John Banville no deja nunca de sorprenderme por su fino estilismo, sensibilidad y dominio del lenguaje, así como por su enorme poder descriptivo lírico y poético.
Eclipse es una novel·la muy intimista muy en la línia del autor, parece un largo soliloquio en el que el protagonista se enfrenta a sus miedos, a la crisis existencial, el fracaso en su matrimonio, la paternidad y como no, a sus fantasmas.
Alexander Cleave un actor de éxito, a sus cincuenta y tantos años, sufre una crisis en el escenario y se queda mudo. Decide recluirse en la casa familiar de su infáncia solo, su mujer no entiende que le está pasando, pero él tampoco puede expresar ni explicar lo que siente, una angustia vital que le atormenta y en la que necesita alejarse de todo su entorno más próximo, incluida ella. El matrimonio tiene una Hija Cas, una persona con un trastorno mental importante aunque no se especifica que clase de dolència se trata, en sus divagaciones y pensamientos recurrentes aparece continúamente el recuerdo de su hija Cas,.
En el regreso caótico a esta casa, Cleave va desgranando sus pensamientos y rememorando su vida en ella, una antigua pensión regentada por su madre, pero más como si hubiera sido un mero espectador que no propiamente el lugar de su infància.
En este viaje introspectivo aparecen sus fantasmas, su padre ya en los últimos días de su vida y entre otros una mujer que se le aparece con un niño o niña, no puede precisarlo con seguridad ya que éste queda desdibujado. Esta imagen que no se sabe en realidad si pertenece al pasado o al futuro, encierra la clave de su angustia, cerca del final el panorama sombrío y oscuro del protagonista se disipa y asistimos a un acontecimiento dramático que le da sentido a todo lo anteriormente leído, con una carga de emotividad y belleza fuera de lo común y que me confirma a Banville como uno de mis escritores favoritos, un maestro de la narrativa contemporánea, dominando el lenguaje literario como pocos escritores con esos toques melancolicos, poéticos, compasivos y muy humanos, que forman parte de la literatura de los grandes maestros.

Completamente tomada pela escrita de Banville. Caminho sem volta, tenho certeza.
E como foi interessante ler "Stoner", íntegro, silencioso, conciso para, semanas depois, estar em contato com Alex, tão ferino e lânguido. Duas construções de personagem belíssimas e diametralmente opostas, tanto do ponto de vista da linguagem quanto da temática. Dois romances para lembrar que são vários os "mundos abandonados por Deus", dos quais falava Lukács.

يُعنون الغِلاف ب جُملة على لِسان مجلة the guardian : " مَع نَثرٍ كهذا ، مَن يَحتاجُ إلى حَبكة ؟ "
ما كُنت لأستطيع أن أقول خِلاف ذلك !
ما هذهِ الرحلة الباهِرة يا جون بانفيل ؟
خلال النور والظلام ، البرد ، الوِحدة ، النَفس ، العائلة و الحُب .
رِحلة حول النور الباهِر الذي يَخطِفُ الأبصار ، البحر الذي يَختطِفُ المسافرين ، و الكارِثة ، بوصفها حَبلاً للوصال بَعد الهُجران .
عن المَعنى ، لَكن أيُ معنى ؟
عن الحياة ، الحيوات ، الشَغف ؟
عن الرِحلة عمومها ، لكن في النهاية ما الأهم ، الوجهة ام الطَريق ؟


* المُترجم ، الإستاذ سلمان ، شُكرا على هذهِ الترجمة البديعة ، على هذا النص الصارخ بالجمال ، شُكراً لأنك سَكبت روحك على هذهِ الترجمة

I loved this book. It’s pretty short so easy to read in a day or two. The main character is not an admirable one but his thoughts and characteristics made me laugh and also cry. He seems practically delusional most of the time. I felt like I was reading a story about a dream a lot of the time. There are so many random little phrases that Alex says in this book that will hit you in the chest randomly without warning and make you think hard. My favorite being “is a rose red in the dark”. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and will definitely be reading more of Johns books in the future!

Well this was a weird one if I do say so myself!

This was published in 2000 but the writing makes it feel as though it was written in a different time period altogether. Banville writes with a highly educated use of the English language, wrapping his pen around lengthy, articulated phrases of an often flowery persuasion! Whether this adds to or detracts from the story, I'm still trying to decide.

The story of an actor who has had a breakdown on stage and runs away to his childhood home, bumbles along with no real structure. He sees apparitions; are they ghosts, hallucinations, whispers of his past? People are squatting in his house; are they real, should they be there, are they malign or benevolent? We hear of a daughter with a troubled past and a distance maintained from her family and we hear of the father/daughter relationship through random reminiscences. This unstructured remembering goes on for chapters and chapters and whilst it is not unpleasant, it feels superfluous at times.

Then BOOM the ending comes right out of nowhere! That's that! This has happened, deal with it! It's quite a shocking ending and unexpected, and because the rest of the story has been so rambling, the harshness of it feels out of place almost.

Although the book is only short (around 200 pages or so), I feel like this took an age to read. It was different and mildly entertaining but felt a little self indulgent at times. So a 3 star review. Not a book I'd return to.

I wish I could have liked this book more. The writing is impeccable, you can hear the voice of Alexander Cleave, ex-actor, and the prose is precise and leads you through the story as he escapes back into his past.

Yet..., yet....Somehow I just found the story too long, too spun out, with too little to grab me into the soul of the novel: I felt like a not very interested spectator. The climax, when it came, was, for me, less the neat rounding off of a long-awaited suspense, more the anticlimax of, "so what."

The fault, I'm sure, is mine. I have the same feelings of losing interest when I read Henry James (well, an author experience has taught me to avoid!). In the case of Banville, I could admire the writing (and I loved The Sea), but this one really did not hold my interest.

But don't let that stop others reading it: it is a personal preference, I'm sure.

La cupezza di Banville, quando vuol essere cupo, non sembra incontrare limiti.

Tranne uno: il mio.

Superb! John Banville has a way with words that’s just exquisite. Normally a fast reader, I took this slowly to fully take in every word and phrase, as well as the beautifully drawn characters and heartbreaking story. Loved every word!

La crítica es unánime: "...resplandor nabokoviano...aspereza beckettiana...Banville tiene muy pocos rivales...el escritor en lengua inglesa más inteligente, el estilista más elegante..." También es admirado por otros escritores: "...Banville es grande porque desciende al fondo más oscuro de la existencia..." (Claudio Magris); "Es un maestro, y su prosa es un deleite incesante." (Martin Amis)... Y así podría seguir y seguir, los halagos para Banville no tienen fin.

No cabe ninguna duda, John Banville escribe bien. Su prosa es de admirar, sobre todo en las descripciones. En pocas palabras es capaz de hacerte ver (de explicar) imágenes que siempre has tenido ante tus ojos pero que pocas veces te has parado a pensar en ellas. (Ahora me viene a la cabeza la pequeña descripción sobre un recuerdo que tiene el protagonista cuando era niño; se trata de esas luces que se reflejan en el techo, producto de los coches que pasan por la carretera, resplandores que lo atraviesan (el techo) y que avivan la imaginación mientras estás tumbado en la cama; lo que a mí me cuesta horrores describir, Banville lo logra de la manera más bella y perfecta.)

La historia. Alex Cleave es un actor de éxito, que a sus cincuenta años le sucede algo inexplicable en el escenario y entonces decide retirarse a su antigua casa, la casa de su niñez. Lydia, su mujer, lo acompaña al principio. Aunque intenta comprender las motivaciones de su marido, termina por ceder a sus deseos y lo deja solo en la casa. Aquí, Alex tendrá que convivir con unos huéspedes inesperados, unos de carne y hueso, y otros fantasmales. ¿Pero son fantasmas del pasado o del porvenir? La novela, narrada en primera persona por Alex, transcurre entre recuerdos, pasados y presentes, en los que su hija Cass tiene un papel preponderante.

No es un libro fácil de leer, en el sentido que no es de los que se leen de un tirón, al menos a mí así me lo ha parecido. Pero la prosa de Banville y lo que te cuenta, te arrastran hasta el final. Además, el autor se guarda algunos golpes de efecto que dan un giro inesperado a la historia. Lo que no me ha gustado tanto del libro, y parece que es una seña de identidad de Banville, es que no llegas a implicarte con los personajes, están perfilados de una manera demasiado fría. Pero, aun así, merece la pena, por las palabras y por ciertas imágenes que han quedado grabadas en mi mente.

Eclipse is the first novel in John Banville's father-and-daughter trilogy involving Alexander and Cass Cleave. (Other novels in the trilogy include Shroud and Ancient Light.) Banville has a talent for luminous writing, as exemplified by Alexander Cleave's description of his estranged and possibly schizophrenic daughter: "Indeed, such was her calm at times that she would seem to be not there at all, to have drifted off, lighter than air. It is a different air in which she moves, a separate medium. For her I think the world is always somewhere other, an unfamiliar place where yet she has always been. This is for me the hardest thing, to think of her out there, standing on some far bleak deserted shore, beyond help, in unmoving light, with an ocean of lostness all before her and the siren voices singing in her head." Banville has a beautiful way with words, and his writing in Eclipse is sublime.

I don't usually write reviews of the books I've read. For all the books I've updated on Goodreads I've put a star rating on but not left any comments, mostly because, well, it seems like a lot of work. And I'm not sure why my opinion would mean more to people than anyone else's. But I felt compelled to write something about this book, largely because of the other reviews I've read here. The enthusiasm and gushing adoration ascribed to this work is utterly baffling to me, given the gaping, massive flaws, so obviously present.

Don't get me wrong. John Banville can write. He has a gift for a unique turn of phrase, a powerful eye for detail and can conjur up potent, visceral descriptions of characters and environments that really stay with you. It's for these reasons, and these reasons only, that I've given this novel the three stars credit. And I do believe it's deserved. But to give this book any more than an average credit would seem to me to be pandering, and to overlook the arrogance, the lack of humanity and the oft off-putting dearth of plausibility so evident throughout.

For those still wanting to read it, I won't spoil it for you. But I will say something in broad strokes about the central character here, so if you want to go in completely fresh you might want to stop reading here.

Alexander Cleave is unlikeable. That is not to say he's an anti-hero. He's not rebelling against anything or being charismatically perverse. He's not a villain either. There is no real moral subversion in the character, and there's no sense in which your own sense of moral self can be questioned by reading about him. To be honest, that the protagonist is NOT flawed, at least not in any real, human way, is part of the problem. I can't identify with him. The character is extremely knowledgeable but is also pompous and irritating with it. His relationships with other characters rarely exceed anything greater than ambivalence and he tends to spend his whole time analysing everything to death, to the point where any weight and substance of reward has been utterly drained from it.

Which leads me to my next point.

This is not a long book. 218 pages (at least that's how long mine was) is not that long a book. But my god, it feels like a really long book. Paragraphs last for pages and say very very little. Sentences sometimes need to be read two or three times to be understood. References to other works by writers or historians or historical people of note are common, but add no real value other than to show you that the author is probably a lot more intelligent than you. He's definitely more intelligent than me, I don't doubt it, but I do expect a book to educate me as well as to move me, and I didn't find the book did the latter at all.

One last thing that I found really irritating, was the narrative's persistent vagueness, that I believe the author was trying to present as uneasy inertia. There is a lot of use of the words 'almost' and 'something' and 'like' which to me were infuriatingly general or elusive, rather than abstract or profound. In the place of otherworldly mystery I just found a dull vacuum of imaginationless rhetoric. I believe I'm meant to think there's more to everything than there appears, but rather than illustrate that with any kind of teasing or intoxicating mystery, I just get a whole lot of rambling and inconsequential tales of not very much at all.

There are some things here that work. There are tales of family and connections and identity that are great and powerfully well told. But that's about half the book. The rest of the book feels, well, just dull really. An unnecessary slog. Reading to me is an investment of my time, and I read to be enriched and to be moved. But I felt like half my time here was wasted. And it's time I'll never get back.

Banville is truly one of the finest wordsmiths working today. His carefully chosen words read like poetry. His insights into the human psyche ring true. I reread pages just because they were so beautifully written. Highly recommend him to serious readers.