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A review by jenibo
The Book of Evidence by John Banville
2.0
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.