Banville is a truly skilled operator when it comes to his prose. The little details in this book are magnified to be on the same level as the key plot moments, such as the murder. Something like drinking gin or vomiting shake the reader like seismic events.

Banville also really knows his narcissists, in some ways they stick close to the model of literary sociopaths but they diverge in small but significant little ways as well. There’s something wonderful and odious about the ways that the narrator, Freddie, can constantly make his situation feel ornate and fascinating, no matter how crude his crimes. Even the guilt of murder is a kind of euphoric experience for him. I think truly depressed people can no longer put imagery to their sorrow, can’t imagine their sadness as some mythic monster, but self centered depressives like Freddy will eternally have images to stand in for their deep seated insecurity and sadness.

Re-reading this, and enjoyed much more than when I first read it years ago. Banville is a brilliant writer, and his horrendous narrator - slippery, self-pitying, self-mythologising - is a brilliant creation. Looking forward to reading the others in the trilogy..

Make no mistake! John Banville's 1989 novel n  The Book of Evidencen is great writing at its best. The author fulfills readers' expectations (or at least the stereotype) of Irish writers and their special gift for using the English language. This tale is told by the churl and cad Freddie Montgomery who as the story opens appears to be telling a magistrate about the murder of a servant girl. He admits freely admits to being the culprit. So the main question in this mystery is not who did it or will he get caught, but rather what were the events led him to commit the crime.

In many ways, this book reminded me of Albert Camus' The Stranger, even in its organization. Both books have two parts and the first part is dedicated to the protagonist relating the events to his listener (the reader). However the style of the tale is different. Meursault is dispassionate witness who is filled with ennui. His account sounds like a police report. It's all related in the same tense-it's all just the bare essential facts. Freddie Montgomery, on the other hand, is a raconteur par excellence. You sense that he's really enjoying the moment as he tells his tale. Both narrators, though different sort of storytellers, are similar in their motives. They don't care about the people around them be they family, friends, or especially their victims. Their crimes are not crimes of passion, but rather indifference.

The second halves are different. Mersault talks about his time in prison and his absurd trail where he is convicted for all intents and purpose of being a sociopath because he didn't cry at his mother's funeral. Freddie, however, talks about his half-hearted escape and what he did as he first waited for the police to catch him and then as he waited for his trial. Ironically, both protagonists have people who care about them and try to support them as best they can. In the end, however, both men reject everything around them and embrace whatever future awaits them-be it the guillotine or live imprisonment.

I was surprised to learn that n  The Book of Evidencen is the first volume of a Freddie Montgomery Trilogy I suppose that John Banville must have felt that this affable but awful character had more to say. I look forward to read more. For sure, n  The Book of Evidencen is great testimony to the fact that Banville really is a wonderful writer.

I admit to being biased. I just love his style of writing, no matter the subject or the undesirability of the protagonist. Or his reliability. I am a bit confused, as when he first arrives back home, he describes Joanne as a girl of 17. However, when the will is read, it seems she must have been only a child, when it was made..

Doesn't matter, but it is very difficult to find missed clues in an EBOOK.

Loved it.

An absolute masterpiece.

Um homem dirige-se ao tribunal para contar a sua história. É uma história sobre relações difíceis, sobre expectativas defraudadas, oportunidades perdidas, entretecida numa trama em que a voragem dos acontecimentos leva a um crime. A estrutura do livro é interessante, mas o fio da história não é muito convincente, percebe-se que cumpre ali a função da lamela no microscópio: está lá não para ser vista mas para permitir ver outra coisa. O que realmente releva deste livro é o personagem principal - e narrador - um homem permanentemente à beira do precipício, como todos nós, com elevadas expectativas mas que pouco faz por isso, um homem ao mesmo tempo introspectivo e superficial. "É o único modo de se conhecer outra pessoa:superficialmente, é aí que se encontra a profundidade (pág. 81)". O que me fica mais marcante deste livro, é o espantoso talento do Autor. Li algures que Banville é o mestre da frase. Sem dúvida que o é. Todo o livro é um longo prazer de leitura, mesmo as partes mais fracas da narrativa passam muito bem graças à mestria do Autor. Suponho que seja isto a essência da literatura.

Soggy old Irish drunk writes a cheap, two-bit Clockwork Orange rip-off about some creep who murders a woman for fun, seemingly because he likes watching women bleed. Oh, and this is the same soggy, decrepit old suck-up who wrote a cheap and blatantly hypocritical hatchet job on Ernest Hemingway (calling him a sexist pig, natch) for THE NATION. Classy!

It just seemed to drag. The story was mildly interesting. The character was a lying, alcoholic womanizer. There was a murder and an art heist. It should have been a more engaging and more riveting story. It wasn't.

"The Book Of Evidence"is a disgustingly good book,the chapters are fairly long, but not to dragged out. Throughout the book no quotation marks are used since it is written in past tense with Freddie narrarating his experience, and thoughts as if it were his testimony.
At some moments throughout the book you find yourself feeling sorry for Freddie, and in others you feel disgusted and appalled by his thought process for his actions and motivations.
This book is written as a character study, we're the story progresses the better you start to understand Freddie and his mind better. If you are easily distracted, and don't enjoy other books that make you analyze; then this might not be for you

Wow...this is the first book I think I have ever read where I looked up the review blurbed on the front cover to understand the context in which it was used. To say this short novel was a slog for me would be a complete and total understatement. I think I finished it only out of spite. I started it because Banville is an author I have enjoyed before and this work has been on my radar...but, alas, nope. Not for me.

I'm not sure what it was. I don't mind the trope. The first person account of someone committing/has committed an awful crime. I think my problem was I was never given enough about anything to care. I didn't find the main character's thoughts on his actions/inactions that interesting. He was not Raskolnikov (sp?) wrestling with a Neitzschean moral dilemma. He was so blasé about everything (which I appreciate was likely intentional) but I couldn't garner interest in him nor his thoughts/actions. Consequently, I had to force myself to finish...when the cover blurb wondered if the novel had been coughed up from hell...the reviewer meant the subject matter, to me it was the experience of reading it.

At the centre of Freddie Montgomery is a hole where a whole human being ought to be. He seems to be lacking some essential element that whole human beings have, and he is vaguely conscious of this lack without really understanding what it might involve. He is also utterly unable to imagine other people as whole human beings that have lives and selves that really exist. His crime seems to have originated from this basic lack of a coherent self. All of this makes for a pretty compelling, albeit unreliable, narrator.

The poet in our book club selected this book for us to read. Banville's writing is beautiful and occasionally caused me to pick up my dictionary.

It was the subject matter that caused me to give it a two star rating. Readers spend their time inside the mind of a murderer. Not a calculating serial killer. who might be interesting, but a slob who is a disorganized failure in life. Frederick does not value things as most people do. His wife and son seem of very little importance to him. In fact, he never reports to readers that he misses them even though he spends most of the novel away.like he does a drink of gin.

Despite Banville's elegant writing, I found the book hard to pick up because the story line was so boring. Frederick is a man who needs money to pay a debt. The novel is his quest to find a way to get the money. Banville keeps readers in suspense for a good part of the novel as to the identity of Frederick's victim but that did not peak my interest much. His choice of victim reflects his skewed sense of values.

A very depressing read.