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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
Lo que más disfruté fuera de la trama fue la prosa de Banville. Es majestuosa en sus descripciones y sabe llevar el ritmo de la historia hasta el final.
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I finished this series although I read them out of order. I don’t recommend that. I enjoyed every book.
"We're too young for this, Mal," he said. "It's too soon."
"Yes, well, it always is, I imagine. When we were student doctors, in Boston all those years ago, I treated an old fellow for something or other, I can't remember what. Something trivial, an ingrown toenail, that kind of thing. He told me he was ninety-seven. 'You know, young man,' he said to me, 'people say "Oh, I wouldn't want to live to be your age, to be ninety-seven," but that all changes when they get to be ninety-six.'"
3.5 stars - if you are reading the 7th book in this series, congratulations, you have great taste in literature. Even for a Quirke novel, this one is paced slowly, but it does eventually unravel in satisfying fashion. Maybe I've consumed so much of Banville's expertly crafted prose that I'm taking it for granted? The finish here is tidy to the point I'd guess Banville might have thought it his last Quirke book, but nay, number eight came out recently and a hard copy sits nearby.
Would highly recommend, and while very good, A Death in Summer (#4) remains my favorite. What emotional depths will Quirke and co. be dragged through in book eight? Who knows but it's tantalizing to speculate about another trip through morose Ireland with a master guide.
Would highly recommend, and while very good, A Death in Summer (#4) remains my favorite. What emotional depths will Quirke and co. be dragged through in book eight? Who knows but it's tantalizing to speculate about another trip through morose Ireland with a master guide.
Finally, it seems to me, Benjamin Black adopts some of the strengths of John Banville. What we get is a very deep character drama, with Banville's trademark interior monologues, alongside an intricate mystery. The plot is a continuation of the earlier Christine Falls and may make them an inseparable pair.
Finished Even the Dead a few days ago. It is the latest installment in Benjamin Black's series of noir mysteries exposing the decades long abuse by the Catholic Church in Ireland of pregnant single women as practically slave labor, and the coerced selling off of their children as orphans. One aspect I really liked of this one was the middle aged main character, Quirke, falling deeply in love with a mature, professional woman who owns her own sexuality and is neither blonde, young, or thin.
Well written
Elegant prose, interesting characters, average plot. The author is more interested in crafting his prose than giving his reader a riveting story.
Elegant prose, interesting characters, average plot. The author is more interested in crafting his prose than giving his reader a riveting story.
Barbara my 95 year old neighbor gave me this book to borrow. She really likes it but I suppose I feel eh about it. I feel like there wasn’t enough mystery solving for me. Too much personal life stuff from the main characters (though I did enjoy the main characters). I enjoyed the last 50-75 pages of the book the most.
Disappointing...
A young man is killed when his motorbike crashes into a tree. Quirke, a pathologist, is on sick leave, suffering from memory problems and attention lapses due to an injury he received some years earlier. But when his assistant begins to think that the young man's death was not due to either accident or suicide, he asks Quirke to come in to check his conclusions. Quirke agrees – it looks like the death was a murder. The victim is Leon Corless, son of a Communist politician, and the police don't know whether Leon has been killed for something he has done or to get at his father, a man notorious for annoying people.
I recently read and loved [b:The Blue Guitar|25241497|The Blue Guitar|John Banville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432679169s/25241497.jpg|44508919], written by the same author under his other name of John Banville, and wondered how his writing style would transfer to the crime novel. The answer, I fear, is not terribly well, at least not as far as this book, the seventh in the Quirke series, is concerned. To be fair, looking at other reviews suggests this is not having universal praise heaped on it by even fans of the series, so I probably picked the wrong one to start on.
The basic writing, as I expected, is excellent. But the balance is totally wrong between the crime and all of Quirke's personal baggage, of which he has more than plenty. His daughter resents him for him having given her away at birth to his adopted brother and his wife to bring up. He has had many broken affairs, including with the aforesaid brother's new wife. His daughter is going out with his assistant. Quirke is a drinker, currently on the wagon, but with a history of going in and out of rehab. And so on and on. His memory problems, which we hear about at excessive length for the first half of the book, are completely forgotten in the second half. (Ha! Forgive the unintentional joke.)
The other thing that irritated me was that I had no real idea of when the book was supposed to be set. For a while I wasn't even sure if it was before or after WW2 – eventually I decided after, but still couldn't pin it down to '40s, '50s or possibly even '60s. Presumably some indication was given in previous books, but in this one it's all very vague. Again, other reviews from people familiar with the series tell me it's the '50s. Dublin also failed to come to life. Street names and locations are mentioned but I got no feel for the life of this vibrant city.
There were points when I actually forgot what the crime actually was, and writing this review two weeks after finishing the book, I'm struggling to recall much about it. The vast bulk of the book is grossly over-padded with filler and the solving of the crime is rushed into the last section. And coincidentally (without spoilers) Quirke, his family and friends all seem to have a personal link to one aspect of it or another, and it appears to relate back to crimes in previous books. And, just to put the icing on the cake, the whole evil Catholic church cliché gets yet another outing.
Add in a ridiculously unlikely love-at-first-sight affair, and all in all, this fairly short book felt very long indeed. In truth, I began to skip long passages of musings about life, the universe and everything, in the hopes that I might finally get to the promised thriller ending. Sadly, I found the ending as flat as a pancake. I'm sure this will work better for people who have been following the series and have an emotional investment in the recurring characters, but as a standalone it left me pretty unimpressed. I'm still looking forward to reading more Banville, but I think I'll leave Benjamin Black on the shelf in the future. 2½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Books (UK).
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
A young man is killed when his motorbike crashes into a tree. Quirke, a pathologist, is on sick leave, suffering from memory problems and attention lapses due to an injury he received some years earlier. But when his assistant begins to think that the young man's death was not due to either accident or suicide, he asks Quirke to come in to check his conclusions. Quirke agrees – it looks like the death was a murder. The victim is Leon Corless, son of a Communist politician, and the police don't know whether Leon has been killed for something he has done or to get at his father, a man notorious for annoying people.
I recently read and loved [b:The Blue Guitar|25241497|The Blue Guitar|John Banville|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1432679169s/25241497.jpg|44508919], written by the same author under his other name of John Banville, and wondered how his writing style would transfer to the crime novel. The answer, I fear, is not terribly well, at least not as far as this book, the seventh in the Quirke series, is concerned. To be fair, looking at other reviews suggests this is not having universal praise heaped on it by even fans of the series, so I probably picked the wrong one to start on.
The basic writing, as I expected, is excellent. But the balance is totally wrong between the crime and all of Quirke's personal baggage, of which he has more than plenty. His daughter resents him for him having given her away at birth to his adopted brother and his wife to bring up. He has had many broken affairs, including with the aforesaid brother's new wife. His daughter is going out with his assistant. Quirke is a drinker, currently on the wagon, but with a history of going in and out of rehab. And so on and on. His memory problems, which we hear about at excessive length for the first half of the book, are completely forgotten in the second half. (Ha! Forgive the unintentional joke.)
The other thing that irritated me was that I had no real idea of when the book was supposed to be set. For a while I wasn't even sure if it was before or after WW2 – eventually I decided after, but still couldn't pin it down to '40s, '50s or possibly even '60s. Presumably some indication was given in previous books, but in this one it's all very vague. Again, other reviews from people familiar with the series tell me it's the '50s. Dublin also failed to come to life. Street names and locations are mentioned but I got no feel for the life of this vibrant city.
There were points when I actually forgot what the crime actually was, and writing this review two weeks after finishing the book, I'm struggling to recall much about it. The vast bulk of the book is grossly over-padded with filler and the solving of the crime is rushed into the last section. And coincidentally (without spoilers) Quirke, his family and friends all seem to have a personal link to one aspect of it or another, and it appears to relate back to crimes in previous books. And, just to put the icing on the cake, the whole evil Catholic church cliché gets yet another outing.
Add in a ridiculously unlikely love-at-first-sight affair, and all in all, this fairly short book felt very long indeed. In truth, I began to skip long passages of musings about life, the universe and everything, in the hopes that I might finally get to the promised thriller ending. Sadly, I found the ending as flat as a pancake. I'm sure this will work better for people who have been following the series and have an emotional investment in the recurring characters, but as a standalone it left me pretty unimpressed. I'm still looking forward to reading more Banville, but I think I'll leave Benjamin Black on the shelf in the future. 2½ stars for me, so rounded up.
NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Penguin Books (UK).
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com