- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: Picador UK (Sep 29 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0330339338
- ISBN-13: 978-0330339339
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 13.8 x 2.4 cm
- Shipping Weight: 381 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #777,744 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
John Banville's novels have a reputation for their linguistic flair and carefully observed description. His latest novel, Eclipse, is no exception in this regard. It tells the story of Alexander Cleave, a dramatic actor with "the famous eyes whose flash of fire could penetrate to the very back row of the stalls". Cleave has however recently experienced an actor's ultimate fear--"he died, corpsed in the middle of the last act and staggered off the stage in sweaty ignominy just when the action was coming to its climax".
The impact upon Cleave of the collapse of his acting career is devastating and leads him to reassess his entire life. Looking back on his childhood, he realises that "acting was inevitable. From earliest days life for me was a perpetual state of being watched". Cleave flees to the house in the country where he grew up and, as he sinks into a depressed torpor, he realises that the house is inhabited by both ghosts from the past, as well as more furtive and tangible presences from the moment. Visited by his anguished wife Lydia, and obsessing on his fractured relationship with his academically gifted but disturbed daughter Cass, Cleave reflects with great emotional intensity on "the terror of the self, of letting the self go so far free that one night it might break away".
Eclipse is a beautifully written but dark and introspective novel. It often almost completely dispenses with plot, as Banville (author of Booker short-listed The Book of Evidence to The Untouchable) probes deeper into Cleave's disturbed reflection on his life, his family, his past and his present, all of which culminates in a desolate and unexpected ending. Eclipse is an elegiac, mournful novel, linguistically brilliant but somewhat unrelenting. --Jerry Brotton
From Publishers Weekly
Irish author Banville (The Book of Evidence; The Untouchable) is one of the most seductive writers currently at work. His books are so intensely imagined and freshly observed, with a startling image or insight on every page, that story almost ceases to matter. In fact, his tale here is tenuous in the extreme. Alexander Cleave is a successful actor because only in performance can he hide his essential hollowness, his sense of his own intangibility. When his career starts to falter, he retreats to his childhood home in a small town by the sea and tries to learn to live with himself, to discover who he really is. Into this existential anguish intrude memories of his parents, his estranged wife, his emotionally damaged daughterDand the ghosts of people he may not even know, but to whose sadness he is attuned. He begins an uneasy relationship with a slovenly caretaker, Quirke, and Quirke's enigmatic teenage daughter, Lily; he is visited by his wife; he goes to a strangeDand magnificently evokedDcircus with Lily; he receives terrible news about his daughter. There is by no means a surfeit of incident, and the book never falters or creates impatience because every scene, every moment, is so alive, so exquisitely lit, felt and polished, that to read among them is like listening to great music. And when Banville does choose toward the end to raise the emotional temperature, the effect is deeply moving. (Feb. 28) Forecast: Banville will probably never be a hugely popular writer, and The Eclipse, unlike The Untouchable, is not structured along conventional lines. But perceptive reviews and the support of people who love exquisitely turned prose will help to slowly build his readership.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quiet acceptance of human imperfections,
This review is from: Eclipse (Paperback)
Written with subtlety and simplicity, "Eclipse" is a wistful and introspective story about Alex, a man who leaves his wife and successful career for solitude.Despite good reviews Banville received elsewhere, I always felt uncomfortable with his work because of its pronounced aloofness and cynicism, along with a collection of deliberately charmless characters. In "Eclipse", Banville appears to have relented somewhat and softened his scrutiny on human nature and its limitation. Alex, who is excessively self-conscious, conceited, bored, and detached, is nonetheless portrayed as a vulnerable person with an inner wish to love and be loved. I felt relief as, while remaining austere and skeptical about emotional bonds, Banville tempers them with quiet acceptance of human imperfections and gives a sense of transcendence with his masterly lyricism.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Might Give It Another Try Some Day,
By A Customer
This review is from: Eclipse: A Novel (Paperback)
I endured about 75 pages of navel-gazing and finally put the book down. Generally, I like 'heavy' introspective books, but this wasn't going anywhere and the main character wasn't interesting enough to carry it along. I think it was around the part where he found himself oddly fascinated with the various matters his body produced, such as 'stools and snot' that I literally tossed the book aside and picked up something else. I might give it another try, eventually but, then again, maybe not.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Twist in the Tale.,
By
This review is from: Eclipse (Hardcover)
John Banville's Eclipse is, I think, his best novel yet. There is a qualification to this claim. Banville is a quiet, introspective and eloquently descriptive writer. Most of his novels largely avoid plot and instead pay attention not so much to the characters but to the world around them. As such the more you read this author the more you understand and appreciate him.Eclipse itself is simple. A middle age actor has had enough of life and the stage and retreats to his old family home. However things are not what he expects. Instead of longed for tranquility old problems with life and family persist. And new problems emerge. The actor does not seem able to discern between what is and what is not real. Are the ghosts and images real or just troubled imaginations? At the end the unreal is something different again. It's a great twist to a ghost story. Once again Banville's powers of description impress. Few writers, through their prose, can paint the world so well. Eclipse succeeds on many levels.
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