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luciajane's review against another edition
3.0
Quote:
“I hardly sleep, these days, these nights. Or, rather, I go to sleep, put under by jorums of drink and fistfuls of jumbo knock-out pills. Then at three or four in the morning my eye lids snap open like faulty window blinds and I find myself in a state of lucid alertness the equal of which I never seem to achieve in day time.”
“I hardly sleep, these days, these nights. Or, rather, I go to sleep, put under by jorums of drink and fistfuls of jumbo knock-out pills. Then at three or four in the morning my eye lids snap open like faulty window blinds and I find myself in a state of lucid alertness the equal of which I never seem to achieve in day time.”
kimbofo's review against another edition
4.0
It’s been a long time since I have read anything by John Banville. I always forget how much I enjoy his writing until I pick up one of his books again.
The Blue Guitar, published in 2015, is about an Irish artist by the name of Oliver Orme who conducts an affair with his best friend’s wife, Polly.
It’s a languid, richly immersive story that features all of Banville’s typical literary flourishes — long, flowery sentences, vivid detail and an impressive vocabulary — and his usual trademarks — men with secrets, an obsession with art and crimes of the heart.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
The Blue Guitar, published in 2015, is about an Irish artist by the name of Oliver Orme who conducts an affair with his best friend’s wife, Polly.
It’s a languid, richly immersive story that features all of Banville’s typical literary flourishes — long, flowery sentences, vivid detail and an impressive vocabulary — and his usual trademarks — men with secrets, an obsession with art and crimes of the heart.
To read my review in full, please visit my blog.
zooomer99's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
sandra_goodson's review against another edition
2.0
2 1/2 stars.
kind of boring to be honest. The characters were all pretty terrible so it was hard to engage. The ending was preposterous. So... yeah.
kind of boring to be honest. The characters were all pretty terrible so it was hard to engage. The ending was preposterous. So... yeah.
fictionfan's review against another edition
5.0
The end of the affair...
Olly Orme used to be a painter, but his muse has left him. He's still a thief though. He doesn't steal for money – it's the thrill that attracts him. He feels it's essential that his thefts are noticed or they don't count as theft. Usually it's small things he steals – a figurine, a tie-pin. But nine months ago, he stole his friend's wife, and now that theft is about to be discovered.
This is Olly's own story, told directly to the reader in the form of a narrative being written as events unfold. The tone starts off light and progressively darkens, but there is a delicious vein of humour throughout the book, observational sometimes, self-deprecatory at others. Olly is a narcissist, but his ability to admit his faults with a kind of saucy twinkle makes him an endearing character. For all his knowingness, he is child-like in his lack of understanding of other people, and over the course of the book he will learn that the people close to him know him considerably better than he knows them.
There isn't much plot in the book – an affair that becomes known, and its aftermath on the people involved. Normally I hate books that are light on plot, but the sheer enjoyment of reading Banville's luscious prose and wickedly perceptive characterisation kept me fully engaged. Olly's style is discursive and untidy, digressing mid-thought back to his past and then just as suddenly jumping off to discuss his style of painting or his thoughts on stealing. But underneath Olly's meanderings Banville is keeping tight control – all of Olly's detours and reminiscences serve Banville's central purpose, to gradually reveal to the reader all the complexities of the flawed and weak, but rather charming, character of Olly himself.
One doesn't have to wonder if Olly is an unreliable narrator, since he tells us frequently that he is. He openly uses false names of the Happy Families variety for the incidental people he meets – Mr Hanley the Haberdasher, etc - and embellishes remembered conversations to make them sound more interesting, but then owns up to it. This all adds to the feeling of him as being child-like, an innocent... but then we also know he's intelligent and untrustworthy, so what are we to believe? He spends much time trying to work out why he can no longer paint, but the reader feels the answer might not be as complex as he likes to think. Even the world he describes has a mild air of unreality to it – solar flares and meteor showers, a world rather crumbling round the edges. It's almost as if the time is not exactly now or else the world is not exactly this one – or perhaps it's a projection of Olly's narcissism, that when his life is disrupted, the whole world shakes in sympathy.
It's only when he talks of a past tragedy in his life that one feels the truth of this man is within grasp. But then he will quickly spin away again, complicating his life more and more, and though he pictures himself as suffering, it's hard not to feel he is enjoying this drama of his own creation, perhaps hiding in it. Even his frequent self-criticism is just another aspect of his overwhelming narcissism – so long as Olly can talk about himself, one feels he will weather any storm.
This is the first of Banville's books that I have read, and I loved it. Looking at reviews from people who are familiar with his earlier books, there's a suggestion that this one doesn't have as much substance as they do. That may very well be true – I would agree that, other than Olly's character, there's nothing particularly original or profound here. But it's the language! The fabulous prose! I could forgive a lot to someone who makes me enjoy every word, whether deeply meaningful or dazzlingly light. And Banville dazzled me while Olly entertained me – I'll happily settle for that.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Books UK.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Olly Orme used to be a painter, but his muse has left him. He's still a thief though. He doesn't steal for money – it's the thrill that attracts him. He feels it's essential that his thefts are noticed or they don't count as theft. Usually it's small things he steals – a figurine, a tie-pin. But nine months ago, he stole his friend's wife, and now that theft is about to be discovered.
This is Olly's own story, told directly to the reader in the form of a narrative being written as events unfold. The tone starts off light and progressively darkens, but there is a delicious vein of humour throughout the book, observational sometimes, self-deprecatory at others. Olly is a narcissist, but his ability to admit his faults with a kind of saucy twinkle makes him an endearing character. For all his knowingness, he is child-like in his lack of understanding of other people, and over the course of the book he will learn that the people close to him know him considerably better than he knows them.
What I really wanted to do was to kiss her lips, to lick her eyelids, to dart the tip of my tongue into the pink and secret volutes of her ear. I was in a state of heady amazement, at myself, at Polly, at what we were, at what we had all at once become. It was as if a god had reached down from that sky of stars and scooped us up in his hand and made a little constellation of us on the spot.
There isn't much plot in the book – an affair that becomes known, and its aftermath on the people involved. Normally I hate books that are light on plot, but the sheer enjoyment of reading Banville's luscious prose and wickedly perceptive characterisation kept me fully engaged. Olly's style is discursive and untidy, digressing mid-thought back to his past and then just as suddenly jumping off to discuss his style of painting or his thoughts on stealing. But underneath Olly's meanderings Banville is keeping tight control – all of Olly's detours and reminiscences serve Banville's central purpose, to gradually reveal to the reader all the complexities of the flawed and weak, but rather charming, character of Olly himself.
What I saw, with jarring clarity, was that there is no such thing as woman. Woman, I realised, is a thing of legend, a phantasm who flies through the world, settling here and there on this or that unsuspecting mortal female, whom she turns, briefly but momentously, into an object of yearning, veneration and terror.
One doesn't have to wonder if Olly is an unreliable narrator, since he tells us frequently that he is. He openly uses false names of the Happy Families variety for the incidental people he meets – Mr Hanley the Haberdasher, etc - and embellishes remembered conversations to make them sound more interesting, but then owns up to it. This all adds to the feeling of him as being child-like, an innocent... but then we also know he's intelligent and untrustworthy, so what are we to believe? He spends much time trying to work out why he can no longer paint, but the reader feels the answer might not be as complex as he likes to think. Even the world he describes has a mild air of unreality to it – solar flares and meteor showers, a world rather crumbling round the edges. It's almost as if the time is not exactly now or else the world is not exactly this one – or perhaps it's a projection of Olly's narcissism, that when his life is disrupted, the whole world shakes in sympathy.
How well I remember her face, which is a foolish claim to make, since any face, especially a child's, is in a gradual but relentless process of change and development, so that what I carry in my memory can be only a version of her, a generalisation of her, that I have fashioned for myself, as an evanescent keepsake.
It's only when he talks of a past tragedy in his life that one feels the truth of this man is within grasp. But then he will quickly spin away again, complicating his life more and more, and though he pictures himself as suffering, it's hard not to feel he is enjoying this drama of his own creation, perhaps hiding in it. Even his frequent self-criticism is just another aspect of his overwhelming narcissism – so long as Olly can talk about himself, one feels he will weather any storm.
This is the first of Banville's books that I have read, and I loved it. Looking at reviews from people who are familiar with his earlier books, there's a suggestion that this one doesn't have as much substance as they do. That may very well be true – I would agree that, other than Olly's character, there's nothing particularly original or profound here. But it's the language! The fabulous prose! I could forgive a lot to someone who makes me enjoy every word, whether deeply meaningful or dazzlingly light. And Banville dazzled me while Olly entertained me – I'll happily settle for that.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Books UK.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
tpowel's review against another edition
2.0
I was expecting this to be much better, but it was really hard to like the main character.
redheadreader73's review against another edition
2.0
I just didn’t particularly like any of the characters . The main character was a self obsessed, middle aged, dried up artist with whom you felt no sympathy or understanding and the other three main characters just seemed under developed. All I felt was frustration at all the characters apathy. Not for me.
rosekk's review against another edition
2.0
The narrator's lack of emotional range made this boring to read. At first I was intrigued. At the beginning his self-centred, callous nature was interesting, and I was curious to see what was beyond it and behind his kleptomania. But then we start to hear about his affair, the death of his child, his own childhood... and his tone doesn't change at all. Whether he's discussing shoplifting or the grief of his wife, he's entirely one-note. Even then, at first I was still with the book, thinking his cold nature was part of the book and we were going to uncover more about his dark nature, but the story treats him like an everyman, and there's nothing in the plot to explain his total lack of emotional reaction.
roisin_prendergast's review against another edition
4.0
The greatest joy is happening to read about the world as you yourself see it and feel it. For me, John Banville provides that experience to a tee. His writing is perfect. He bathes the everyday and the ordinary in an extraordinary light - lifting people and objects to their fullest potential in such a way as for the reader to truly appreciate and marvel at them and their existence.
Another tale of forbidden love and ill-matched lovers. Again, like the other Banville novels I have read, it is bleak and stormy but there is beauty and humour in the darkness.
I found the narrator and protagonist of this story, Oliver Orme, at first rather unlikeable. But I warmed to him through his playful self-deprecating explanations and descriptions. Although done in a very self-conscious and purposeful way, this side of his character outweighs the selfishness and you can't help but empathise with his reasonings and torments.
Polly - his mistress, his lover, his best friends wife - is loveable and charming in her girlish and unassuming way. I could understand how Oliver came to fall in love with her from the sense of feeling her character projects.
Surprisingly for me, I was slow to take to this book. I think my concentration was off. But once I was in, I was in. And I didn't want to get out.
Another tale of forbidden love and ill-matched lovers. Again, like the other Banville novels I have read, it is bleak and stormy but there is beauty and humour in the darkness.
I found the narrator and protagonist of this story, Oliver Orme, at first rather unlikeable. But I warmed to him through his playful self-deprecating explanations and descriptions. Although done in a very self-conscious and purposeful way, this side of his character outweighs the selfishness and you can't help but empathise with his reasonings and torments.
Polly - his mistress, his lover, his best friends wife - is loveable and charming in her girlish and unassuming way. I could understand how Oliver came to fall in love with her from the sense of feeling her character projects.
Surprisingly for me, I was slow to take to this book. I think my concentration was off. But once I was in, I was in. And I didn't want to get out.