Sandwiched between Eclipse and Ancient Light this masterfully crafted tale that tells the story of Axel Vander, the pivotal character of the trilogy. Vander is a real cad; boozer, womanizer and vain beyond belief but he has a secret. Yet under Banville’s skillful words, my disgust for Vander turns as the tale unravels. But so are his characters, all who are flawed but so very interesting as well.

All three books operate like separate stories but are very much intertwined. Having said this, once you read Eclipse, one needs to read Shroud and both books make more sense of Ancient Light, which I read first and is the last of the so-called trilogy.

Sadly one can’t say much without revealing too much about Shroud. Believe me, there is a pack-full story line here and the book is a page turner. Like Shroud, the words are evocative, mesmerizing and wondrous. A master storyteller that can’t be missed.

Weirdly, there is an eclipse in Shroud, an reference to ancient light in both Eclipse and Shroud, and the shroud is the famous Shroud of Turin.

Banville is a master writer and if you are new to him, try this “trilogy” out. Very worth the read.

Shroud is a difficult book (for me) and required concentration to read. There are many literary allusions and long, somewhat dry passages. The plot, as such, truly revealed itself only as I reflected upon reaching the last page. I found the effort rewarding, liking novels that demand a bit more of me. The themes can be unsettling. Who doesn't have "identity issues"? And fears about aging, the inevitability of loss - physical, social, and intellectual.

Another masterpiece by John Banville.

4* The Book of Evidence
4* O mar
3* Shroud (The Cleave Trilogy #2)
2* Ancient Light (The Cleave Trilogy #3)
2*Bowen and Betjeman
4* Kepler (The Revolutions Trilogy #2)
4* The Untouchable
TR Mrs Osmond
TR Athena (The Freddie Montgomery Trilogy #3)
TR The Blue Guitar
TR Imagens de Praga
TR Doctor Copernicus (The Revolutions Trilogy #1)
TR The Newton Letter (The Revolutions Trilogy #3)

This book is incredibly powerful and moving. It’s a fiction about Paul de Man, who prolifically wrote pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic tracts during World War II, yet who later went on in the U.S. to enjoy a prestigious academic career in which he was known as a major literary critic.

This is from Wikipedia: “Paul de Man (December 6, 1919 – December 21, 1983), born Paul Adolph Michel Deman, was a Belgian-born literary critic and literary theorist. At the time of his death, de Man was one of the most prominent literary critics in the United States—known particularly for his importation of German and French philosophical approaches into Anglo-American literary studies and critical theory. Along with Jacques Derrida, he was part of an influential critical movement that went beyond traditional interpretation of literary texts to reflect on the epistemological difficulties inherent in any textual, literary, or critical activity. This approach aroused considerable opposition, which de Man attributed to ‘resistance’ inherent in the difficult enterprise of literary interpretation itself.”

So de Man was invested in the idea of texts as inherently corrupt, etc, and the rest of the post-modernist dogma, which Banville contrasts with his earlier fascist beliefs. Absolutely stunning.

When I started reading this book a few days ago, I realized that I had read it before, but remembered nothing about it. I love Banville's prose, although his plots are psychological and murky. I love that he uses a word like pococurantish in an ordinary sentence. A sample of his musings:

"As I passed under the first broad, high, cool canopy of leaves, it occurred to me to wonder when a tree would feel most like itself, when it would feel it had most fully achieved its true being. I mean, if it were sentient -- and who is to know if we are the only conscious ones, or that our consciousness is the only kind there is? -- at what stage of its yearly cycle would it say, now, now, I am what I am, now at last I am in my total treeness, Would it be in spring's first greening, or the full-leafed glory of June, or autumn fame, or even the gnarled nakedness of winter?" -- And this as an old man reviews his life, and begins his last adventure.

Banville keeps playing with words and intention. He teases and probes, mocks and beguiles, baffles and enlightens with his darkly pleasant wordplay. A pattern of recurrent symbols drenched with double entendres, the deliberate use of anagrams, of menacing coincidences, of literary connections.
What is fiction and what is reality?
Nietzsche affirms that “there exists neither “spirit”, nor reason, nor thinking, nor consciousness, nor soul, nor will, nor truth: all are fictions.”
What is hallucination and what is remembrance?
Banville is of the opinion that“what is remarkable is not that we remember, but that we forget”.

Banville shrouds his story in mystery and drags the reader through the nooks and crannies of his antihero’s mind, the highly acclaimed literary critic Axel Vander who is also an irascible old man, recently widowed and haunted by the ghost of his docile wife, who bears the cross of a fraudulent identity and a diffused past in the Antwerp of WWII.
Threatened by a letter from an enigmatic woman called Cassandra Cleave, an uncommon femme fatale, that reveals secrets that would disrupt Axel’s staged life, he leaves the comfortable impersonality of Arcady, the rural paradise of California, to meet her in Turin.
Once again, the Irish artist paints his characters using the sfumato technique, wrapping them in a sort of haze that blurs the contours of their figures. The unreliable narration shifts from Axel’s first person narrative to Cass’ third person without warning and in both cases, the more the characters explore their psyches, their pasts and their memories, the more undefined they become. Reflection and identity serve as settings where the “non-action” gradually unfolds.

This novel is part of a trilogy, and so it is no accident that the actor Alexander Cleave, protagonist of the sequel Ancient Light who is also Cassandra’s father, and the writer Axel Vander, Alex and Axel, are both impostors who lie with eloquence and without the slightest shred of shame about their pasts. Their monologues, almost soliloquies with Shakespearean ascendancy, dissolve the distinctness of their features in the askew labyrinth of their consciences, leaving only an indistinct shade of their separate beings in the mirror of Banville’s prose.

It is not fortuitous either that the downfall of the nihilistic protagonist takes place in Turin, where the mad philosopher lost his last vestiges of sanity, or that Axel’s first essay was about Shelley who drowned his poetry in the surly ocean in the Gulf of La Spezia. Every intellectual reference or choice of expression is intentional and contributes into creating a dazzling masquerade ball where the reader swirls and the characters dance to the rhythm of Banville’s elastic, atemporal narration, making of fallacious simulation an artistic genre on its own.

But Banville’s genius doesn’t stop there. The pregnant imagery and plot twists are not the most fundamental aspects of his novels. It is the superb portrayal of such a disturbing emotional landscape that reveals the true “beauty of the monster”, of the irredeemable villain, Harlequin and Prince at once, that provides a voice for those who vacillate between life and death, light and shadow, fear and cynicism, and possesses the exceptional quality of awakening tenderness for the loathsome hero who is incapable of loving someone else, for he can only love himself in nauseating self-disgust.
Nevertheless, once the dead have found their voice, not even the Holy Shroud of Turin can save them from being crucified in performance, they are beyond redemption because, as Macbeth envisioned, “life’s but a walking shadow, a poor placer that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”. So yes, maybe Nietzsche and Axel Vander were right and there is no God, but there will always be Shakespeare… and Banville.

John escribe bien, pero debería pensar también un poco en el lector y es que este libro es bastante rollo. Lo cogí a ciegas de la biblioteca porque el argumento parecía prometedor. Sin embargo, vas leyendo y no hay manera de meterse en la narración porque, básicamente, apenas hay historia. Pocas veces pongo una calificación tan baja.

This is beautifully written- but my interest waned about page 80 abs I’m afraid did not pick up. I was expecting to love it as I so admire Banville!s writing - but I just could not get on with this at all.

Exquisitely well-written, like anything by Banville, layered with thought-provoking and sometimes nearly metafictional musings on identity, performance and authenticity. However, a lesser Banville for its rather self-indulgent portrayal of a sudden, more or less inexplicable passion between an old academic lion and a young deer-in-the-headlights who has unearthed a secret from his past. Poor Cass, she feels less like a believable character than a sort of wish-fulfillment fantasy, like the one Eco indulges in Baudolino. She's still given something of her due as an independent personality, but otherwise merely exists in order to provoke certain reactions in that old fake, 'Axel Vander'.

This is a book in three parts. It started horribly slow for me in the first part, picked up in the second part and finished very well in the last; in fact, it was the last that saved it. What happened? The first part displayed the typical Banville love of words and language over story and meaning, flowery expressions and intricate phrasing that lead nowhere in particular except to show his command of vocabulary and an ability to hint at things to come without inciting much interest in what those things might be, nobody particularly sympathetic, nothing but a pile of words. The second part had a familiar story of Nazi-occupied Belgium, although it could have been anywhere since there's nothing particularly Belgian in this and I suspect Belgium was chosen just to be different, followed by a switch of identities, all broadly signaled in the first part and carried out in the second. Nothing special yet. However the third part's story of love and loss was where Banville's talent shows as his talented weave of subtle language and emotion beyond words really moved me and made the book worthwhile. This is my third Banville book and I wonder if he ever moves off old men looking back in wistfulness and suffering but it works here at last if you have the patience for it.

Consueta la padronznza della parole. Senonchè in questa opera eccede di ingredienti e accadiment, di mutamenti narrativi non ti uguale riuscita, spezzandola in almeno tre storie eterogenee nel climax narrativo, che a fatica rimangono unite, sebbene il protagonista sia lo stesso: un uomo che si è impossessato dell’identità di un altro. Eccesivo anche un ridondante ripiegamento dell’io narratore in decrizioni leziose.

"Σάβανο"

Ένα σάβανο που καλύπτει χαρακτήρες κ ανθρώπινες υποστάσεις.

Ήρωες με κρυμμένα μυστικά, άνθρωποι με δυαδικές συμπεριφορές. Ψυχικές διαταραχές κατατρύχουν τις ψυχές τους κ τους μεταλλάσσουν σε ψεύτες απογυμνώνοντάς τους από κάθε ηθική αξία.

Γυναίκες κατακλύζουν τη ζωή του Άξελ Βάντερ, ενός καθηγητή που ως στόχο έχει να κατακτήσει τη φύση του κ να αποκωδικοποιήσει την ταυτότητά του.

Το ανάγνωσμα βρίθει από χιμαιρικές εικόνες, σκηνές ψεύδους, λαβυρινθώδεις αναζητήσεις της αλήθειας.

Τα μυστικά που δεξιοτεχνικά απέκρυψε ο συγγραφέας στο πρώτο βιβλίο αποκαλύπτονται στον αναγνώστη στο δεύτερο μέρος με σιβυλλικό τρόπο δίνοντάς του συνεχώς νέα στοιχεία. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο ο αναγνώστης συλλέγει τα τεκμήρια, συνθέτει κ πλάθει ολοκληρωτικά την υπόσταση των ιδιαίτερων προσωπικοτήτων αυτού του μυστηριακού έργου.