The Book of Evidence

Hm. Definitely wasn't what I expected. Bit boring, actually. But there are a couple of prime moments where the book kicks you in the face in the most hilarious way possible with how unreliable the narrator is. So, not completely irredeemable.

I read this book based on the recommendation/review of a friend, and I am absolutely floored. John, where have you been all my life? I second all the reviewers' praise of Banville's language - even found myself feverishly writing down scattered phrases or entire paragraphs. - And how beautifully Banville controls the story - delivering just the right amount of plot detail and character insight at just the right time. Finally, I am struck by the juxtaposition of Banville's vigorous prose with his protagonist' (and interlocutor's) general apathy (or "accidie," as Banville would have it). It is, in a word, perfect.

John Banville's Book of Evidence is a disturbing short novel about Freddie Montgomery, a man who has committed murder. This is his account of his life and what led him to kill.

Needless to say, it is disturbing. Freddie rambles, filling his audience in on his life in bits and pieces, going back and forth in time without taking a break. There are no chapter divisions, so this novel would be best read in as close to one sitting as possible, just to appreciate the nature of Freddie's associations and thoughts.

Sometimes, Freddie reminded me a bit of Humbert Humbert, with his bizarre, sad existence--he can't seem to control himself, and I almost felt sorry for him. Also, at times, it's clear that Freddie feels that he's a perpetual outsider, always different, never really included or a part of anything. He is The Stranger.

Because Freddie's viewpoint is the only one on offer, the reader is left to wonder about some of his relationships, particularly with his wife and mother. The little I gathered about these two women made it abundantly clear how unreliable a narration Freddie was providing.

This is a fascinating read.

When Freddie is in prison:
"By the way, what an odd formulation that is: to get life. Words so rarely mean what they mean."

The questions I am left with ***spoiler*** are--





Why did Daphne and Freddie ever get married? Was Freddie always insane?
Is Daphne as amoral as Freddie?
The way Daphne and Freddie were living, when Freddie gets himself in trouble, is puzzling.
Freddie's financial position: had his parents been reasonably well off?
What line of work was Charlie in, and who were his friends? It's all so mysterious.

Frederick Montgomery erzählt, scheinbar vor Gericht, wie es zum Mord an einem Dienstmädchen kam. Dabei entwickelt er seine Ideen über den freien Willen und das Böse und beschreibt sein Verhältnis zu anderen Menschen (auffällig ist, dass er sich selten einen Namen merken kann und oft sehr verächtlich reagiert). Wie in dem kürzlich gelesenen Distelfink von Donna Tartt geht es auch hier um ein altes niederländisches Gemälde, das sehr lebendig wirkt und den Erzähler quasi zu seiner Tat veranlasst. Eine moderne Version von 'Schuld und Sühne'.

Irish novelist John Banville—known to readers of mystery fiction as Benjamin Black—had been writing novels for twenty years when, in 1989, The Book of Evidence was short-listed for the Booker. Every page of this elegant psychopathic monologue—a thief and murderer's intelligent and restrained account of his inane and violent crime—reveals Banville to be a master of his craft.

Protagonist Freddie Montgomery is—like Humbert Humbert—an unreliable narrator. He and Humbert are unreliable, however, not because they lie to us, but because their amorality and lack of feeling rob them of the capacity to connect their own actions with consequences, and therefore they are deprived of the ability to create a coherent emotional identity. Freddie, in fact, may commit his crimes—and write his "book of evidence" too—in a vain attempt to feel something—anything—and, through such feelings, to comprehend his ever elusive self. But—just like the monkey-artist in Nabokov's preface to Lolita—the first, the only, portrait he can fashion is a picture of the bars of his cage.

In addition to the unreliability of his narrator, Banville resembles Nabokov in the beauty of his prose. Though his style is less resplendent and concentrated, it is also more melodious and precise. The jeweled splendor of Nabokov is perhaps inimitable, but one could do worse than imitate Banville's flowing, pellucid style.

"I killed her because I could, I said, what more can I say?"

I have found another favorite author. My Goodreads friend, Judith, highly recommended John Banville, and in particular his The Untouchable. I read good books very slowly so since I still work more than full time I began with a much shorter novel, one of Banville's earlier works, The Book of Evidence (1989), which made the short list for Booker Prize. It took me almost an entire week to read the 217 pages (a popular novel of this volume would take me one evening), but it was a literary delight - almost entirely because of Banville's wonderful prose.

I am including a synopsis after the rating if the reader wants to avoid "spoilers," even if the so-called plot (rather minimal here) is not an important component of the novel and it is basically known from the beginning how the events will develop. One does not read books like that for the story. Thousands of authors can tell a story; only very, very few can tell it in a way that inspires awe for their writing talent. For me, Banville's prose is on par with three supreme masters of language: Patrick White, Vladimir Nabokov, and Cees Nooteboom. Life is worth living to read sentences like

"The sun, the salt air, leached the significance out of things, so that they lost their true weight."

Let's note, though, that it is not just the language. It is - to use a horrible cliché - the depth of psychological insights that adds profundity to that sentence. This is in fact the first extraordinary aspect of Banville's prose that I noticed: the language he uses is completely interwoven with the psychological states he describes; it is hard to find where one ends and the other begins. This entanglement of language and psychology is evident in many passages and in some places it is even explicit:

"I am struck by the poverty of the language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state."

Three fragments of the novel are so gorgeous that I had to read them several times, just to savor the writing. First, the magical, breathtaking passage about the woman from the painting whose life story Freddie creates when looking at the picture. Then there is the spellbinding account of the murder and the threesome scene with Daphne and Anna.

The murder scene reveals yet another outstanding feature of Banville's prose: almost complete absence of clichés, which to me one of the most important attributes of great literature. While most of us conceptualize murder based on depictions in movies or TV Banville's scene of killing avoids popular stereotypes. Furthermore, why did Freddie kill? He does not know and the reader will not know either. That's how things often are in life. The movies, TV, and popular literature tend to artificially create a semblance of sense in human behavior. Reading Banville's novel one might understand that the causality that narrative arts create is often artificial and fake. The reader of Book who likes to have things explained at the end will likely be quite disappointed.

And finally, the most obvious aspect of the novel: it might be read as a modern rewrite, or perhaps homage to Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which was written 123 years earlier. Even the author himself alludes to the similarity. Let's make it clear, though, Freddie is no Raskolnikov and while Dostoyevsky is all about moral issues, guilt, and consequences of evil deeds, Banville focuses on post-modern motifs in his writing. The depth of both novels is comparable but the artistry of Banville's prose makes his story so much more readable (however I read Dostoyevsky only in Polish translation; maybe the original Russian is better). Yet another difference is the "narrative unreliability" of Freddie's account. We cannot be sure what really happened; he himself is not certain.

Four and a quarter stars.

[A brief (and, frankly, misleading) synopsis] Freddie Montgomery, formerly a scientist for a government institute, now lives the life of leisure somewhere in the Mediterranean. He has borrowed money from a local gangster and, unable to pay back the debt, leaves his wife as a hostage and returns to Ireland with hopes to sell some paintings owned by his family. He finds out that the paintings have already been sold to a friend of his so he decides to steal one of them. He kills a woman during the burglary and is now in jail awaiting the trial.

Through his remarkable and dark-humorous writing, Banville lets his hero Freddie narrate or plead GUILTY to his jury/ audience - We, the readers - You, "Who must have meaning in everything, who lusts after meaning, your palms sticky, and your faces on fire!" It would be difficult not to think of Nabokov when you listen to self-pity story of Freddie and the way he addresses the readers or mocks them, at times.

Nevertheless, this is beautifully written and not lengthy. You would not be disappointed if you read this book of not much of an evidence.

“A man with a decent accent can do almost anything.”

Freddie Montgomery is apparently defending his actions to a judge: he stole a small painting and brutally murdered the servant who saw him do so. He admits the crimes. The story is Freddie’s account, and only his, of why, with a bit of how.

“To do the worst thing, the very worst thing, that’s the way to be free.”
It’s a chilling insight into the cold heart and twisted mind of a clever, entitled, amoral, and beguiling raconteur.

“I never imagined there would be anything so vulgar as a police investigation.”
As a character, he’s utterly convincing, but what he says is clearly not. That is the intrigue.


Image: Bloody hands (Source)

The mind of a cold-blooded criminal

“None of this means anything.”
Freddie’s pompous, slightly self-pitying account mixes self-aggrandisement (“I see myself like the villain of an old three-reeler”) with excuses (circumstances and coincidences), and deflected blame (“Why did she not run away?”). He actually says, “It was all so unfair” while relishing the infamy of his crimes and wanting the reader to believe that his defence lawyer likes him and a young prisoner fancies him.

He accuses his wife of “moral laziness”, describes his mother as “majestic and slovenly”, and an American of “euphoric self-regard” - all of which probably apply more to him. He mentions “the impatient assurance of the rich” who have “this gilded ease” - envy, rather than projection.

His emotional detachment from “the child” (his seven-year old son), his wife (“I don’t know that I love Daphne in the manner that the world understands by that word”), and his mother, are surely psychopathic. The working class are “these people” and even “these grotesques”.

He says he has no remorse because he does not expect forgiveness - typically twisted logic.

“The feeling of power… It sprang not from what I had done, but from the fact that I had done it and no one knew.”

The allure of gloves

Freddie needs money urgently (he claims his comfortable Mediterranean expat life came to an abrupt halt after hubris got him in trouble with a local crime boss). The way he is drawn to one particular picture, “Portrait of a Woman with Gloves”, is more of a mystical compulsion than a way to maximise filthy lucre.
“There is something in the way the woman regards me, the querulous, mute insistence of her eyes, which I can neither escape nor assuage.”


Image: Portrait of a Woman with Gloves, “Workshop of Rembrandt”, in the National Gallery of Ireland. (Source)

He imagines a detailed backstory and he describes her gloves, but he doesn’t acknowledge their utility to criminals nor their seductive potential (especially with one, teasingly off, and the other still on).

“It’s as if she were asking me to let her live.”
A strange excuse for theft, and ultimately, the unnamed woman in the picture is the opposite of Josie Bell, the maid he murders.
“Failure of imagination is my real crime, the one that made the others possible. For me she [Josie] was not alive.”
The last sentence is a horrifying admission with the rare ring of truth.

Paradox?

“How much is true?
All of it. None of it. Only the shame.”
If an unreliable narrator admits they’re unreliable, is that admission reliable? (The claim of shame isn’t.)
“It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Noxious smells and dirty light

Evocative descriptions of stinks, sunlight, and mist are trademarks of Banville’s writing (see my review of some of his other books, HERE). Sometimes he combines the two:
“The light outside seemed moist and dense as glair, I imagined it in my mouth, my nostrils.”

Comparing prison with boarding school is a cliché, but the fug marks this as Banville:
“It’s just like school, really, the mixture of misery and cosiness, the numbed longing, the noise, and everywhere, always, that particular smelly grey warm fug.”


Image: Prison yard, in grey (Source)

“The daylight too is strange, even outside, in the yard, as if something has happened to it, as if something has been done to it, before it is allowed to reach us. It has an acid, lemony cast, and comes in two intensities: either it is not enough to see by or it sears the sigh. Of the various kinds of darkness I shall not speak.”

Literary links

From the first page, comparisons with Lolita are inevitable (see my review HERE). The similarities are strong, but there are many differences and this is worthwhile in its own right. Furthermore, a casual murder will be less upsetting to some readers than paedophilia.

Oedipus, Freud (especially dreams), and Lady Macbeth are the more interesting comparisons.

Quotes

•t“Flower children of all shapes and colours fell into my bed, their petals trembling.”

•t"There is something about gin, the tang in it of the deep wildwood, perhaps, that always makes me think of twilight and mists and dead maidens. Tonight it tinkled in my mouth like secret laughter."

•t“I enjoy the inappropriate, the disreputable… In low dives… the burden of birth and education falls from me.”

•t“Pity is always, for me, the only permissible version of an urge to give weak things a good hard shake.”

•t“His clothes had more substance than he did.” [An old man near death]

•t“Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much descriptive as judgmental. They carry the weight of censure mingled with fear.”

•t“All sorts of unspoken things swam in the air between us like slithery, dangerous fish.”

•t“The silence was fraying at the edges.”

•t“It was out of a muddled conflation of ideas of knight errantry and rescue and reward that my plan originated.” [He also claims not to have had a plan]

•t“Shadows hung down the walls like fronds of cobweb.”

•t“I could feel my horrible smile, like something sticky that had dripped onto my face.”