None of this boded very well for the novel – I had Proust on my night-table for ages, but every time I read it I fell asleep so quickly that I seemed to go backwards as much as forwards. And aristocratic decline strikes me as generally a good thing, so I often struggle to feel much sympathy for the lords and ladies forced to survive in only two houses instead of five.

Birchwood, though, I thoroughly enjoyed. While the writing style is reminiscent of Proust in its dreamy beauty, it clips along at a much faster pace, as does the sometimes bizarre plot of childhood resentments, exploding grandmothers, running off to join the circus, searching for a long-lost sister, etc. Also there’s a detachment from the destruction that comes to Birchwood, a sense that it’s inevitable and even deserved, a strong context of the social unrest in Ireland at the time.

The writing was brilliant from the first page to the last, and made me want to read a lot more of Banville’s work. Here’s the first paragraph:

I am, therefore I think. That seems inescapable. In this lawless house I spend the nights poring over my memories, fingering them, like an impotent casanova his old love letters, sniffing the dusty scent of violets. Some of these memories are in a language which I do not understand, the ones that could be headed, the beginning of the old life. They tell the story which I intend to copy here, all of it, if not its meaning, the story of the fall and rise of Birchwood, and of the part Sabatier and I played in the last battle.