The Book of Evidence | John Banville | Literary Seduction-At Its Best

The Book of Evidence | John Banville | Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

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The Book of Evidence

	The Book of Evidence John Banville Vintage, 2001 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

John Banville?s stunning powers of mimicry are brilliantly on display in this engrossing novel, the darkly compelling confession of an improbable murderer.

Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral, he returns to Ireland to secure funds. That pursuit leads to murder. And here is his attempt to present evidence, not of his innocence, but of his life, of the events that lead to the murder he committed because he could. Like a hero out of Nabokov or Camus, Montgomery is a chillingly articulate, self-aware, and amoral being, whose humanity is painfully on display.

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Literary Seduction-At Its Best

Why have I put off reviewing this book, which is rightly regarded as Banville's breakthrough novel, while reviewing (almost) all his other books? Perhaps, as Freddie would say, because I could. - Some of it has to do with the fact that certain other reviewers and critics regard Athena and Ghosts to be a continuation of this book. I don't concur with this assessment, for reasons stated in reviews of those books, and I wanted to give these books their just due as integral works on their own without a reference to a review of this book. But here I go:

What makes this book such a wonder? First, there's the sumptuous, poetic language on display in all of Banville's work - At times I felt as if I was reading a Conrad Aiken poem - that makes for a feat of literary seduction unparalleled. Indeed, if there is one adjective I would use for Banville's stylism, aside from poetic (perhaps redundant anyway), for readers with a keen ear for the use of language, it is, without hesitation - Seductive. This seductive style, luring the reader into Freddie's mindscape, goes pari passu with the philosophical underpinnings of the novel. In plain speech, determinism is very seductive in its own right. There is no free will here, no choice, and Banville's great feat here is to have seduced us into a mindset where we can very easily imagine, mutatis mutandis, doing exactly the sort of thing Freddie has done, murdering. This is what's so frightening about the novel: We come to see ourselves, like Freddie, as the playthings of inner and outer forces over which we have scant control, as playthings of the gods, so to speak.

Putting the book down, one wonders if, really, there is not much more to our place in the world than, as Freddie puts it:

"....The ceaseless, slow, demented drift of things." P.135

A very eerie book indeed.

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Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

Freddie Montgomery doesn't really set out to kill Josie Bell, but it happens anyway. This whole novel is a harrowing presentation of "evidence" about his crime - about his life and the events leading up to the murder, as well a description of its aftermath.

I can't describe this as a happy book, but it is a remarkable one. Banville's use of language is original but clear; his characters are strikingly delineated though almost none of them are sympathetic.

There are literary echoes, too - the Greeks, Camus, T.S. Eliot - but you wouldn't have to know these authors to appreciate the novel. I would describe it as Gothic, in the sense that it deals with the grotesque, and you keep reading if only to find out what new dreadfulness is around the corner. (No, it is not gory.)

Like the aforementioned authors, the novel poses questions about what it means to be human, and ultimately the questions will have to be answered by the reader. I can see why it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Highly recommended.

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Dark soul of the common man

John Banville's Book of Evidence is a dark tale of an 'everyman' who is so disconnected from himself and others, he is capable of a heinous murder. Banville's prose is simple and eloquent and although I don't empathize with the main character, Banville makes his profound alienation comprehensible. Excellent read and I look forward to more of this author's work

The Book of Evidence

I read this as a book group selection. It provided many psychological and social subjects to discuss. What the characters lack in charm they make up in complexity.
Banville's writing is seamless and beautiful. With little dialogue it is largely a stream-of-conciousness narative.
I caution the reader to treat it as serious literature and read carefully. The Book of Evidence sounds like "genre" fiction but it isn't. If you try to give it a quick read, you will miss the point.
This is not a murder mystery.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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