John Banville is a magnificent prose writer. I loved his earlier book Birchwood, so thought I would try out The Sea, which won him the Booker Prize in 2005. I liked it, but did feel a little bit disappointed. The writing was still beautiful. The blurb on the cover from the Daily Telegraph was not an overstatement: “They are like… Read More
Posts tagged john banville
“Birchwood” by John Banville
This book has very clear echoes of Proust, both in the writing style and in the sense of nostalgia that pervades the story of aristocratic decline. The references are clear and deliberate – in the very first chapter, Banville’s narrator refers to his fragments of memory as “madeleines” and talks of his “search for time misplaced.” None of this boded… Read More