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kalchainein's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Self harm
mendelbot's review against another edition
2.0
One of the more frustrating books I have read of late. The language is beautiful, the basic premise full of promise, but the story itself feels too light for a 280 page novel. This would work either as a much shorter work, where the lack of revelation would work, or in a much longer book, where the author could flesh out his ideas a bit more.
In other words, a paradox of a novel: it feels both underwritten and incomplete.
In other words, a paradox of a novel: it feels both underwritten and incomplete.
kathi_and_her_birds's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
Reads like it was written by the most average white man who has not questioned any of his prejudices even remotely but believes himself to be The Genius Of The Century because he combined Christian and ancient Greek religion/mythology. Predominant vibes are hatred, disgust, misery, and objectification of any character who is not such an average white man. There is no love palpable in the entire book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Self harm, Sexism, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Medical content, Infidelity, Grief, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Vomit, Misogyny, Incest, Blood, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Pregnancy, Fatphobia, Excrement, Death of parent, and Death
dougbrun's review against another edition
4.0
Where have all the gods gone? Hermes, Pan, Zeus and the group? We haven’t heard from them in a very long time. But wait, maybe we have, perhaps we have met them, dined with them, slept with them (that Zeus is quite the horny old god) and don’t realize it. Perhaps they walk among us, watching, listening, trying to understand us. This is a wonderful book--and that is it’s wonderful premise. It is one of the few books that upon finishing I wanted to immediately start all over again.
It is a delightful mid-summer day in the Irish countryside and old Adam Godley, a famous theoretical mathematician, lay in a gloomy upstairs room, suffering the effects of a debilitating stroke. His family and a couple of friends mill about Arden, the family estate. They stroll the gardens and grounds, awaiting the end. There is his obtuse son, young Adam, and his lovely wife Helen; his troubled nineteen year-old daughter, Petra; her “young man” boyfriend, who wishes to write a biography of her father; and the second wife, Ursula, driven to drink by her husband’s dalliances and remoteness. A friend of Adam senior also stops by, a frumpy, club-cloven-footed perspiring mystery of a man. And there are the gods: Zeus, who has an eye for Helen; Pan, the shape changing mysterious visitor; and the breezy omniscient narrator, Hermes. Together the mix affords us a view of the human and godly condition with humor, hope and occasional dismay.
Hermes is a delightful tour guide through this world of human foibles and godly pursuits. His observations are not only earth bound. He shares with us his frustration in keeping “Dad”, his father Zeus, in check. Early in the novel Zeus instructs Hermes to hold back the dawn an hour so that he can stay with the comely mortal Helen just a bit longer. He has visited her in the night, changing form to replicate her husband, ravishing her to a frenzied state that she will only recall as a dream. But for the most part the god’s are shy, making themselves known only in increments. “Strange, how tentative we are when we come into their world, shy amongst the creatures we have made,” muses Hermes. “Is it that we are worrying we might leave the order of things calamitously disturbed? Everything is to be put back exactly as it was before us, no stone left unturned, no angle unaligned, all divots replaced. This is the rule the gods must obey.”
As the gods come and go on this single day in the life of the Godley household, the family, friends and two staff members are revealed in increasing detail. The narrative moves from young Adam and Helen, shortly after Zeus's libidinal visit, through the entourage to the comatose mind of the patriarchal mathematician. Only perhaps the coma is not all it appears to be. In fact, there is a torrent of consciousness behind the lifeless form. “No two things are the same, the equals sign a scandal; there you have the crux of it, the cross to which I was nailed from the start. Difference: the very term is redundant, a nonce-word coined to comfort and deceive.” It is revealed that his complex mind, is streaming along, nicely, thank you very much. And it echoes what we know of his mathematical work, theories of parallel worlds, just as the narration reveals parallel and intertwined complexities. For instance, the old man continues: “Perhaps that is my trouble, perhaps my standards are too high. Perhaps human love is simple, and therefore beyond me, due to my incurable complicating bent.”
For someone who relishes good prose, this book is a delight, as one would expect from a writer of such accomplishment. (The Infinities is the second Man Booker Prize John Banville holds, as well as a host of other recognitions, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Guardian Fiction Award.) For example, this passage: “Time too is a difficulty. For her it has two modes. Either it drags itself painfully along like something dragging itself in its own slime over bits of twigs and dead leaves on a forest floor, or it speeds past, in jumps and flickers, like the scenes on a spool of film clattering madly through a broken projector.” Or this passage, describing the dead-start liftoff of a locomotion: “Now the engine bethinks itself and gives a sort of shake, and a repeated loud metallic clank runs along the carriages from coupling to coupling, and with a groan the brutish thing begins to move off, and as it moves the risen sun strides through each set of carriage windows in turn, taking its revenge on the still-burning light bulbs, putting them to shame with its irresistible harsh fire.”
There is little dramatic momentum to this book. Instead the book progresses like a stroll through a garden, a morning filled with illuminated reserve and observation.Too, there is the constant agitation of revelation, like a chemical slowly dissolving an element. No one is who they seem. Rather, they are more complex, more disorderly and fraught; more in love, more afraid than the surface belies. Reading The Infinities is rather like watching the sun come up. The shadows give way to the low light, the low light increases to eventual brightness. There is never not pleasure in watching the sun come up. But then Hermes was ordered to hold it back for a hour, remember? Zeus can alter even that. Certainly the mathematician Adman Godley would find the challenge to such mathematical certainty an obverse pleasure.
It is a delightful mid-summer day in the Irish countryside and old Adam Godley, a famous theoretical mathematician, lay in a gloomy upstairs room, suffering the effects of a debilitating stroke. His family and a couple of friends mill about Arden, the family estate. They stroll the gardens and grounds, awaiting the end. There is his obtuse son, young Adam, and his lovely wife Helen; his troubled nineteen year-old daughter, Petra; her “young man” boyfriend, who wishes to write a biography of her father; and the second wife, Ursula, driven to drink by her husband’s dalliances and remoteness. A friend of Adam senior also stops by, a frumpy, club-cloven-footed perspiring mystery of a man. And there are the gods: Zeus, who has an eye for Helen; Pan, the shape changing mysterious visitor; and the breezy omniscient narrator, Hermes. Together the mix affords us a view of the human and godly condition with humor, hope and occasional dismay.
Hermes is a delightful tour guide through this world of human foibles and godly pursuits. His observations are not only earth bound. He shares with us his frustration in keeping “Dad”, his father Zeus, in check. Early in the novel Zeus instructs Hermes to hold back the dawn an hour so that he can stay with the comely mortal Helen just a bit longer. He has visited her in the night, changing form to replicate her husband, ravishing her to a frenzied state that she will only recall as a dream. But for the most part the god’s are shy, making themselves known only in increments. “Strange, how tentative we are when we come into their world, shy amongst the creatures we have made,” muses Hermes. “Is it that we are worrying we might leave the order of things calamitously disturbed? Everything is to be put back exactly as it was before us, no stone left unturned, no angle unaligned, all divots replaced. This is the rule the gods must obey.”
As the gods come and go on this single day in the life of the Godley household, the family, friends and two staff members are revealed in increasing detail. The narrative moves from young Adam and Helen, shortly after Zeus's libidinal visit, through the entourage to the comatose mind of the patriarchal mathematician. Only perhaps the coma is not all it appears to be. In fact, there is a torrent of consciousness behind the lifeless form. “No two things are the same, the equals sign a scandal; there you have the crux of it, the cross to which I was nailed from the start. Difference: the very term is redundant, a nonce-word coined to comfort and deceive.” It is revealed that his complex mind, is streaming along, nicely, thank you very much. And it echoes what we know of his mathematical work, theories of parallel worlds, just as the narration reveals parallel and intertwined complexities. For instance, the old man continues: “Perhaps that is my trouble, perhaps my standards are too high. Perhaps human love is simple, and therefore beyond me, due to my incurable complicating bent.”
For someone who relishes good prose, this book is a delight, as one would expect from a writer of such accomplishment. (The Infinities is the second Man Booker Prize John Banville holds, as well as a host of other recognitions, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Guardian Fiction Award.) For example, this passage: “Time too is a difficulty. For her it has two modes. Either it drags itself painfully along like something dragging itself in its own slime over bits of twigs and dead leaves on a forest floor, or it speeds past, in jumps and flickers, like the scenes on a spool of film clattering madly through a broken projector.” Or this passage, describing the dead-start liftoff of a locomotion: “Now the engine bethinks itself and gives a sort of shake, and a repeated loud metallic clank runs along the carriages from coupling to coupling, and with a groan the brutish thing begins to move off, and as it moves the risen sun strides through each set of carriage windows in turn, taking its revenge on the still-burning light bulbs, putting them to shame with its irresistible harsh fire.”
There is little dramatic momentum to this book. Instead the book progresses like a stroll through a garden, a morning filled with illuminated reserve and observation.Too, there is the constant agitation of revelation, like a chemical slowly dissolving an element. No one is who they seem. Rather, they are more complex, more disorderly and fraught; more in love, more afraid than the surface belies. Reading The Infinities is rather like watching the sun come up. The shadows give way to the low light, the low light increases to eventual brightness. There is never not pleasure in watching the sun come up. But then Hermes was ordered to hold it back for a hour, remember? Zeus can alter even that. Certainly the mathematician Adman Godley would find the challenge to such mathematical certainty an obverse pleasure.
heyhannahrae's review against another edition
1.0
This was absolutely terrible. I am so glad to be done with it. The vocabulary is ridiculously pretentious, the plot is drab, and the characters are both boring and unlikable. I would never in a million years recommend this book to anyone.
cstefko's review against another edition
1.0
1.5 stars
It pains me to rate this so lowly and to relegate it to the dreaded DNF status, especially because I loved Banville's previous book [b:The Sea|3656|The Sea|John Banville|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924824s/3656.jpg|987554] (though now I'm scared to go back and reread it now that I am older and much more cynical of Great Books by white men). But y'all... it's not good. I often say that I don't mind a book having little plot, but this truly has zero plot. There's some good writing, but then there's also terrible writing, often in the same paragraph. And a lack of continuity/consistency... The book jacket says Ursula is stepmother to both kids, then an early passage says she is Petra's mother but not Adam's, then in a later passage she implies that she gave birth to both children. What?? Just lazy editing. Not to mention the ridiculous central conceit, which has to do with the Greek gods and isn't worth getting into. But honestly, the main reason I had to give up on this one (besides a lack of motivation to find out what happens) is that the horny old man vibe realllly jumps out. Life is too short. I'll get around to rereading The Sea at some point, but I don't think I'll give any of Banville's other books a try at this point. Let this be a cautionary tale!
It pains me to rate this so lowly and to relegate it to the dreaded DNF status, especially because I loved Banville's previous book [b:The Sea|3656|The Sea|John Banville|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386924824s/3656.jpg|987554] (though now I'm scared to go back and reread it now that I am older and much more cynical of Great Books by white men). But y'all... it's not good. I often say that I don't mind a book having little plot, but this truly has zero plot. There's some good writing, but then there's also terrible writing, often in the same paragraph. And a lack of continuity/consistency... The book jacket says Ursula is stepmother to both kids, then an early passage says she is Petra's mother but not Adam's, then in a later passage she implies that she gave birth to both children. What?? Just lazy editing. Not to mention the ridiculous central conceit, which has to do with the Greek gods and isn't worth getting into. But honestly, the main reason I had to give up on this one (besides a lack of motivation to find out what happens) is that the horny old man vibe realllly jumps out. Life is too short. I'll get around to rereading The Sea at some point, but I don't think I'll give any of Banville's other books a try at this point. Let this be a cautionary tale!
jasonfurman's review against another edition
3.0
This novel unfolds in the form of a classical drama -- a single day spent by a family in the house of their dying father, a mathematician. And like a good classical drama, it also has some mischievous gods wandering around interfering in the lives of the mortals, including Zeus, Hermes and Pan. The story extremely loosely follows Amphitryon.
The writing is beautiful, it is filled with moments that are both poignant and funny, and the entire novel is disorienting -- it is largely realistic but in addition to the gods there are the occasional throwaway lines that make it clear the setting is somewhat different than we imagine -- e.g., Wallace's theory of evolution recently disproven, Einstein's theory of relativity recently disproven, and the modern train is a steam engine straight out of the mid-19th century. These odd throwaways are never explained.
The 3-/12 stars, however, are because reading the book went from a delight to a slog. Although in theory it had a classical unity, it seemed somewhat random with one characters thoughts or perspectives following right after the other, with no clear forward momentum, greater depth of explanation, or resolution. Which was disappointing because the premise was so promising and appealing.
The writing is beautiful, it is filled with moments that are both poignant and funny, and the entire novel is disorienting -- it is largely realistic but in addition to the gods there are the occasional throwaway lines that make it clear the setting is somewhat different than we imagine -- e.g., Wallace's theory of evolution recently disproven, Einstein's theory of relativity recently disproven, and the modern train is a steam engine straight out of the mid-19th century. These odd throwaways are never explained.
The 3-/12 stars, however, are because reading the book went from a delight to a slog. Although in theory it had a classical unity, it seemed somewhat random with one characters thoughts or perspectives following right after the other, with no clear forward momentum, greater depth of explanation, or resolution. Which was disappointing because the premise was so promising and appealing.
othersociologist's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
5.0
jocelyn_sp's review against another edition
2.0
I bought this at a neighbour's garage sale. We discovered common tastes in books, and she recommended it. I found it more clever than enjoyable
drewbios's review against another edition
Lovely, sparkling prose, but writing as Hermes in the first person felt cumbersome, particularly when dealing with the middling details of otherwise ordinary lives. Perhaps that contrast was the point, but it didn't feel right to me.