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Dying birds
The world of Benjamin Black (aka Booker Prize-winning author John Banville) is a bleak and cynical one.
So it's rather unsurprising that "The Silver Swan" is a bleak and cynical murder mystery, full of secrets, dark streets and loneliness. The second book about the ironically-named ex-alcoholic pathologist Quirke is a pretty depressing affair, but the tangled...
Publié il y a 20 mois par E. A Solinas
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› Voir plus de commentaires 5 étoiles, 4 étoiles |
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I Cannot Separate The Two
I have read all the novels published by Mr. Banville and have now read both that he has written under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black. Try as I have I cannot read these books under his pen name without comparing them to the work that carries the name of Mr. Banville. Just for the record I believe Mr. Banville to be one of the finest writers of fiction producing books at...
Publié il y a 18 mois par taking a rest
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› Voir plus de commentaires 3 étoiles, 2 étoiles, 1 étoiles |
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3 internautes sur 3 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
I Cannot Separate The Two, Mai 12 2008
I have read all the novels published by Mr. Banville and have now read both that he has written under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black. Try as I have I cannot read these books under his pen name without comparing them to the work that carries the name of Mr. Banville. Just for the record I believe Mr. Banville to be one of the finest writers of fiction producing books at present.
"The Silver Swan" is the second in a series of books that center on the primary character of Quirke. This subsequent effort is inferior to the first. The scope of the book is very narrow, coincidence takes the place of great plotting, and even Quirke seems to have trouble deciding who he is and the difference between right and wrong. Except perhaps for the idea they are very flexible and for personal use as opposed to moral absolutes.
These books are not poor but I don't believe they would have gained notice if the author had remained unknown. I never came across these books until they were pointed out to me, and I would not have completed the second if I were not an admirer of Mr. Banville's work. As an author he is wonderful even when his skills are not as apparent as is the case with these books.
He has a third forthcoming work as Mr. Black and that will likely decide if I continue to read these books. For people who have never read a book under the name Banville these books may well work. It would probably be wise to read reviews by people who know only the work of "Mr. Black".
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What a waste of time, Oct. 18 2008
I had high hopes for this novel. The central character is a fellow named Quirke and he is a pathologist working in Dublin. Having read other books where the central protagonist is a pathologist or medical investigator (Simon Beckett's novels come to mind) I was eagerly looking forward to reading Benjamin Black's novel.
Boy, was I ever in for disappointment.
The plot of this book could not move along slower. The fact that Quirke is a pathologist had no bearing on the story. Black didn't write a thing about the profession. In fact when I'd finished reading the novel, I was left with a sense of "so what?". I didn't learn anything new and I certainly wasn't enlightened or even entertained. All in all I kept wanting to put the book down and pick up something what I knew would hold my interest.
But I didn't. I kept hoping beyond hope that Black would draw upon some area hidden within the novel and my suffering would be rewarded. Alas, it was not meant to be. Instead the Black just goes on and on and on with all of this useless trivia that has nothing to do with the novel and does very little to advance the plot. Ugh. I certainly wish I could get the weeks back I spent reading this travesty. The characters are very one dimensional, despite Black's feverish attempt to make them seem not so.
For those who haven't guessed it yet, this is a mystery novel. Or at least it was supposed to be. However I had figured out the 'whodunit' of the novel a little less than halfway through. All I can about this book is skip it. You'll be glad that you did. And I can pretty much assure you this is my first and last novel by Benjamin Black.
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Dying birds, Avril 5 2008
The world of Benjamin Black (aka Booker Prize-winning author John Banville) is a bleak and cynical one.
So it's rather unsurprising that "The Silver Swan" is a bleak and cynical murder mystery, full of secrets, dark streets and loneliness. The second book about the ironically-named ex-alcoholic pathologist Quirke is a pretty depressing affair, but the tangled relationships do make it a bit harder to identify just who dunnit.
An old classmate of Quirke's comes to him for help -- his wife Dierdre was just found dead at the bottom of a sea cliff, and he's begging for a little understanding and help. But when Quirke does a postmortem, he spies a needle mark on Dierdre's arm -- and though he's unsure of whether it was murder, suicide or an accident, he begins poking into the life she was living before she died.
To make matters worse, his perpetually estranged, chilly daughter Phoebe has become involved with Leslie White, a seductively foppish hairdresser who was also Dierdre's partner in business -- and, Quirke finds, the bedroom. His investigations lead him to a smarmy "spiritual healer" and White's ex-wife, who are pieces in a murderous puzzle...
Do not expect the sunny quirky Ireland of "Waking Ned Devine," or the quaintly modern land of certain chick-lit novels. The Ireland of "Silver Swan" is a determinedly bleak place -- dark, grimy, sunless, where people drink and have sex to forget the miserable emptiness of their lives. Every loved one dies, leaving the remaining people counting down the days until they themselves die.
But while Black's prose starts off rather stilted and spare, he hits his stride a few chapters in -- full of nuanced details and atmospheric little descriptions ("...until at last there should be nothing of her left but a hair's-breadth outline sketched from a few black and silver lines"). Everything takes on the cynical edge of a reminiscence, so that even a shocking crime seems weary and painful.
As for the mystery itself, it's told half in Quirke's meandering inquiries -- he sort of pokes and prods around here and there, unearthing clues. But we get more of a glimpse into the past than he does, via chapters from Dierdre's point of view -- we see the men who enthralled her, used her, and may have murdered her. Pretty creepy stuff.
And the characters, like the prose, are sad outlines. Quirke, as always, is anything but quirky. He's still haunted by a past of lost loves and alcoholism, but he pays more attention to his present problems -- his estrangement from his daughter, and his love life -- than he did before. Phoebe is less striking, mainly because she's so determined to look and act a dried-up spinster.
"The Silver Swan" is a bleak desert of motives and maybe-murders, painted in dark words by a very talented author. But if you feel depressed, then don't touch this book with a ten foot pole.
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"The world has fallen asunder", Mars 5 2008
Set soon after the events of Christine Falls, this latest novel by Benjamin Black reaches into the dark heart of the human soul where alcholism, drug use, blackmail, and seedy sex is central to the lives of the main characters. On the wagon after years of drinking, the broken down pathologist Garret Quirke's instincts are aroused when he is called upon to investigate the suicide of a young girl whose body has been found washed up on the rocks of Dalkey Island.
The woman, Deirdre Hunt was the wife of old school acquaintance Billy Hunt who has strangely requested a meeting with Quirke to discuss the circumstances surrounding his wife's death. Certainly Quirke doesn't relish the prospect of meeting Hunt, a man thickened by years and with a bald patch on the crown of his head and retaining the smell of the recently bereaved.
Hunt oddly begs Quirke not to perform an autopsy on Deirdre's body: "I don't want her sliced up like some sort of carcass, " he fervently tells the pathologist even as Quirke promises Billy that he'll see what he can do. But even more bizarre is that Billy tells him that Deirdre had in fact called herself Laura Swan, her professional which she used when working in her beauty parlor, the Silver Swan.
Black brings forth a disreputable and lurid world in his grimy little suburban melodrama, the characters intent circling each other even as they appear to be mired in bitterness, living on the edge of drink and the dark abyss of drugs. Deirdre's life is transformed when she meets two shady men: the Indian Dr Kreutz, his propensity towards a Spiritual Healer hiding a much darker side and the darkly Machiavellian confidence trickster Leslie White.
Indeed Deirdre is seduced by Dr. Kreutz's soft, amused and sing-song voice and because he looks like some marvelous, exotic wading bird who sends Deirdre a message, a prophecy of the future in the unlikely form of survival and of love. But it is the seductive White that proves to really be Deirdre's undoing.
Deirdre gleefully accepts the proposal of this "beautiful silver haired creature" to open a beauty parlor, but falling into an affair with him, he was at once diffident and insistent and she falls under the spell of his playful talk and the intoxicating feel of his fingers, and also world of drugs and dirty pictures, of Deirdre naked and unable to control herself.
The Silver Swan effortlessly movies between the events that led up to Deirdre's death and the aftermath, where Phoebe, who up until two years ago had thought Quirke was her father, and who knew Deirdre Hunt, is also faced with the seductive charms of Leslie White. It is Phoebe who following Deirdre's murder is plagued with the feeling of being watched, of being followed. As she gradually falls for the charms of White, her state of mind remains on edge, bewildered, caught up in a tangle of half memories and weird fancies.
An atmospheric tale, Black fully entrenches his characters in 1950's Dublin beautifully capturing the interiors of dark and smoky café's and pubs, the rain-soaked streets in a society that is still somewhat stultified by religion and propriety, where sexuality and abortion remain furtive and underground. In the course of the investigation, Quirke constantly fights the urge to drink, but remains steadfast to the end, even as the mysteries of Deirdre's death slowly unravel with surprising consequences for all the characters. Mike Leonard March 08.
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CDN$ 28.00 CDN$ 24.32
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Accueil Amazon
