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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
Unlike anything I’ve read before. A first-person, direct address structure, where we know the outcome on the very first page and are compelled by character, plot, and language to read it straight through. I’ll likely read another.
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“No es fácil esgrimir un martillo dentro de un coche. Al darle el primer golpe esperaba oír el chasquido agudo y definido del acero sobre el hueso, pero fue más parecido a machacar barro o masilla endurecida. En mi mente apareció la palabra fontanela.”
Para hacer posibles las reflexiones criminológicas del personaje esta novela, que nos lleva al asombro e inquietante relatar en primera persona es transitar por lo irónico de la vida misma, quien desde la cárcel confiesa un asesinato, un crimen el cual no fue movido por la codicia, la venganza o cualquier otro motivo, más bien es un asesino movido por el accidente de un hecho. Freddie Montgomery, un talentoso científico, tras ser detenido secuencia las debilidades y vulnerabilidades del hombre ante un interrogatorio del cual no tiene más escapatoria que sentirse culpable. Imagina sus declaradas cavilaciones ante la corte.
“Pero no, no son solo las drogas. Ha desaparecido algo esencial, nos han arrancado la esencia. Ya no somos del todo humanos. ”
Como diría Jean Baudrillard en El crimen perfecto: “Si no existieran las apariencias, el mundo sería un crimen perfecto, es decir, sin criminal, sin víctima y sin móvil. Un crimen cuya verdad habría desaparecido para siempre, y cuyo secreto no se desvelaría jamás por falta de huellas.” Las apariencias de este personaje se cubren en el mismo hecho del auto engaño, pues no siempre lo que parece ser por la impresión que nos da, mas bien es un monologo del cuan nos damos cuenta cómo va tejiendo lo que deviene a ser. Un tipo que se mete en un lio de maleantes, pues al tomar un dinero prestado, no puede pagarlo, no tiene más salida que irse corriendo, pero vaya decisión, sino que tuvo dejar a su familia en mano de los maleantes para regresar a Irlanda con el fin de recaudar fondos como intercambio. Es aquí donde comienza la gran tormenta, cuando se roba un cuadro a la luz del día en la casa de un amigo, pero llevándose de paso a la sirvienta, la mata. La muerte de esta sirvienta es el móvil acusatorio que lo lleva por los devaneos de sentirse condenado, pero este condenado insiste en tener un trato justo, vaya ironía de la vida.
Es un texto que nos recuerda a El Extranjero de Albert Camus, quien va de la mano con el personaje de un asesino sin sentido, un personaje que a todas luces se siente extraño en este mundo, quien busca las respuestas apropiadas para salir de debajo de una roca, pero motivado en la decisión de plasmar su historia en el papel porque teme que no se le permita declarar, y eso no lo ve bien "No es justo. Incluso un perro como yo debe tener su día». Mientras Meursault vaga por la vida condenado por no llorar en el funeral de su madre, Freddie va de un lado a otro con el asombro entumecido de un amnésico. Un personaje que ya nada le importa de la vida, ni el sufrimiento humano, un espíritu oscuro "Me sentí como el héroe lúgubre de una novela rusa".
Es un buen libro, donde este desgraciado personaje, desde la primera página te vas identificando con él, un personaje que nada se le escapa, todo lo detalla, ama la ginebra, odia a los perros y los bigotes, desea a su esposa junto a su mejor amiga. Rencoroso, burlón, con un destello de humor mordaz. "Había algo en estar esposado que me pareció casi relajante, como si fuera un estado más natural que el de la libertad sin trabas". Esta viene a ser la primera novela de la Trilogía Freddie Montgomery: El libro de las pruebas, Fantasma y Atenea.
Para hacer posibles las reflexiones criminológicas del personaje esta novela, que nos lleva al asombro e inquietante relatar en primera persona es transitar por lo irónico de la vida misma, quien desde la cárcel confiesa un asesinato, un crimen el cual no fue movido por la codicia, la venganza o cualquier otro motivo, más bien es un asesino movido por el accidente de un hecho. Freddie Montgomery, un talentoso científico, tras ser detenido secuencia las debilidades y vulnerabilidades del hombre ante un interrogatorio del cual no tiene más escapatoria que sentirse culpable. Imagina sus declaradas cavilaciones ante la corte.
“Pero no, no son solo las drogas. Ha desaparecido algo esencial, nos han arrancado la esencia. Ya no somos del todo humanos. ”
Como diría Jean Baudrillard en El crimen perfecto: “Si no existieran las apariencias, el mundo sería un crimen perfecto, es decir, sin criminal, sin víctima y sin móvil. Un crimen cuya verdad habría desaparecido para siempre, y cuyo secreto no se desvelaría jamás por falta de huellas.” Las apariencias de este personaje se cubren en el mismo hecho del auto engaño, pues no siempre lo que parece ser por la impresión que nos da, mas bien es un monologo del cuan nos damos cuenta cómo va tejiendo lo que deviene a ser. Un tipo que se mete en un lio de maleantes, pues al tomar un dinero prestado, no puede pagarlo, no tiene más salida que irse corriendo, pero vaya decisión, sino que tuvo dejar a su familia en mano de los maleantes para regresar a Irlanda con el fin de recaudar fondos como intercambio. Es aquí donde comienza la gran tormenta, cuando se roba un cuadro a la luz del día en la casa de un amigo, pero llevándose de paso a la sirvienta, la mata. La muerte de esta sirvienta es el móvil acusatorio que lo lleva por los devaneos de sentirse condenado, pero este condenado insiste en tener un trato justo, vaya ironía de la vida.
Es un texto que nos recuerda a El Extranjero de Albert Camus, quien va de la mano con el personaje de un asesino sin sentido, un personaje que a todas luces se siente extraño en este mundo, quien busca las respuestas apropiadas para salir de debajo de una roca, pero motivado en la decisión de plasmar su historia en el papel porque teme que no se le permita declarar, y eso no lo ve bien "No es justo. Incluso un perro como yo debe tener su día». Mientras Meursault vaga por la vida condenado por no llorar en el funeral de su madre, Freddie va de un lado a otro con el asombro entumecido de un amnésico. Un personaje que ya nada le importa de la vida, ni el sufrimiento humano, un espíritu oscuro "Me sentí como el héroe lúgubre de una novela rusa".
Es un buen libro, donde este desgraciado personaje, desde la primera página te vas identificando con él, un personaje que nada se le escapa, todo lo detalla, ama la ginebra, odia a los perros y los bigotes, desea a su esposa junto a su mejor amiga. Rencoroso, burlón, con un destello de humor mordaz. "Había algo en estar esposado que me pareció casi relajante, como si fuera un estado más natural que el de la libertad sin trabas". Esta viene a ser la primera novela de la Trilogía Freddie Montgomery: El libro de las pruebas, Fantasma y Atenea.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think what kept me hooked was the narrator. Firstly, his way of describing things and people—so vividly and with such idiosyncrasy. Secondly, how unreliable he is, how twisted his world view is. His account begs to be dissected (even as he himself warns you not to look for deeper meaning). You want there to be a motive, even as the narrator refuses to give you that.
Though the murder is the point of drama the narrative hinges on, the story lingers on a very different “crime”—the narrator’s self-centered otherness, his inhumanity, his lack of real identity and direction.
John Banville writes luxurious prose and The Book of Evidence is unsurprisingly lush with gorgeous language. The story has an incredible windup, the opening left me giddy with anticipation, and while it's not poorly plotted, it did not deliver as strongly as I hoped.
Recommended for Banville fans but should not be used as a starter book to get a friend hooked on his work.
Recommended for Banville fans but should not be used as a starter book to get a friend hooked on his work.
I am not enjoying this book. There's a genre of what passes for entertainment which I cannot enjoy, and this novel belongs to it.
This group of works includes The Slap by Tsiolkas, and the movie and book Wake in Fright, which many Australians will know (both of these I have referred to are Australian, though Book of Evidence is Irish).
They are works which are critically acclaimed, and well produced and written, but which I find soul-crushing to witness. They seek to portray the ugly amoral hypocrisy of a group of people, and their innocent victims, or merely to highlight the meaninglessness of life. They delight in long descriptions of senseless, and inexplicable violence and offensiveness, without sign of redemption or reason. Their raison d'etre is to open our eyes to our own depravity, or that of the society in which we live, and they wander through incident after incident aimlessly in an attempt to build up a foreboding sense of horror, but the survey of amorality is not a strong enough impetus for the plot, and it suffers from an acute lack of direction. It's poor mimicry, to my mind, of Dostoevski's aim in Crime and Punishment, but lacking in the inspirational insight in that work. Speaking of mimicry, this is written very much after the style of Camus or Kafka, which is certainly a tribute to Banville, I guess.
I don't find this to be the stuff of entertainment. I suppose I'm a bit sheepish to admit that I do like a nice little feel-good movie, and I like to learn to appreciate and love life and people and the world around me in my reading. I'm a pessimist about humanity and the future in general, and books like these just bring me down. I wouldn't presume to say that this is not a good work, and I'm a bit ashamed of putting a Pulizer shortlisted book into my rubbish bin, but I cannot enjoy it, and I probably won't bother reading it to the end. I know there won't be any happy ending, or even a resolution to place the amorality into context or enlighten me at the end of all that gloom.
This book documents the decline and comeuppance of a wealthy, dissipated and directionless ne'er do well with no moral code, who murders a woman after he gets himself into a debt to one of his many rip-off victims, who was into criminal elements. His immediate victim has his ear cut off by gang members and sent to him, and the useless protagonist is threatened by the gang leader into leaving his wife and son (whom he doesn't really care too much for) on a Mediterranean island as unknowing hostages whilst our hero goes home to try to suck more money out of what is left of his family, whom he has betrayed and left in the lurch years before. The money is not forthcoming and he ends up murdering the maid of an acquaintance he once desultorily screwed with his wife in a threesome after sponging off her for a while. Like the sound of this? You're welcome to it.
This group of works includes The Slap by Tsiolkas, and the movie and book Wake in Fright, which many Australians will know (both of these I have referred to are Australian, though Book of Evidence is Irish).
They are works which are critically acclaimed, and well produced and written, but which I find soul-crushing to witness. They seek to portray the ugly amoral hypocrisy of a group of people, and their innocent victims, or merely to highlight the meaninglessness of life. They delight in long descriptions of senseless, and inexplicable violence and offensiveness, without sign of redemption or reason. Their raison d'etre is to open our eyes to our own depravity, or that of the society in which we live, and they wander through incident after incident aimlessly in an attempt to build up a foreboding sense of horror, but the survey of amorality is not a strong enough impetus for the plot, and it suffers from an acute lack of direction. It's poor mimicry, to my mind, of Dostoevski's aim in Crime and Punishment, but lacking in the inspirational insight in that work. Speaking of mimicry, this is written very much after the style of Camus or Kafka, which is certainly a tribute to Banville, I guess.
I don't find this to be the stuff of entertainment. I suppose I'm a bit sheepish to admit that I do like a nice little feel-good movie, and I like to learn to appreciate and love life and people and the world around me in my reading. I'm a pessimist about humanity and the future in general, and books like these just bring me down. I wouldn't presume to say that this is not a good work, and I'm a bit ashamed of putting a Pulizer shortlisted book into my rubbish bin, but I cannot enjoy it, and I probably won't bother reading it to the end. I know there won't be any happy ending, or even a resolution to place the amorality into context or enlighten me at the end of all that gloom.
This book documents the decline and comeuppance of a wealthy, dissipated and directionless ne'er do well with no moral code, who murders a woman after he gets himself into a debt to one of his many rip-off victims, who was into criminal elements. His immediate victim has his ear cut off by gang members and sent to him, and the useless protagonist is threatened by the gang leader into leaving his wife and son (whom he doesn't really care too much for) on a Mediterranean island as unknowing hostages whilst our hero goes home to try to suck more money out of what is left of his family, whom he has betrayed and left in the lurch years before. The money is not forthcoming and he ends up murdering the maid of an acquaintance he once desultorily screwed with his wife in a threesome after sponging off her for a while. Like the sound of this? You're welcome to it.
I had to keep reminding myself that this was published in 1989 and presumably set around then because it felt so vividly part of an older Ireland of tweed and gin. It was such a powerful impression that references to running shoes or credit cards seemed jarringly anachronistic. Perhaps it was that I was flooded with memories of The Third Policeman, Beckett or even Joyce. The book bore my personal baggage lightly though and was deftly sometimes blazingly original, chilling, darkly hilarious.
“My world, and I an outcast in it.”
The Book of Evidence is my first Banville novel, after getting off to a slightly rough start with The Sea (I stopped after about 10 pages -- maybe I was just tired, but I wasn't enjoying the language, somewhat ironically). At first, I read this book like an odd mixture of Camus, Nabokov, and Thomas Bernhard. It had that Bernhardian "novel-length-monologue" type of thing he does with that aura of darkness that permeates his work. The theme appeared philosophically to be in Camus' wheelhouse, and the language and character writing seemed to be pure Nabokov. As I read more, Banville's distinct authorial voice began to come through. To continue some random comparisons to other writers though, I found myself thinking of John Updike and Don DeLillo as I read. I feel like this is the kind of novel Updike could've/would've written -- a novel-length confessional of a murder committed by an unreliable narrator -- and maybe he would've written the story as compelling, but he would've failed to write Freddie Montgomery himself with the absence of too much "theatricality" and -- I don't know -- awareness of his dramatic irony that Updike's more colorful characters sometimes lack. I also thought of DeLillo, not because he would ever be interested in writing a story like this, but because of the gorgeous stylistic flair to Banville's writing. Many of Banville's sentences were breathtaking, making me think of DeLillo who is a similarly strong stylist. I wouldn't yet go so far as to compare Banville favorably to DeLillo, whom I hold in very high regard. But here's just one example of Banville's writing: “In the hot, hazy dusk the streets seemed wider, flattened, somehow and the cars scudded along, sleek as seals in the sodium glare.”
The Book of Evidence is my first Banville novel, after getting off to a slightly rough start with The Sea (I stopped after about 10 pages -- maybe I was just tired, but I wasn't enjoying the language, somewhat ironically). At first, I read this book like an odd mixture of Camus, Nabokov, and Thomas Bernhard. It had that Bernhardian "novel-length-monologue" type of thing he does with that aura of darkness that permeates his work. The theme appeared philosophically to be in Camus' wheelhouse, and the language and character writing seemed to be pure Nabokov. As I read more, Banville's distinct authorial voice began to come through. To continue some random comparisons to other writers though, I found myself thinking of John Updike and Don DeLillo as I read. I feel like this is the kind of novel Updike could've/would've written -- a novel-length confessional of a murder committed by an unreliable narrator -- and maybe he would've written the story as compelling, but he would've failed to write Freddie Montgomery himself with the absence of too much "theatricality" and -- I don't know -- awareness of his dramatic irony that Updike's more colorful characters sometimes lack. I also thought of DeLillo, not because he would ever be interested in writing a story like this, but because of the gorgeous stylistic flair to Banville's writing. Many of Banville's sentences were breathtaking, making me think of DeLillo who is a similarly strong stylist. I wouldn't yet go so far as to compare Banville favorably to DeLillo, whom I hold in very high regard. But here's just one example of Banville's writing: “In the hot, hazy dusk the streets seemed wider, flattened, somehow and the cars scudded along, sleek as seals in the sodium glare.”
Banville has keen powers of observation. Divinely so, I think. He has a knack for putting an image into words that bring it to life, as contrived as this may sound as praise. It's like he has a photographic memory of an infinite amount of highly specific feelings. Here's another: “I could feel my horrible smile, like something sticky that had dripped onto my face.” During some passages, it's like he's pulling from a bank of experiences deep within the human subconscious. There's something “hyper real” about how Banville brings Freddie’s murder episode to life. It's both thrilling and literary. He makes this episode -- one that the vast majority of all people will never experience anything like -- believable and real.
And that's really just scratching the surface of the novel. The story itself has an interesting thematic core. Banville seems interested in some themes like compulsivity, reliability of narrator, and moral detachment. Freddie's flippant attitude toward his crime and all of its associated events raise questions about his humanity. His hyper-intelligence contrasts interestingly with the brutality of his crime, and how he interacts with and retrospectively comments upon the bevy of characters in the book highlights the tension between his learned facade and his criminal nature. The reader is forced to confront a highly unusual situation (in the best written segment of the novel, by the way) in which Freddie murders a woman in cold blood -- actually leaving her to die after bludgeoning her rather than finishing her off -- and can't really explain why he did it. It sort of "just happens" -- this horrible act. Banville may be using this situation as a symbol for life in the grand scheme. While very few of us are murderers, all of us make idiotic mistakes, decisions that have no explanation. In this condensed form, Banville shows us that life simply flows; our actions merely come out of us. This absence of free will may be something Banville wished for us to consider.
And that's really just scratching the surface of the novel. The story itself has an interesting thematic core. Banville seems interested in some themes like compulsivity, reliability of narrator, and moral detachment. Freddie's flippant attitude toward his crime and all of its associated events raise questions about his humanity. His hyper-intelligence contrasts interestingly with the brutality of his crime, and how he interacts with and retrospectively comments upon the bevy of characters in the book highlights the tension between his learned facade and his criminal nature. The reader is forced to confront a highly unusual situation (in the best written segment of the novel, by the way) in which Freddie murders a woman in cold blood -- actually leaving her to die after bludgeoning her rather than finishing her off -- and can't really explain why he did it. It sort of "just happens" -- this horrible act. Banville may be using this situation as a symbol for life in the grand scheme. While very few of us are murderers, all of us make idiotic mistakes, decisions that have no explanation. In this condensed form, Banville shows us that life simply flows; our actions merely come out of us. This absence of free will may be something Banville wished for us to consider.