Download or read book The Supreme Fictions of John Banville written by Joseph McMinn and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work offers a critical commentary on the range of John Banville's fiction, including the plays, and views that fiction in the contexts of contemporary critical theory, particularly those of postmodernism and feminism. It argues that Banville's work is deeply influenced by romantic and modernist mythologies of the creative imagination, especially those expressed by Coleridge and Wallace Stevens. Banville's interest in systems of knowledge and forms of representation is a major issue in the study, and McMinn investigates his use of paintings as metaphors.

Download or read book Snow written by John Banville and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *NATIONAL BESTSELLER* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA HISTORICAL DAGGER AWARD* A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year A New York Times Editors’ Choice Pick “Banville sets up and then deftly demolishes the Agatha Christie format…superbly rich and sophisticated.”—New York Times Book Review The incomparable Booker Prize winner’s next great crime novel—the story of a family whose secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their ancestral home Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate a murder. A parish priest has been found dead in Ballyglass House, the family seat of the aristocratic, secretive Osborne family. The year is 1957 and the Catholic Church rules Ireland with an iron fist. Strafford—flinty, visibly Protestant and determined to identify the murderer—faces obstruction at every turn, from the heavily accumulating snow to the culture of silence in the tight-knit community he begins to investigate. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threaten to obliterate everything. Beautifully crafted, darkly evocative and pulsing with suspense, Snow is “the Irish master” (New Yorker) John Banville at his page-turning best. Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up! Other riveting mysteries from John Banville: April in Spain

Download or read book Ancient Light written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea gives us a brilliant novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: “a devastating account of a boy’s sexual awakening and the loss of his childhood…. Seamless [and] profound ... An unsettling and beautiful work.” —Wall Street Journal Is there a difference between memory and invention? That is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he reflects on his first, and perhaps only, love—an underage affair with his best friend’s mother. When his stunted acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role playing a man who may not be who he claims, his young leading lady—famous and fragile—unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see, with startling clarity, the gap between the things he has done and the way he recalls them. Profoundly moving, Ancient Light is written with the depth of character, clarifying lyricism, and heart-wrenching humor that mark all of Man Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’s extraordinary works.

Download or read book The Book of Evidence written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-07 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Infinities written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a languid midsummer’s day in the countryside, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. His family gathers at his bedside: his son, young Adam, struggling to maintain his marriage to a radiantly beautiful actress; his nineteen-year-old daughter, Petra, filled with voices and visions as she waits for the inevitable; their mother, Ursula, whose relations with the Godley children are strained at best; and Petra’s “young man”—very likely more interested in the father than the daughter—who has arrived for a superbly ill-timed visit. But the Godley family is not alone in their vigil. Around them hovers a family of mischievous immortals—among them, Zeus, who has his eye on young Adam’s wife; Pan, who has taken the doughy, perspiring form of an old unwelcome acquaintance; and Hermes, who is the genial and omniscient narrator: “We too are petty and vindictive,” he tells us, “just like you, when we are put to it.” As old Adam’s days on earth run down, these unearthly beings start to stir up trouble, to sometimes wildly unintended effect. . . . Blissfully inventive and playful, rich in psychological insight and sensual detail, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a wise look at the terrible, wonderful plight of being human—a dazzling novel from one of the most widely admired and acclaimed writers at work today.

Download or read book The Sea written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An “extraordinary meditation on mortality, grief, death, childhood and memory" (USA Today) about a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside to grieve the loss of his wife. In this luminous novel, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. What Max comes to understand about the past, and about its indelible effects on him, is at the center of this elegiac, gorgeously written novel—among the finest we have had from this masterful writer.

Download or read book April in Spain written by John Banville and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *NATIONAL BESTSELLER* Booker Prize winner John Banville returns with a dark and evocative new mystery set on the Spanish coast Don't disturb the dead… On the idyllic coast of San Sebastian, Spain, Dublin pathologist Quirke is struggling to relax, despite the beaches, cafés and the company of his disarmingly lovely wife. When he glimpses a familiar face in the twilight at Las Acadas bar, it's hard at first to tell whether his imagination is just running away with him. Because this young woman can't be April Latimer. She was murdered by her brother, years ago—the conclusion to an unspeakable scandal that shook one of Ireland's foremost political dynasties. Unable to ignore his instincts, Quirke makes a call back home to Ireland and soon Detective St. John Strafford is dispatched to Spain. But he's not the only one en route. A relentless hit man is on the hunt for his latest prey, and the next victim might be Quirke himself. Sumptous, propulsive and utterly transporting, April in Spain is the work of a master writer at the top of his game. Don't miss John Banville's next novel, The Lock-up! Other riveting mysteries from John Banville: Snow

Download or read book Christine Falls written by Benjamin Black and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2007-03-06 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of a conspiracy among the city's high Catholic society It's not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It's the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse—and concealing the cause of death. It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious—and very well-guarded—secrets of Dublin's high Catholic society, among them members of his own family. Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville's fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black's debut marks him as a true master of the form.

Download or read book The Silver Swan written by Benjamin Black and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2008-03-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inimitable Quirke returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman's dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, his surrogate father lies in a convent hospital paralyzed by a devastating stroke, and Phoebe, Quirke's long-denied daughter, has grown increasingly withdrawn and isolated. With much to regret from his last inquisitive foray, Quirke ought to know better than to let his curiosity get the best of him. Yet when an almost forgotten acquaintance comes to him about his beautiful young wife's apparent suicide, Quirke's "old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden" is roused again. As he begins to probe further into the shadowy circumstances of Deirdre Hunt's death, he discovers many things that might better have remained hidden, as well as grave danger to those he loves. Haunting, masterfully written, and utterly mesmerizing in its nuance, The Silver Swan fully lives up to the promise of Christine Falls and firmly establishes Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) among the greatest of crime writers.

Download or read book Mrs Osmond written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea continues the story of Isabel Archer, the young protagonist of Henry James’s beloved The Portrait of a Lady—in this masterful novel of betrayal, corruption, and moral ambiguity. Eager but naïve, in James’s novel Isabel comes into a large, unforeseen inheritance and marries the charming, penniless, and—as Isabel finds out too late—cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond. Here Banville imagines Isabel’s second chapter telling the story of a woman reawakened by grief and the knowledge that she has been grievously wronged, and determined to resume her quest for freedom and independence.

Download or read book John Banville and His Precursors written by Pietra Palazzolo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together leading international scholars, John Banville and His Precursors explores Booker and Franz Kafka prize-winning Irish author John Banville's most significant intellectual influences. The book explores how Banville's novels engage deeply with a wide range of sources, from literary figures such as Samuel Beckett, Heinrich von Kleist, Wallace Stevens, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Henry James, to thinkers such as Freud, Heidegger, and Blanchot. Reading the full range of Banville's writings - from his Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea to his latest book, Mrs Osmond – John Banville and His Precursors reveals the richness of the author's work. In this way, the book also raises questions about the contemporary moment's relationship to a variety of intellectual and cultural traditions - Romanticism, Modernism, existentialism – and how the significance of these can be appreciated in new and often surprising ways.

Download or read book The Black Eyed Blonde written by John Banville and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe returns in The Black-Eyed Blonde—also published as Marlowe as by John Banville—the basis for the major motion picture starring Liam Neeson as the iconic detective. "Somewhere Raymond Chandler is smiling . . . I loved this book. It was like having an old friend, one you assumed was dead, walk into the room." —Stephen King "It was one of those Tuesday afternoons in summer when you wonder if the earth has stopped revolving." The streets of Bay City, California, in the early 1950s are as mean as they get. Marlowe is as restless and lonely as ever, and the private eye business is a little slow. Then a new client is shown in: blond, beautiful, and expensively dressed, she wants Marlowe to find her former lover. Almost immediately, Marlowe discovers that the man's disappearance is merely the first in a series of bewildering events. Soon he is tangling with one of Bay City's richest and most ruthless families—and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune. “It’s vintage L.A., toots: The hot summer, rain on the asphalt, the woman with the lipstick, cigarette ash and alienation, V8 coupes, tough guys, snub-nosed pistols, the ice melting in the bourbon . . . . The results are Chandleresque, sure, but you can see Banville’s sense of fun.” —The Washington Post

Download or read book Even the Dead written by Benjamin Black and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After a suspicious car crash death and the disappearance of an acquaintance of his daughter, Irish pathologist Quirke seeks help from his friend Inspector Hackett. Before long, events lead them deep into a shadowy world where one of Dublin's most powerful men uses the cover of politics and religion to make obscene profits.

Download or read book The Untouchable written by John Banville and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most dazzling and adventurous writers now working in English takes on the enigma of the Cambridge spies in a novel of exquisite menace, biting social comedy, and vertiginous moral complexity. The narrator is the elderly Victor Maskell, formerly of British intelligence, for many years art expert to the Queen. Now he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. But at whose instigation? As Maskell retraces his tortuous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe. Beautifully written, filled with convincing fictional portraits of Maskell's co-conspirators, and vibrant with the mysteries of loyalty and identity, The Untouchable places John Banville in the select company of both Conrad and le Carre. Winner of the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction "Contemporary fiction gets no better than this... Banville's books teem with life and humor." - Patrick McGrath, The New York Times Book Review "Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction... The Untouchable is the best work of art in any medium on [its] subject." -Washington Post Book World "As remarkable a literary voice as any to come out of Ireland; Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding." -San Francisco Chronicle

Download or read book Amongst Women written by John McGahern and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1991-09-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Michael Moran is an old Irish Republican whose life was forever transformed by his days of glory as a guerrilla leader in the Irish War of Independence. Moran is till fighting—with his family, his friends, and even himself—in this haunting testimony to the enduring qualities of the human spirit.

Download or read book Birchwood written by John Banville and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2023-11-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic novel of family, isolation and a blighted Ireland from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Sea depicts the end of innocence for a boy and his country. Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a dilapidated family manor filled with memories and despair. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to join a traveling circus and look for his long-lost twin sister. Soon he discovers that famine and unrest stalk the countryside, and Ireland is ruined too. Told with lyrical prose, John Banville’s Birchwood is the elegiac story of the aristocratic decline of an eccentric family riddled with dark secrets. "John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language." —The Scotsman

Download or read book Shroud written by John Banville and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2011-08-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Shroud will not be easily surpassed for its combination of wit, moral complexity and compassion. It is hard to see what more a novel could do’ Irish Times Dark secrets and reality unravel in Shroud, the second of John Banville's three novels to feature Cass Cleave, alongside Eclipse and Ancient Light. Axel Vander, distinguished intellectual and elderly academic, is not the man he seems. When a letter arrives out of the blue, threatening to unveil his secrets – and carefully concealed identity – Vander travels to Turin to meet its author. There, muddled by age and alcohol, unable always to distinguish fact from fiction, Vander comes face to face with the woman who has the knowledge to unmask him, Cass Cleave. However, her sense of reality is as unreliable as his, and the two are quickly drawn together, their relationship dark, disturbed and doomed to disaster from its very start.