The Blue Guitar

Literature & Fiction

JOHN BANVILLE

Genre Fiction

Penguin Export

Ancient Light - Penguin

Literary

VIKING

Penguin

The Infinities

BOOKS ON TAPE]

The Untouchable

Contemporary

Picador

Athena

A thriller and a love story as sumptuously perverse as Lolita. 'Sleek, beautiful, breathtakingly cunning prose' Sunday Times Morrow a clerkish, middle-aged type encumbered with a chain-smoking dying aunt and a considerable talent for wallowing is at a loose end when, on two separate occasions, he is beckoned up the stairs of an empty Dublin house. The first is an offer of dubious work, and Morrow soon becomes caught up in a conspiracy to authenticate a series of fake paintings. The second, possibly even odder, is an offer of a love of a sort. Written in typically luminous prose and featuring a rich cast of characters, Athena is a paean to art, painting, and love, in all its mercurial richness. 'One of the most profoundly intelligent, introspective novels of recent years, questioning the perceptions of author, narrator, reader and critic' Good Book Guide 'The consummately achieved and entrancing creation of a master of language: in the fullest sense a work of art' Scotsman 'Athena is a love letter to Morrow's passions, to love, to art and to the paintings he examines: works on classical themes, in which a moment's obsession, lust, loss and magic are preserved for ever' Literary Review Volume Three of the Frames Trilogy

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Birchwood

Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a baroque madhouse for its ruined inhabitants. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to join a travelling circus and look for his long-lost twin sister. Soon he discovers that Ireland is ruined as well. Famine and unrest stalk the countryside...

The work and life of Coperniccus is powerfully evoked in a novel that tells of a shy man, baffled by the conspiracies that rage around him. The second novel recreates the life of Johannes Kepler and his drive to chart the stars and planets. The Newton Letter concerns a contemporary historian writing a biography of Isaac Newton.

The Revolutions Trilogy: "Doctor Copernicus", "Kepler", "Newton Letter - An Interlude"

Shroud

The Sea (2005) is the eighteenth novel by Irish author John Banville. The story is told by Max Morden, a self-aware, retired art historian attempting to reconcile himself to the deaths of those whom he loved as a child and as an adult. The novel is written as a reflective journal; the setting always in flux, wholly dependent upon the topic or theme Max feels to write about. Despite the constant fluctuations, Max returns to three settings: his childhood memories of the Graces-a wealthy middle class family living in a rented cottage home, the "Cedars"-during the summer holidays; the months leading up to the death of his wife, Anna; and his present stay at the Cedars cottage home in Ballyless-where he has retreated since Anna's death. These three settings are heavily diced and impromptly jumbled together for the novel's entire duration. Max's final days with Anna were awkward; Max does not know how to act with his soon-to-be-dead wife. Scenes of Anna's dying days are more full of commentary than with actual details, as are most of the novel's settings. It's through these commentaries that we learn of Max's choice to return to the cottage of his childhood memories (after Anna's death), confirming that a room would be available for residence during a visit with his adult daughter, Claire.

The Sea

London, United Kingdom: Picado

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Books by JOHN BANVILLE