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A review by aquamarine
Wolf on a String by Benjamin Black, John Banville
2.0
Good luck finishing this book. It's a slog.
I like the writing of Benjamin Black (John Banville) and picked this up in Prague because of the setting. I enjoyed the descriptions of Prague - Old Town, Golden Lane etc. But oh lord were all the characters in this unpleasant and not in interesting ways. This book suffered from a few things: the main character only had things happen to him; he was passive, not very bright and didn't make any interesting decisions so there was little tension. The mystery wasn't interesting and it wasn't hard to guess who the culprits were.
Worst of all was the sexism and old-fashioned horror of the Other - you'll see what I mean. There's ways of portraying what might be the attitudes of the time without seeming to share in them. I don't need the author to step out from behind a curtain and say 'hey, it's my character who thinks openly sexual women are cold evil temptresses who share in the original sin of Eve' but there's no subtlety here and Banville makes it pretty clear when he says himself his favourite character (and his main character's true love) is the silent servant girl - silent because her tongue has been cut out while she was being raped. Ugh ugh ugh. The lovely submissive and silent serving girl is the ideal woman. Not forgiving the writer for this one. Not sure I'll read anything else by him - his portrayals of women and sex are uniformly awful.
I did like the attention paid to animals though; the horses and poor Plato the cat.
I like the writing of Benjamin Black (John Banville) and picked this up in Prague because of the setting. I enjoyed the descriptions of Prague - Old Town, Golden Lane etc. But oh lord were all the characters in this unpleasant and not in interesting ways. This book suffered from a few things: the main character only had things happen to him; he was passive, not very bright and didn't make any interesting decisions so there was little tension. The mystery wasn't interesting and it wasn't hard to guess who the culprits were.
Worst of all was the sexism and old-fashioned horror of the Other - you'll see what I mean. There's ways of portraying what might be the attitudes of the time without seeming to share in them. I don't need the author to step out from behind a curtain and say 'hey, it's my character who thinks openly sexual women are cold evil temptresses who share in the original sin of Eve' but there's no subtlety here and Banville makes it pretty clear when he says himself his favourite character (and his main character's true love) is the silent servant girl - silent because her tongue has been cut out while she was being raped. Ugh ugh ugh. The lovely submissive and silent serving girl is the ideal woman. Not forgiving the writer for this one. Not sure I'll read anything else by him - his portrayals of women and sex are uniformly awful.
I did like the attention paid to animals though; the horses and poor Plato the cat.