I am not sure how to rate this book. Banville is a very good writer and he has created a perfect amoral character, who does not try to justify his actions but does explain how he came to commit them. Nothing about his life or the crimes he commits are planned, but the way everything turns out is inevitable from his character.
The language is exquisite, poetic and impressionist. There is plenty of dark, ironic humour. I can see why he is sometimes compared to Nabokov. I admire this book, but I did not feel it engaged me and I felt too detached to really say I enjoyed it.

Fred is a criminal. Not only does he steal a painting in order to pay a bad debt but he kills a person who watches him. This novel is his confession.
The problem is that Fred is an unreliable chronicler of his tale.He can't remember names, is drunk most of the time and adds random facts into his story. The reader has to sift between truth and fiction. The only certainties is that Fred did commit two crimes and that he does not show any remorse for his actions.
So why three stars? I found the first half exhilarating but the second half a bit dull. Also the negativity in this book is almost a parody. My version of the book was revised with a ton of supplementary material, which does help give more light in Fred's character.

Montgomery, the murderer, the protagonist of this narrative, strikes me as he tells his tale to be the foremost unreliable narrator. He is guilty, of course, of course, but of what? Some sort of existential botch to hear him tell it. Not murder where a person with a soul is taken forcably. Oh no. Montgomery is much too delicate for that. He shirks duties and agrees with himself on every pleasure he takes, and regards himself first as a man deserving of enjoyment; a connoisseur of pleasure that he curates like the Dutch paintings that in the end so inflamed him. But, alas, he's not a hard worker at his pleasures. He is entitled to them, a taker of them, a thief of pleasures earned and kept by others. After duping a hustler of his own ill gotten gains, he is forced to leave his wife and child in some unnamed demi-paradise and hustle home to Ireland to try and get the money he needs to return them. There is so little urgency in this task and at times it seems he has forgotten it altogether. The first sin he permits of himself is laziness, a profound laziness that first drives his cynicism and ultimately engenders his murderous rage. This book is told by a lazy man who gradually becomes sinister because of his failure to create anything of value over a lifetime of coveting only the best, and so in the end, he decides that it is the murder itself that will be his creation. But then, it's done. The where are the reviews? The congratulations? indeed he has really no idea why he's done it. He wants you to know that he's guilty, and he wants you to know that he's smart and aesthetically sensitive about it. What emerges from his narrative of his acts is the portrait of a sociopath who is startled by the fact of other's humanity.

It's a brief, incisive read, that harkens to Nabokov. First of a trilogy the second volume of which has sat on my shelf for 25 years unread. I guess I'll manage to choke the second volume Ghosts down now and put it to rest, if you pardon the pun. Banville is a cold writer. His sentences maintain tension, are smooth and round and don't call attention to themselves. There is a clinical feel to this writing that I appreciate, but not all readers will, I expect. Still, the craftsman will admire it. Well done.

Small but perfectly formed. Pretty much every page contained a sentence that made me wince, laugh out loud, shake my head with admiration or all three at the same time. I can’t understand why so many reviewers claim to find this book depressing. It’s undoubtedly bleak and nihilistic but also incredibly well balanced given that the central character outwardly lacks any redeeming features whatsoever. It’s also fucking hilarious. If you’re depressed by writing of this quality then maybe reading isn’t for you. Or maybe you’re actually depressed for other reasons, in which case maybe it’s best to lay off the Banville for a while.

I came to this writer through reading Bill's comments on GR. It took a while to get into the rhythm of the writing as it is all just the one voice of the unreliable narrator. However I stayed with it and now want to read more of Banville's work.

I think one would be hard-pressed to find a better stylist writing today than Banville. How has he not won the Nobel? Every sentence is perfectly crafted. There are shades of Nabokov (the fact that Freddy drives a Humber Hawk is there just to make sure the reader sees what Banville is up to and that amuses me to no end) and more than a few lines bring to mind Eliot’s Prufrock, in both meter and sentiment: “I looked in their eyes and saw myself ennobled there, and so could forget for a moment what I was, a paltry, shivering thing, just like them, full of longing and loathing, solitary, afraid, racked by doubts, and dying.”

This was a reread for me because I finally want to get around to reading the other books in the trilogy in 2024.

I thought this was an excellent book! As Colm Toibin's very helpful introduction explains, it is a meld of Banville's genre's, the high art and elegant prose of Banville and the mystery and intrigue of Benjamin Black. Don't be deceived - the use of language in this book is among the most fluid and skilful of any I can think of. Here is a great description, "He had the high patina of something lovingly crafted, like one of those exquisite and temptingly pocket-sized jade figurines I had been eyeing only a moment ago on the mantelpiece." The sentence not only describes the individual, but also the mendacity of the author. It is also very funny and made me realise how great a writer Banville is.

One of the best living prose-stylists, I find depth in Banville's sentences that always suck me right into his narrative. The Sea did that on a wistful, lyrical manner as if I were reading a long, melancholy poem. The Book of Evidence works harder on a more character-focused, existentialist-hell sort of way.

What is the reason for murder? What are the grounds for punishment? Banville seems to ask us, and, like the misadventures of any other anti-hero going through existentialist-hell, nothing is quite black and white when it comes to crime and punishment. Freddie seems to go through the motions of prison-life with the senses of an immoral deadbeat drowning in his own morality. The only thing that springs some life and hope in him are his memories of his crime and his interactions with other criminals with similar stories to tell.

Freddie seeks not only rationalization but also a kind of poetry and art in his crime, and the results of his thoughts and actions bring about a sensible, elegiac end to the novel.

Filled with words and sentences that look and feel like gold repairings embellished on precious, broken china, The Book of Evidence is another Banville book that beats close to the murmurs of the frail human heart.

Любим автор, майсторски написан роман, силен превод, поднесени от обичано издателство....всичко щеше да е прекрасно, ако книгата беше минала и адекватна корекция.

So many details to notice, unexpected observations of the twisted, narcissistic (yet somehow charming) Freddie Montgomery. A playground for psychological discussion.

I dunno about the next two in the trilogy….

The labyrinthian testimony of a man against himself.

I can't recall the last time I disliked a book so much. Only because it was written by Banville, an author I admire, did I force myself to finish it. I should have trusted my instincts and quit at the end of the first chapter. My mistake!