deems the Lemur to do research for the book for him. And The Lemur, a young geek seemingly with access to mountains of information, has extensive knowledge of his father in law.

His father in law is William ‘Big Bill’ Mulholland, an Irish-American. He is a CIA operative turned communications mogul. And Big Bill has his secrets and expects Glass to keep them. Now Mulholland lives the good life. He has set up a charitable trust – run by Glass’s wife Louise, who is also a UN Special Ambassador for Culture – and thinks the story of his life should be told. “Not a hagiography–I don’t merit one, I’m no saint,” he insists. “What I want is the truth.”

Only a few days into his assignment, The Lemur calls Glass to pressure him for money. He knows something and he wants half a million dollars for it. Then later The Lemur is found dead, having been shot through his left eye. The last person he called before being shot was John Glass. ‘That makes you the last one to talk to him alive,’ says Captain Ambrose from the NYPD. And, when Glass replies, ‘You mean, the second last’, Captain Ambrose grins. ‘Yeah. Right.’

However, Glass has a cast-iron alibi. But who killed The Lemur? What was the secret? John Glass turns detective, fearing that his own affair with a young artist may be the damaging secret. With little information, John assembles what facts he can, guilt eventually pointing back to himself and his extended family: wife, Louise; step-son, David; and father-in-law, Big Bill Mulholland.

I greatly enjoyed Black’s other novels (Christine Falls, The Silver Swan). I did not like this one nearly as much. I did not find the characters even remotely likeable. Overall, it is not nearly as gripping, fresh and original as the two previous books featuring Quirke. For me the pages of The Lemur turned fast, but I am a great fan of John Banville and Benjamin Black. So, if like me, you are a fan of John Banville, you should read The Lemur.

John Banville and Colum McCann at the 92nd Street Y – video

Cindy — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 20:57:36 +0000

The Gods are here: The Infinities, by John Banville

Cindy — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 00:38:37 +0000

The gods play a key role in this novel. John Banville lets them loose on a family somewhere in the countryside preparing to lose the patriarch of the household. They are, however, pretty mundane gods – gods engaged in relatively trivial pursuits. Maybe its a slow season for them and they are bored? Or maybe gods, as Banville sees them, are relatively simple minded?

This is John Banville’s first novel under his own name – he has written as Benjamin Black in the interim – since publishing the Man Booker Prize winning The Sea in 2005. For this book, Banville has created a universe full of infinities, and even infinities within infinities. A place so huge there must be room for more than what we see, hear and smell. And, indeed, he has constructed a universe where deities, seeming mostly of Greek origin, do exist and even mingle with humans. In The Infinities they flit about English manors and play gleeful and lustful tricks on the inhabitants.

The story in The Infinities takes place in Arden – a large family home somewhere in Ireland or England or thereabouts. The family patriarch, Adam Godley, has had a stroke, is seemingly unconscious and about to die. He is a famous man in some circles. He is a mathematician renowned for having developed a set of equations that turned relativity theory upside-down and proves the existence of the infinities; actually “an infinity of infinities … all crossing and breaking into each other”.

The patriarch’s family is now gathered around him – his much younger wife Ursula, his son Adam with his beautiful wife Helen, and his strange daughter Petra with “something missing” who writes an encyclopedia of human morbidity, and several guests. Also present are the various servants. And among the guests, unbeknown to the humans of course, are gods. They are disguised as humans, and have marvelous powers; they can be invisible if they want, they can sneak around and observe, and they can even sneak into beds. The deities present include Hermes and Zeus, in an interesting competition where godly rules of conduct are observed at all times.

The primary narrator is Hermes. He is a somewhat philosophical fellow. He comments on virtually everything taking place in the house – including the letting of bodily fluids in various forms – and among the characters. At the same time he keeps an eye on Pan – in the guise of chubby, goat-footed Benny Grace – and his father, the randy Zeus.

As Hermes explains, having himself been attracted to one of the women present, “You must understand, a god is not a gentleman and likes nothing better than to trifle with a lady’s affections, but,” he believes, “there are rules that apply even to a divinity, and it was incumbent on me to proceed with caution and deference, if the niceties of the game were to be preserved.”

The narrative is extremely rich; the story is full of small side stories and odd observations. Banville’s considerable fantasy is at full display, and the references to philosophy, mythology and even physics and mathematics are abundant. The Infinities is a playful novel, and the writing and use of symbols and metaphors makes it interesting to read. An excellent novel by John Banville!

Mefisto, by John Banville

Cindy — Wed, 05 May 2010 16:15:01 +0000

The story of Faustus has attracted much literary attention. It is one of the most durable myths in Western culture: The man who makes a deal with the Devil that he can never be happy and never satisfied, and that if he is, the Devil can take him. Goethe, as we know, renamed him a little and turned him into Faust in his wonderful story. Thomas Mann rewrote the story in his Doctor Faustus about the composer Adrian Leverkuehn. Christoper Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus gives a somewhat more straight forward retelling of the myth, but also very worthwhile.

That this myth attracted the attention of John Banville was probably not so surprising. Similarly, it is probably not surprising that he sets the novel firmly in his beloved Ireland. Banville’s main character is Gabriel Swan, an autistic mathematical genius. And Mefisto is a thin, fox-like young man named Felix, a man full of sly jokes. However, the world Banville paints here is dark and grim, with a gloomy set of characters.

Mefisto is a book full of imagination, symbolism and wonderful language. Virtually every single sentence in the book is beautiful. This book is simply a mesmerizing display of his extraordinary skills as a wordsmith, but in a superb way where the words and sentences are not allowed to interfere with the story. Language is never the enemy of this extraordinary tale.

In my opinion Banville does a superb job in his treatment of the Faustus legend. His interpretation represents a very interesting remaking of the myth for the present day. His rewriting seems to be firmly based on Goethe more than the other interpretations, but the new story that emerges in Mefisto is fully his own and very original. It is a book I recommend, but not as the first Banville-book to read.

A novel of virtuosic scope, written in a style as pristine as the rarefied mountain air atop the Brocken. –The New York Times<

Intense, cerebral, linguistically inventive. –Cleveland Plain Dealer

The Silver Swan, by Benjamin Black

Cindy — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:20:11 +0000

This is the second book John Banville wrote using Benjamin Black as penname. John Banville has described it as “liberating” to write under this name, and has said that he writes much easier and faster as Benjamin Black. Even his writing style is different – he doesn’t pay the same attention to every word in his sentences and to some extent, it feels as if he lets the story tell itself. Still, there is much Banville in the Benjamin Black books, and they too, of course, are books of high quality. The first book in the series, Christine Falls, was actually nominated by the Mystery Writers of America for the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Novel. So the books are both good and fun to read as well.

The Silver Swan features Quirke, a somewhat grumpy pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family in Dublin. It is a mystery book set solidly in 1950s Dublin – a gloomy city, a city where people and families know one another, where the church is strong, and a city with many hidden secrets. Quirke is an “incurably curious” guy. He often finds it necessary to go far beyond a pathologist’s normal duties, and in this second novel in the Quirke series (after Christine Falls), he is visited by Billy Hunt, a casual friend from college. Hunt asks him not to autopsy the body of his wife Deirdre, who was found drowned and naked. This, of course, is a somewhat curious request. However, Deirdre may have drowned herself, and the family wants to avoid conflict with the Catholic Church over her burial.

Quirke, being curious, conducts a secret autopsy, and Deirdre gets her church burial. However, when Quirke examines the body, he finds things that make him suspect she’s been murdered. Quirke, being Quirke, cannot help but to begin his private investigation into her death.

Black expertly balances Quirke’s investigation with chapters detailing Deidre’s past. From her marriage to Billy to her shady business deal with Leslie White, an enigmatic Englishman who knew Deidre as Laura Swan, the proprietress of their joint venture, a beauty salon called the Silver Swan. And as Quirke digs deeper and deeper, he discovers a web of lies and blackmail that threatens to envelop even his own estranged daughter, Phoebe.

Quirke is a brooding Irish soul with a very independent code of ethics. This makes him the kind of troubled hero the genre loves. In The Silver Swan, Black runs Quirke’s private investigation on a parallel track with the victim’s own story, told in intimate flashbacks. The result is a lyrical crime fiction book – beautifully and intelligently written, but not quite a mystery book. But Banville’s talents are on full display in the book, so it is not any less a book for not falling neatly into the mystery category – perhaps rather the opposite! And the laconic, stubborn Quirke makes an appealing hero as the pieces of this unsettling crime come together in a shocking conclusion.

Black is a literary stylist who revels in long descriptive passages laced with elegant similes and metaphors. The characters are meticulously delineated. And the writing is elegant to the extreme. The book is a great pleasure to read. The mystery is intriguing and the book at times suspenseful. A wonderful read!

“In this stunning follow-up to 2007′s Christine Falls, Black spins a complex tale of murder and deception in 1950s London.”

- Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Elegant… [Mr. Black/Banville's] sinuous prose, subtle eroticism and 1950s period detail do more than enough to put this series on the map.”

- New York Times

“Banville/Black is a master of atmosphere; the fear and dread associated with hidden desires and deeds fairly leap off the page.”

- Library Journal, starred review

“The lonely characters that fill The Silver Swan linger in the mind — a puff of fog here, a shadow there. They ask the big questions, and they never seem quite happy with the answers they work out for themselves in this fascinating meditation on morality.”

- New Orleans Time Picayune

“Christine Falls was the most artful noir mystery in years; The Silver Swan is better. The plot is grippingly propulsive, the evocation of Dublin is detail-perfect, every major and minor character is beautifully realized—and there isn’t a clunky sentence in the book.”

- Los Angeles Times

The Book of Evidence, by John Banville

Cindy — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:57:11 +0000

What is it with this book, really? Of course, it is well-written. It is a John Banville, for crying out loud! And John Banville is a stylist, a wordsmith, a man who sells hand-crafted sentences – in a sense tailor-made sentences. And that’s something, but not in itself enough, for language is but a vehicle for delivery of meaning. So, then, what is it that makes this tale so strangely, maybe even perversely appealing? The tale itself is odd, Freddie Montgomery’s prison memoir. Who cares about Freddie? Who has even heard of Freddie? And more to the point: Why should I concern myself with Freddie’s prison memoir? I have never heard of the guy, surely never encountered him, don’t care much about criminals and their crimes?

There are only two reasons, and none of them, oddly enough, have anything whatsoever to do with Freddie Montgomery! The first is that John Banville has written about Freddie and his crimes – invented it all – and cares about them. That is a very good reason. It may even be a sufficient reason. The other reason is that many people who have read the book say it is a great book – they even say things like “a marvelous piece of literary, philosophical, and political fiction”. That’s also a reason; probably, in the big scheme of things, not a good reason, but even so, for me, a reason to read the novel.

So, then, in The Book of Evidence we meet Freddie Montgomery. He is a schizophrenic 38-year-old ex-scientist haunting dingy pubs who, nonetheless, ponders life and his illness via this superb novelized murder trial “confession.” He is on trial for the brutal murder of a female servant who interrupted his plan to steal a painting. Freddie is a wily creature, but also disarming and charming. As a narrator, he cannot be trusted. He is a man with little empathy and a man who is more or less blind to his own numerous weaknesses. And he is so concerned about his own ontological status, his own perceptions and the impressions he makes on others, that it is disturbing and most likely biases his tale in ways almost impossible to account for. He is an existential wreck. Just listen to him:

“How shall I describe it, this sense of myself as something without weight, without moorings, a floating phantom? Other people seemed to have a density, a ‘thereness’, which I lacked. Among them, these big, carefree creatures, I was a child among adults.”

He raises many interesting questions, this Freddie of ours. If his self is such a mess, how do we relate to what he says about himself? In the context of the tale, this same question arises in a somewhat different way: If the self of this man is in some ultimate sense a fiction then how can he possibly be held responsible for his crimes? For Freddie, there isn’t really a crime, there is instead what he calls “a failure of imagination”. What is the punishment for that? What is the crime that is being punished? And, more generally, what in this odd, beautifully, pointed but oh so diffuse, contradictory and at times very implausible story, so lacking of both reference and self-reference, is to be trusted, viewed as correct, or as “probably more correct” than something else?

Well. Hmm. Have I now confused you enough in this review? It is a beautiful book. One I didn’t always enjoy but am very happy to have read. It is a wonderful, extraordinary book that raises important questions. So to you, I can only say: Go and read The Book of Evidence, come to your own conclusions and enjoy! Perhaps, like me, you will feel when you have finished that you have completed a grand, unguided, exhilarating tour of an exciting round-about in a grand mindscape crafted by John Banville, and laugh?

Birchwood – Prosaic Black Comedy by John Banville

Cindy — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:26:20 +0000

Sometimes it feels as if John Banville doesn’t write, but rather works as a craftsman, setting and modifying the words, one by one, tweaking and altering ,word by word, until the sentence perfect. And then, sentence by sentence, tweaking and altering until the paragraph is in place, reading just right. And in the process, always paring, ridding the page of unnecessary words, as much as possible taking out words that are unnecessary, as if there is a price to be paid in pounds of gold for extra words. And always preferring words that are dense and cast long shadows, contributing to the substance of the text.

Written in 1973, John Banville’s novel Birchwood is a short (less than 200 pages), dense and exceedingly beautiful. Artfully and compactly written, it is a novel that centers on Gabriel Godkin and his return to the dilapidated family estate, recounting the story of the fall and rise of Birchwood. If Gabriel is a special, somewhat strange and intriguing character – and believe me, he is – then his family is “special” in a sense that reaches the extreme and almost utmost meaning of that word.

After many years away, Gabriel – the heir to Birchwood – returns to a house filled with unsettling memories and despair. The family secrets are deep and dark —a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother. A family whose members – including Gabriel – are all wobbling on the edges of an insanity. In this black and oh so Irish comedy we reach deep into an existence of a family and its desperation and isolation, and we witness love and loss as well as the end of innocence. A complex story told in a brilliant prose seemingly crafted just for a story like this, providing just the right amount illumination and shadow to make us not really see, but at least glimpse the real somewhere there, deep in the dreamy beauty of the narrative.

It is a book best read slowly. Birchwood is a book written almost as a stream of consciousness, but whose reading should not be rushed, but rather savored. It is a book with sentences that sometimes require some pondering. John Banville’s writing is so beautiful and so compact that his books simply can’t always be read as other books, and this is certainly true of Birchwood as well.

“This is one of the most startling of the century’s varied achievements in Irish writing.”
—Seamus Deane

“John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.”
—The Scotsman

“Birchwood represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..”
—Colm Toibin