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A review by roisin_prendergast
La guitarra azul by John Banville
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.