Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE LEMUR by Benjamin Black

Benjamin Black’s first two novels, CHRISTINE FALLS and THE SILVER SWAN, were set for the most part in 1950s Dublin and featured a pathologist, Quirke, as a variation on a staple of the crime fiction protagonist, the reluctant private investigator. Languid and graceful in style, morbidly claustrophobic in atmosphere, the crime novels are written to a very high standard, as you might expect of John Banville, Benjamin Black’s more literary alter-ego, even if events tend to unfold at a pace that is unusually sedate for the genre.
  THE LEMUR is a different affair entirely, and not only because it is set in New York in the present day. First published in serial form in the New York Times magazine, it is notable, at 132 pages, for its brevity. Its protagonist, John Glass, is a once-famous journalist who has abandoned his principles to the extent that he has accepted a million-dollar commission from his father-in-law, ‘Big’ Bill Mullholland, to write the ex-CIA operative’s biography. Glass employs a researcher, whom he nicknames ‘The Lemur’, to dig into Mulholland’s past, an unwise move that results in blackmail, extortion and murder.
  It’s a conventional set-up, but the joy of THE LEMUR is watching John Banville wriggle around in what can often be a strait-jacketed genre. “The police station, if that was what to call it – headquarters? precinct house? – looked just as it would have in the movies,” he writes with an deceptively jaunty air of disregard for detail, before following up with the observation that “ … if viewed from above, all this apparently random toing and froing would resolve itself into a series of patterns … as in a Busby Berkeley musical,” and describing the police captain as having “the face of an El Greco martyr, with deep brown, suffering eyes and a nose like a finely honed stone ax-head.”
  The tale, while straightforward by the standards of the more complex contemporary crime narratives, benefits from the brevity imposed by its serialisation. It’s no more than a novella, but each relatively short chapter contains its fair share of twists and surprises, albeit stealthily delivered, the story emerging as sinuously as the smoke from Glass’s beloved cigarettes.
  There are caveats, of course. Crime fiction aficionados will very probably anticipate the final twist long before the big reveal at the end, and the constraints of time and space mean that events are too quickly forced to be entirely believable. The biggest issue you may have with THE LEMUR, however, is that it is just too short. Easily read in one sitting, it offers an all-too-brief glimpse into a world peopled with exquisitely detailed characters, particularly as Banville’s sense of mischief is palpable and infectious.
  Even if you are a die-hard fan of the genre, this offering is worth reading for the simple joy of reading John Banville in playful mood. And if you haven’t read crime fiction before, THE LEMUR might well be the perfect place to start. – Declan Burke

This review was first published by the Sunday Business Post

The Untouchable’s New Clothes

“Speaking of which – what the fuck is going on with all the award nominations for Benny Blanco? You can’t help feeling it’s just for who he is, and almost a thank you for his condescending to join the crime pack, rather than a reflection of the content of his books. John Connolly must be pissed – and rightly so.”

The author of the above conundrum will have to remain anonymous, unless he or she decides otherwise, on the basis that we’re using it without permission, albeit it as a fairly accurate summation of the off-the-record comments that have arrived at the Grand Vizier’s desk over the last few weeks. Benny Blanco, as all three regular visitors to CAP Towers will be aware, is the pseudonym we use for the pseudonymous Benjamin Black, the crime fiction avatar of John Banville, who may well have changed his name by deed poll to ‘Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’ if the number of times the phrase is used in relation to his Benjamin Black novels is any reliable guide.
  The vast majority of said reviews are very positive indeed, both for Black’s debut CHRISTINE FALLS and its sequel, THE SILVER SWAN (Black’s third novel, THE LEMUR, is currently being serialised in the New York Times). In fact, the Review Monitoring Elf can’t remember seeing a single negative review of either novel. Sample quotes arriving in today (Sunday) alone range from: “I am at this moment reading THE SILVER SWAN by Benjamin Black, and it’s so good, so shiveringly delicious, I want to lick each page in appreciation” (Agatha Christ-Almighty) to: “Pour yourself a quiet drink and settle into your best chair for an authentic dose of Irish angst and wit, wondrous writing and about as undiluted an evening’s pleasure as reading can provide … Last year, Banville / Black stunned many of his long-time fans with an utterly masterful mystery novel, CHRISTINE FALLS, which is up for both an Edgar Award and a Los Angeles Times book prize” (Tim Rutten, LA Times).
  The Grand Vizier would have it be known that he is not in agreement with the thrust of these sentiments. But firstly, a disclaimer: the pseudonymous Grand Vizier is the power-hungry avatar of crime fiction author Declan Burke, who has not won a Booker Prize, and is highly unlikely ever to do so, and that’s even though we live in an infinite universe where everything is at least theoretically possible. A further disclaimer: the Grand Vizier believes John Banville’s THE UNTOUCHABLE to be one of the best novels of the last two decades, and that Banville is a superb writer and one of the best prose stylists working in the English language today. A third disclaimer: the Grand Vizier has yet to read THE SILVER SWAN, and is therefore only qualified to speak about CHRISTINE FALLS.
  So: CHRISTINE FALLS. Here at CAP Towers, we have for the very great part implemented a philosophy of goodwill to fellow writers, partly because life’s nasty, brutish and short enough as it is without us pissing on anyone’s parade, but mainly because the Grand Vizier is of such an evil disposition that he can do with every bit of good karma going. And so, even though the Grand Vizier was happy to host Claire Coughlan's reviews of CHRISTINE FALLS and THE SILVER SWAN, he held off from writing a review of his own of CHRISTINE FALLS, on the basis that it would run something like this: “An affectionate and adequate pastiche, although poorly plotted; unnecessarily verbose, particularly as Banville has spoken of Georges Simenon as an inspiration; a casual approach to the defining characteristics of the genre that borders on disrespect for its traditions; inelegantly paced, particularly during the scarcely plausible last quarter.”
  Now, we know that that opinion runs contrary to most of the reviews CHRISTINE FALLS has received, and from reviewers that the Grand Vizier believes generally get it right. And, yes, due to the Grand Vizier’s lowly position on the publishing ladder (we’re holding it for our betters at the moment), there is a very good chance that the above comments will be read as sour grapes. So be it. Here we stand; we can do no more.
  Curiously enough, given the timing of this post, two other reviews of Benjamin Black’s novels arrived in today along with those quoted above. The first was posted by Erachet at Up The Beanstalk, the gist of which runneth thusly: “Perhaps not so surprising is that what makes the two Black novels, CHRISTINE FALLS and THE SILVER SWAN, so good — their atmospheric, descriptive writing — is precisely Mr. Banville’s great strength, while Benjamin Black, whose third novel is currently being serialized in The New York Times Magazine, is still learning some of the ropes when it comes to plot and suspense.” Then came Scott Eyman, Palm Beach Post Books Editor: “Line by line, Banville is a superb, evocative writer (“He was studying a dried puddle of blood, gleaming darkly like Chinese lacquer against the red-painted floorboards.”), and I think it would be fair to say that he wants to make sure you don’t forget it … Mostly, this virtuosity is welcome, because we are privy to the minds of the victims, usually relegated to mere names on a page. These, Banville insists, are real people. But there are other times when virtuosity is all that it is. Beneath the luscious writing and the evocative setting, the book’s bones are quite conventional.”
  A coincidence? Two petty cases of backlash against the hype? Could it be that the upper echelons of the crime writing fraternity have too soon rushed to embrace Benjamin Black in the hope that the genre might bask in the reflected glory of John Banville? Or is it possible that some people are simply acknowledging that John Banville’s THE UNTOUCHABLE doesn’t make Benjamin Black untouchable? You know where the comment box is, people … and there's a free, brand new copy of CHRISTINE FALLS to anyone who can change our minds about it.

First We Take Manhattan

Benny Blanco (right, in award-winning ‘John Banville’ persona) is quite the toast of our U.S. cousins this week, with Sarah Weinman breaking the news that CHRISTINE FALLS was short-listed in the Los Angeles Book Festival awards in the crime / mystery category and Vanity Fair giving that novel’s sequel, THE SILVER SWAN, the hup-ya in its ‘Hot Type: A monthly overview of great new books’ section. How do they know they’re great books if they’re still new? Because they’re Vanity Fair, people – do try to keep up. Meanwhile, THE SILVER SWAN received not one but - wait for it! - TWO nominations in the Irish Book Awards short-lists announced today (see below). Finally, the latest instalment of Benny’s THE LEMUR, currently being serialised in the New York Times, can be found just about here. Is Benny about to break America John Connolly-style? Only time, that notoriously prevaricating doity rat, will tell.

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE SILVER SWAN by Benjamin Black

In THE SILVER SWAN, Benjamin Black, aka John Banville, manages to put right every flaw that marred his crime fiction debut, CHRISTINE FALLS. Although the latter made compulsive reading, its pace and ‘baddies’ unfortunately stumbled into what seemed like a rushed ending. But Black has got the hang of this crime malarkey and the result is a superbly written, paced and characterised novel. The narrative follows three linear strands, told from the points of view of Quirke, the pathologist from CHRISTINE FALLS who’s now abstaining from alcohol and typically gets personally involved with this case; his niece/daughter Phoebe, who also gets involved in the action; and the eponymous Laura Swan, whose body is washed up on the rocks of Dalkey Island off Dublin. Did she kill herself or was she murdered? There are no prizes for guessing which, as THE SILVER SWAN is low on the ‘whodunit’ element – the villains reveal themselves early on – and high on telling a dark, sad story, gradually building its pace and wringing it to a dramatic denouement. The depiction of the setting itself is remarkably evocative and the shabby glamour of 1950’s Dublin presides over the story like a grande dame, as it did in CHRISTINE FALLS. – Claire Coughlan

Being Benny Blanco

Ice Box Films turned in an excellent documentary on RTE during the week, the subject being Benny Blanco from the Bronx, aka Benjamin Black, aka John Banville. Produced by Clíona Ní Bhuachalla and directed by Charlie McCarthy, ‘Being John Banville’ was one of those rare pleasures, unafraid to present one man talking about writing unadorned by gimcrack editing or flash-whizz-bang pyrotechnics to jazz things up. The vid has Banville rubbishing the first draft of THE SILVER SWAN, dissing Benny B and explaining his metamorphosis into a potentially soul-destroying popular genre writer, complete with – oh yes! – that all-important Mephistophelian reference. If you’re good, we’ll bring you some more next week …

A Waltz To The Music Of Chancer

We’re loving The Chancer (right), people. Relatively new to the realms of lit crit, he is delicate in his appraisals, Solomon-like in his judgements. Here’s The Chancer on Benny Blanco, aka Benjamin Black:

“Let’s get this right again: Booker Prize winner John Banville, distressed by his poor sales, decides to pen a series of crime novels under a pseudonym – hello Benjamin Black – on the understanding that the people who would never, ever buy a John Banville book might accidentally pick one up, resulting in the Tesco-friendly best-seller every highbrow author secretly craves. And it works! Not only that, Banville’s new Black book, THE SILVER SWAN, got better all-round reviews than his last couple of ‘proper’ novels – AND you can actually read the bleedin’ thing, for a change. The Chancer Inquires: Can a pseudonym kill off the real author? Very Stephen King’s THE DARK HALF, like. Word has it that Banville is set to receive one of the literary community’s highest honours – a mammoth interview in The Paris Review. Trust us: It’s a big deal. While we’re at it, The Chancer wants Roddy Doyle to stick with the kids’ books – ‘Rover Saves Christmas’ gets better with every read. Best Irish Christmas story EVER? Absolutely. Beats the shite out of ‘The Dead’, for starters.”

Get off that fence, sir, you’ll get splinters up your wazoo. Having divested himself of his opinion, The Chancer then links to a nifty little interview from back in May at LA Weekly, ‘John Banville Takes on Benjamin Black: Still killing women’, where Benny Blanco gets into the Benjamin Black nitty-gritty with Nathan Ihara, to wit:

NI: But let’s talk about the book — what led you to write in such a drastically different style?
BB: “At the time I thought it was an exercise because I had finished the John Banville novel THE SEA and I started to read Georges Simenon. I was having lunch with the political philosopher John [N.] Gray, and he put me on to him. So I started to read and I was really blown away by this extraordinary writer. I had never known this kind of thing was possible, to create such work in that kind of simple — well, apparently simple — direct style. So it wasn’t any more serious than that. But looking back I think it was very much a transition. It was a way of breaking free from the books I had been writing for the last 20 years, these first-person narratives of obsessed half-demented men going on and on and on and on. I had to break out of that. And I see now in retrospect that CHRISTINE FALLS was part of that process. Because it’s a completely different process than writing as John Banville. It’s completely action driven, and it’s dialogue driven, and it’s character driven. Which none of my Banville books are – I’m not sure what drives them.”

Hmmmm, sounds to us like a case for quirky ol’ Quirke. Any clues to get him started, gentle readers?

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE SILVER SWAN by Benjamin Black

Incurably curious pathologist Quirke is back, in John Banville’s second novel written as Benjamin Black. It’s two years since the events of CHRISTINE FALLS, and Quirke has given up the drink. He and his daughter aren’t on good terms, his step-father’s suffered a severe stroke, and his step-brother’s lonely and mourning the death of his wife. A bleak picture in ’50s Dublin, then. Things threaten to become even more interesting when Billy Hunt, an old school-friend Quirke barely remembers, calls him and asks a favour: his wife has been found drowned, a suspected suicide, and could Quirke please see that an autopsy is not performed – Billy can’t bear the thought of his wife’s body under the pathologist’s scalpel. Quirke, being Quirke, agrees but does one anyway after he notices a suspicious mark on the dead woman’s skin. It seems he is right to be suspicious, but all that he finds only begs more questions, questions Quirke begins to worry away at, slowly picking his way through a puzzle of drugs, messy finances, and adultery, to reveal the answer. It’s possible that Banville is the best writer at work in the genre at the moment, in terms of artfulness at least. His prose is simply brilliant, gorgeous and evocative and poetic. The sentences he writes stun, the descriptions of the people and the city seem lovingly penned. However, there are moments when you get the sense he’s working on autopilot with these books. Every now and then, a clunker, which would never happen in a book written under the real name. I read somewhere that he writes them very quickly, and if you were to compare the writing here to the writing in, for example, THE SEA, I can certainly believe that. If his writing is this good when he’s not even really trying, if he were to spend the time on a crime novel that he spends on a normal piece of fiction, imagine the result! Quirke is a stunning character, too. Troubled, determined, dogged, melancholy, tee-total here, Banville furnishes him with dimension and makes him fascinating with absolute ease. The characterisation of Quirke alone is reason enough to read the series. As would be the atmosphere of the novel: vaguely sordid, repressed, a little desperate, dark, with everything seeming sinister. The only area where Banville is less than brilliant is the plotting. CHRISTINE FALLS was a little too predictable in this department, though with a brilliant end. The plot of THE SILVER SWAN is actually quite simple, but Banville moves it along at a perfect pace and this time ensures that there’s enough the reader doesn’t know to keep them interested in that department. There are no great shocks (there are, after all, only about three scenarios which could prove to be the truth), but it’s all developed excellently. There’s no punch at the end as there was with the last novel, but the whole thing is more satisfying over all. I can’t wait for the next, apparently called THE LEMUR, and to be serialised in The New York Times.- Fiona Walker

This review is republished by the kind permission of Euro Crime

You Don’t Have To Be Madagascarian To Work Here, But …*

News comes a-filtering down the liana-style grapevine that Benny Blanco’s third Quirke novel, THE LEMUR, is to be serialised in the New York Times, starting in January and running for 15 weeks. Quirke, the (oh yes!) quirky pathologist from CHRISTINE FALLS and THE SILVER SWAN, returns to investigate the strange case of a homicidal genius who lures his victims to Madagascar, into the jungle, and then gets them to stand under a tree just so – only for his KGB-trained lemur to strike, looping its stripy tail around their necks and strangling them while they gasp, with their final breath, “Lummee! And there was me thinking it was a blummin’ racoon!” Or maybe not. Anyhoo, if anyone hears a whisper of what THE LEMUR might actually be about, feel free to drop us a line. If you don’t, and we discover you knew all along, we’ll send our rabid wallaby around. Don’t say you haven’t been warned …

* We know. It’s ‘Malagasy’. But that’s even less funny.

“Mr Pot? Your Kettle Is Waiting.”

The Rap Sheet, bless its cotton socks, brings our attention to the John Banville (right) essay Criminal Odes in the current issue of Book Forum, in which Benny Blanco’s alter ego throws the eye over THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS, edited by Otto Penzler. “It’s a good piece overall,” comments The Rap Sheet’s Grand Vizier J. Kingston Pierce, “though Banville tries a bit too ardently to prevent the grit of this genre’s untidy roots from getting under his nails.” A case in point, perhaps, being Benny’s appraisal of Ray Chandler’s work, to wit:

“On mature reflection, I consider the Marlowe books forced and even a touch sentimental, for all their elegance and wit and wonderful sheen … Chandler perhaps laboured too long and too hard at effecting the transmutation of life’s raw material into deathless prose.”

Take that, damned Pot! Feel the wrath of the Mighty Kettle! For lo! here’s Benny holding forth on the writing process in last week’s Irish edition of the Sunday Times, to wit:

For one thing, these days Banville is revelling in the freedom afforded by his guise as a crime novelist. “On the brink of old age, I’m suddenly having fun,” he says. “I didn’t realise writing novels as so easy until I became Benjamin Black – you just sit there and make it up as you go along. I mean, John Banville will work on a sentence for half a day; Benjamin just goes, ‘Bugger it, that’ll do.’”

No labouring too long and too hard for ol’ Benny Blanco, eh? Because that deathless prose malarkey is only for serious writers. Except Ray Chandler, obviously.

Happiness Is The New Black

Grilled by Mick Heaney in yesterday’s Irish edition of The Sunday Times (no interweb link, sadly), John Banville (right) plugged THE SILVER SWAN by waxing lyrical – in suitably gloomy modernist fashion, natch – about the conflicts inherent in writing crime fiction under his nom de plume of Benny Blanco, aka Benjamin Black, to wit:

For one thing, these days Banville is revelling in the freedom afforded by his guise as a crime novelist. “On the brink of old age, I’m suddenly having fun,” he says. “I didn’t realise writing novels as so easy until I became Benjamin Black – you just sit there and make it up as you go along. I mean, John Banville will work on a sentence for half a day; Benjamin just goes, ‘Bugger it, that’ll do.’”

Nice to see Banville mellowing out last, eh? Erm, not quite …

“I needed to take a serious break from what I was doing,” he says. “The road I was on was too straight, and I had to take a side road. The John Banville book I’m doing at the moment will be slightly different because of Benjamin Black. The difference will be minimal but significant. I had to stop writing in the first person and start writing, as Beckett would say, in the last person. I needed a change.”

Okay. But surely now, with two Quirke novels under his belt, the crime fiction world is his oyster with Guinness chasers, right? Nope …

“Somehow, that genre doesn’t allow for humour. And that, if anything, would drive me away from crime fiction. It’s all so bloody gloomy and deterministic. And it’s because everything is moving towards a denouement, towards a close. Life is funny because there is no end to it, it’s an open joke. But crime fiction is not like life – it can’t be, because everything is going to be explained at the end. And that doesn’t happen.”

Laugh? We almost emigrated. Still, there is some good news, folks – Banville / Black “has already completed a third Benjamin Black novel, to be serialised in the New York Times, which took him six weeks to write …”. Six weeks, according to our crude calculations, being roughly what it takes John Banville to write an entire paragraph. Ah well, quality over quantity every time, eh ? What’s that? You want it good and fast? Bloody peons …

Alas, Poor Novel. We Knew It, Horatio ...

In common with most crime fiction readers, the Crime Always Pays elves tend on the whole to be readers first, crime fiction devotees second. As far as they’re concerned, a good book is a good book is a good book. They’re not even prejudiced against literary fiction – some of the literary novels they’ve enjoyed so far this year include Cormac McCarthy’s THE ROAD, Mary Renault’s THE MASK OF APOLLO, Brian Moore’s BLACK ROBE, Sebastian Faulks’ BIRDSONG, Flannery O’Connor’s WISE BLOOD, Primo Levi’s THE TRUCE, and John Banville’s THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE. Of course, Banville’s offering could easily be considered a crime fiction novel rather than a literary one, although there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be both. Quoth Marcel Berlins in Saturday’s London Times, reviewing THE SILVER SWAN:

“John Banville won the Man Booker Prize for THE SEA, but may be remembered just as much for the crime novels he writes as Benjamin Black. I do not imply that he’s dumbing down. On the contrary, he has applied his superb literary skills to a new genre, and discovered – as have his readers – that he’s a wonderful crime writer …”

No quibbles here: Banville is a wonderful writer, and could probably turn his hand to churning out quality pornography if the mood took him. But it’s that “I do not imply that he’s dumbing down” that gets under the skin of the elves’ collective inferiority complex. Why should any genre fiction, or non-genre fiction, require ‘dumbing down’ per se? Yes, there are bad crime writers, just as there are bad porn writers, and bad chick-lit writers, and bad literary writers. But what you generally don’t get in genre fiction, and which is increasingly the case in literary fiction, is a writer disappearing up his or her own fundament. A case in point: Adam Thirlwell’s MISS HERBERT, reviewed last week in the Sunday Times by Tom Deveson, the gist of which runneth thusly:

Thirlwell is a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, as well as the author of a previous novel, POLITICS … the scholarly showmanship is impressive and he flourishes his paradoxes with panache. Here is a novel that “is not really a novel”, one with a theme and variations but “no plot, no fiction, and no finale”. In a jetlagged version of literary history, Diderot and Kundera, Joyce and Hrabal are collaborators. Tolstoy “is a miniaturist”, a descendant of the “economical” Sterne.

Yes, well, huzzah. And there’s plenty more in that vein, until Deveson concludes:

It seems that Thirlwell can’t decide whether he is writing “an inside-out novel”, producing a look-at-me-mum firework display or instructing those less fortunate than himself in how to appear well read.

Which is, as far as we can make out, a polite way of saying that Thirlwell is so far up his own hole he’ll need a miner’s helmet, two maps and a compass to find his way out again. But the real issue is this – that it’s Thirlwell and his fellow fellows, with their novels that aren’t really novels, their book-shaped empty vessels devoid of plot, fiction and finale, who regularly pronounce the novel dead. Now, it’s possible that the doomsayers are commenting exclusively on the literary novel, in which case they’re only slightly wrong. But it’s also possible they’re the writing equivalent of the kid who descends from his ivory tower with a shiny new football, then discovers that the ill-bred oiks in the street are running rings around him, and so declares the game stupid, and takes his ball home, there to puncture it in a sulk. Should we indulge that petulant child as he kicks his flat ball around his ivory tower, or should we encourage him to get back out into the street and compete against the oiks, honing his craft to the point where he can beat them at their own game or finally, honourably, admit he just doesn’t have what it takes to play ball? Answers on the back of a used million-yen note to the usual address, people. Oh – and if anyone come across a review similar to that of MISS HERBERT above, mail it on here, placing ‘Putting The Fun Back Into Fundament’ in the subject line. Here is a novel that “is not really a novel”, one with a theme and variations but “no plot, no fiction, and no finale” ? To paraphrase Oscar Wilde on the death of Little Nell, it’d take a heart of stone not to laugh at that.

Cuddly Dudley Strikes Again

There really is no one else around like Ruth Dudley Edwards (right), author of MURDERING AMERICANS and full-time jagged bayonet in the side of political correctness. Reviewing the latest offering from Benjamin Black (aka John Banville) in last weekend’s Irish Times, La Dud used the platform to take sideswipes at Booker Prize-winner Anne Enright, the literary establishment in general, and - yep, you guessed it - one John Banville. The gist runneth thusly:

“It takes a lot these days to persuade me to read any fiction other than upbeat crime novels, since I find contemporary so-called literary fiction almost invariably disappointing or unpleasant. Foolishly, I allowed myself to be persuaded into reviewing Anne Enright’s THE GATHERING for the Literary Review which made me feel sick (I am squeamish) and which I dismissed as horrid just a few days before she won the Man Booker Prize. Although I once read a John Banville novel (THE UNTOUCHABLE – a roman á clef about the traitor Anthony Blunt) and liked it, I had no inclination to read his Man Booker prize-winner, THE SEA, which sounded lethally depressing, but I let my arm be twisted into reviewing his second crime novel in his Benjamin Black persona – and, being thorough, I first read its predecessor, CHRISTINE FALLS. These should have plunged me into terminal gloom, being about Quirke, an alcoholic pathologist in 1950s Dublin contemplating at world of lies and silence, pregnant girls exiled to laundries, abducted babies, ruthless priests, blackmail, drug addiction, sexual predators and plenty more of the same …”

Erm, yes. Let’s just move swiftly on to the good stuff, shall we?

“I’ve wondered why I like these books so much. It is partly because of Black’s skilful evocation of my city when I was a child: he doesn’t go in for set pieces about place, more for telling detail … It is partly too that despite the subject matter, there is no gratuitous nastiness or disgusting imagery. More important is that Black has produced two highly intelligent, disconcerting, unpredictable and beautifully written page-turners which tell us a great deal about our past and address serious moral issues. In a sane literary world, THE SILVER SWAN would be considered for another Booker prize, but, in fact, Black is unlikely even to be nominated. The literary establishment despises what it calls the genre novel. The notion that a novel should be driven by a compelling narrative is just so yesterday.”

Right, that’s it – consider Crime Always Pays’ stalking of Nicole Kidman officially oh-ver. From now on, it’s La Dud or bust for us …

Ay Caramba! ’Tis John Bartville!

It may be a little behind in its Benny Blanco from the Bronx (aka Benjamin Black) coverage, but given that the elves are huge (as in, tiny-but-keen) fans of The Simpsons, we couldn’t resist the following post from The Writer’s Times :

Interesting piece in today’s Metro about John Banville’s new novel. THE SILVER SWAN is a break from his usual literary output. It’s a thriller, based on something that happened in his local Dublin neighbourhood. Writing as Benjamin Black, Banville has set the novel in the 1950s, exposing the dark side of Ireland, where church and state ruled with a grimness rivalling regimes behind the Iron Curtain … Adopting a different style seems to have helped Banville get back on track with the style which won him the Booker in 2005 for THE SEA.
“... I wrote the Black books, [says Banville] which are all about character and plot, to give myself a bit of a kick.”
It seems to have worked – he’s 6,000 words into a new Banville novel, although he says that, for a writer, all that matters is writing the perfect line: “Each time I sit down to write, I think of Bart Simpson inscribing on the blackboard, ‘I must write a better sentence.’ And I’d sacrifice anything to get a sentence right.”

Insert your own ‘Homeric struggle’ punchline at your leisure, folks …

Booker, Danno

It’s far from crime fiction Anne Enright (right) was reared, but it’d be entirely remiss of us not to mention the fact that her fourth novel, THE GATHERING, scooped the Man Booker prize last night. Quoth the Irish Times:

In what the judges said was a tight decision, Enright’s “powerful, uncomfortable and even at times angry book” saw off the competition from highly fancied works by Ian McEwan and New Zealander Lloyd Jones … Chairman of the panel of judges Howard Davies said it had been a very close decision but at the end the judges came to have enormous respect for her “emotionally-charged novel of family life” and came to “appreciate its careful structure and character development”. McEwan’s ON CHESIL BEACH and Jones’s MISTER PIP had been joint favourites to secure the €72,000 (£50,000) prize.

Fabulous stuff. The last Irish Booker prize winner, John Banville in 2005, immediately turned to crime fiction, penning CHRISTINE FALLS (the follow-up, THE SILVER SWAN, is due early next month). Can we expect Enright to follow suit? Only time, that notoriously doity rat, will tell …

Cut To The Quirke

Benny Blanco from the Bronx (aka Benjamin Black, aka John Banville) returns with the Quirke-tastic follow-up to CHRISTINE FALLS this November, THE SILVER SWAN being an investigation into who exactly green-lit the eye-searing art-deco interiors in Sligo’s recently refurbished Silver Swan hotel. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s actually a dodgy suicide that arouses Quirke’s “old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden.” Hmmm, sounds like a bad case of the thong-wedgies to us. Or is that just wishful thinking on behalf of the Crime Always Pays elves who lust after Benny, the silver fox? Anyhoo, credit to the blurb elves over at Henry Holt for downplaying Benny’s sophomore offering so artfully, to wit:

“Haunting, masterfully written, and utterly mesmerizing in its nuance, The Silver Swan fully lives up to the promise of Christine Falls and firmly establishes Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) among the greatest of crime writers.”

Pardon us while we swoon dead away. But before we do, here’s an excerpt from THE SILVER SWAN:

“HER FOREHEAD WAS CLEAR AND HIGH, and the swathe of copper-coloured hair falling back from it must indeed have been magnificent. Quirke had a picture in his mind of her sprawled on the wet rocks, a long swatch of that hair coiled around her neck like a thick frond of gleaming seaweed. What, he wondered, could possibly have driven this handsome, healthy young creature to fling herself on a summer midnight off Sandycove pier into the black waters of Dublin Bay? Her clothes, so Billy Hunt had said, had been placed in a neat pile on the pier beside the wall; that was the only trace she had left of her going, that, and her motor car, which Quirke was certain would have been another thing she was proud of, and which yet she had abandoned. Her car and her hair: twin sources of vanity. But what was it had pulled that vanity down? Then he spotted the tiny puncture mark on the chalk-white inner side of her left arm …”

All together now: Sahwoooooooon …

Quirke II: The Quirkening

Brian McGilloway of the rather fine Borderlands fame was kind enough to tip us off that his PanMacmillan stablemate Benjamin Black – forthwith to be known on these pages as Benny Blanco (from the Bronx) – has the follow-up to Christine Falls arriving in November. The Silver Swan features the redoubtable pathologist Quirke investigating an apparent suicide against a backdrop of grey, drab 1950’s Dublin while trying to negotiate a relationship with the daughter he has always denied. Huzzah, say we – although, with apologies to Chekov, it sounds like the kind of thing that should feature a seagull rather than a swan in the title. Or could that be po/mo irony? Hmmm … only time, that notorious tittle-tattler and perennial doity rat, will tell.