John Banville

This is a book to savour for its language. It has an affecting plot too. Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he had a childhood holiday. He's dealing with the recent loss of his wife, and finds himself confronting a drama, long suppressed, from that long-ago holiday. He made friends with the much more advantaged twins Myles and Chloe, who are not exactly the run-of-the-mills kids next door. This is a book about grief and lost love, to read slowly, and to become as haunted by as Max himself is by his memories.… (mer)

We're in 1950s Dublin, some six months after Banville's April in Spain too place. A young women has apparently asphyxiated herself in her car a lock-up garage. It becomes apparent it's a murder. As ever, though the whole of the book is on the surface an account of the efforts to solve the crime and find the perpetrator, actually, that's not the reason to read it. Instead, it's about the more-than-prickly relationship between DI Strafford and police pathologist Dr. Quirke, about the complicated love affairs both men have in 1950s Dublin, still under the somewhat puritanical stranglehold of the Catholic church. And this extends to its influence over police investigations as well as moral arbitration. It's about the weather, the greyness of Dublin. And it's about simply enjoying Banville's luscious writing. So many reasons to read and appreciate this book!… (mer)