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Morrow – a clerkish, middle-aged type encumbered with a chain-smoking dying aunt and a considerable talent for wallowing – is at a loose end when, on two separate occasions, he is beckoned up the stairs of an empty Dublin house. The first is an offer of dubious work, and Morrow soon becomes caught up in a conspiracy to authenticate a series of fake paintings. The second, possibly even odder, is an offer of a love – of a sort. Written in typically luminous prose and featuring a rich cast of characters, Athena is a paean to art, painting, and love, in all its mercurial richness.
233 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
54 people are currently reading
920 people want to read
About the author
John Banville
133 books2,392 followersWilliam John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W.B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
Banville has won the 1976 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the 2003 International Nonino Prize, the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize, the 2013 Austrian State Prize for European Literature and the 2014 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007. Italy made him a Cavaliere of the Ordine della Stella d'Italia (essentially a knighthood) in 2017. He is a former member of Aosdána, having voluntarily relinquished the financial stipend in 2001 to another, more impoverished, writer.
Banville was born and grew up in Wexford town in south-east Ireland. He published his first novel, Nightspawn, in 1971. A second, Birchwood, followed two years later. "The Revolutions Trilogy", published between 1976 and 1982, comprises three works, each named in reference to a renowned scientist: Doctor Copernicus, Kepler and The Newton Letter. His next work, Mefisto, had a mathematical theme. His 1989 novel The Book of Evidence, shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of that year's Guinness Peat Aviation award, heralded a second trilogy, three works which deal in common with the work of art. "The Frames Trilogy" is completed by Ghosts and Athena, both published during the 1990s. Banville's thirteenth novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 2005. In addition, he publishes crime novels as Benjamin Black — most of these feature the character of Quirke, an Irish pathologist based in Dublin.
Banville is considered a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He lives in Dublin.
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November 20, 2021
CRITIQUE:
The Collapse of a Questionable Narration
"Athena" marks the conclusion of "the Freddie Montgomery Trilogy", although it's arguable that the narrative of the Trilogy had collapsed well before the end of the third novel, rather than being reinforced by the extended focus.
As with "Ghosts", the first third to one-half of the novel meanders around before it confirms its purpose and sets its course. However, in contrast, the second half shines a light on the plight of the Freddie character (who goes by the pseudonym, Morrow).
A Counterpoint to Proust
Each of the three novels directly or indirectly raises questions about unreliable narrators. However, here, the unreliability doesn't derive specifically from Morrow's psyche. Instead, it's a product of how Banville suspects the mind, in general, and memory, in particular, works.
Banville develops his perspective in opposition to Marcel Proust:
Arguably, desire creates [false] memories of absences, or events that never occurred. They are not just works of invention, or the conscious imagination.
One wonders whether their purpose is to screen, block or conceal other memories (e.g., memories of traumatic events)(i.e., as does a screen memory).(1)
The Continuum of the Mind
While evaluating Morrow and his observations throughout the novel, I tried to locate different aspects of the mind on a continuum that consists of the following functions or actions:
...perception, analysis, understanding, memory, imagination, invention, dreaming, misapprehension, misunderstanding, illusion, delusion, self-deception, deception, misrepresentation, concealment, deceit, fraud...(2)
Free Fall (From the Collapse Board)
Morrow reflects on his wife (who played a bit part in the first novel, and subsequently divorced him while he was in prison) as someone "with whom long ago I wandered the world until one day we found we had used up world and selves, and I left her, or she left me, and I went into free fall."
He implies that there is a sense in which the self (and all that it consists of) is finite and therefore, inevitably, exhaustible. So, too, is a relationship, and Morrow is destined to go into a second free fall at the end of another relationship (whether imagined or invented).
Morrow lives in the present, as do we all. However, in his capacity as narrator, he resorts to the past, as far as he can recall, to make sense of his story and his present. However, what he finds in the past isn't totally reliable:
Thus, at his own peril, he delves back into the past to make sense of where (and who) he is in the present,... and the novel documents his free fall.
"These Swoony Ruminations"
There appears to be (or there has recently been) a woman in Morrow's life (A.)(3). He wishes she had 'taken pity on me and led me to the couch and sat me down and said, "All right now, listen, this is what is really going on..." But no, that is not how you would have done it. You would have blurted it out and laughed, wide-eyed, with a hand over your mouth, and only later, if at all, would I have realised the full significance of what it was you had told me. I never understood you.' (4)
Once again, A. might be a creature/invention of Morrow's imagination or gaze. Alternatively, she might be the subject of a painting come alive (e.g., the Greek goddess, Athena, of the title, who is the equivalent of the Roman goddess, Minerva):
"The Flickering Simulacrum of a Duplicitous Reality"
Banville/Morrow foreshadows opposition to this idea:
At the same time that he is apparently in this relationship with A., Morrow has become ensconced in a criminal conspiracy to forge and distribute some paintings (including a work of Jean Vaublin called "Birth of Athena"). Morrow's role is to be the scholar and expert who can verify the authenticity of the paintings.
Rene-Antoine Houasse - 'The Birth of Minerva" (Minerva (archaic Menerva), a Roman goddess of handicrafts, was widely worshipped and regularly identified with Athena, but most scholars think her indigenous, and connect her name with the root of meminisse [‘to remember’]) Source
He interprets the conspiracy from the perspective of his relationship (which overrides and screens it from memory):
"The Fragile Theatre of Illusions"
Morrow's memory of A. (as unclear as it appears to be) screens other, potentially more important memories (such as the memory of his involvement in the conspiratorial scheme):
A.'s role in Morrow's life is equally unclear:
He wonders whether their intimacy was authentic, or fabricated or fake:
"Transports of Doomy Pleasure"
A. reads de Sade's "Justine" (in the first of two scenes that recall de Sade's sado-masochistic fiction) -
"Her Invented Lives"
Before he lost A., Morrow would sit "in some fake old-fashioned pub listening to her stories of herself and her invented lives."
Her invention gives Morrow a sense of licence, not just licentiousness:
"That Intricate Dance of Desire and Deceit"
To the very end, Morrow can't figure out who or what A. was. Was she real or was she invented? If the latter, was she invented by Morrow or Banville? (Does this answer apply to every character in a novel?)
Banville's novel is no clumping caper or bizarre farce, but it is an intricate dance of desire and deceit. I have dropped it a star rating, because the novel's lyricism doesn't match the quality of the first two volumes of the trilogy, and it took much longer to take off.
FOOTNOTES:
(1). Thanks to Ipsa for pointing me in the direction of Sigmund Freud's concept of "screen memories".
(2). This is a subjective list. It's not meant to be complete.
(3). "It's not even the initial of her name, it's only a letter, but it sounds right, it feels right."
(4). Does the mention of a couch imply that A. might be an analyst?
(5). Banville makes, but doesn't explicitly explore, an allusion to Galatea.
SOUNDTRACK:
The Collapse of a Questionable Narration
"Athena" marks the conclusion of "the Freddie Montgomery Trilogy", although it's arguable that the narrative of the Trilogy had collapsed well before the end of the third novel, rather than being reinforced by the extended focus.
As with "Ghosts", the first third to one-half of the novel meanders around before it confirms its purpose and sets its course. However, in contrast, the second half shines a light on the plight of the Freddie character (who goes by the pseudonym, Morrow).
A Counterpoint to Proust
Each of the three novels directly or indirectly raises questions about unreliable narrators. However, here, the unreliability doesn't derive specifically from Morrow's psyche. Instead, it's a product of how Banville suspects the mind, in general, and memory, in particular, works.
Banville develops his perspective in opposition to Marcel Proust:
"What paradisal moments are these that assail me at unconsidered moments? They are not, I think, involuntary memories such as those the celebrated madeleine is supposed to have invoked, for no specific events attach to them, no childhood landscapes, no beloved figures in rustling gowns or top-hats; rather they seem absences, suddenly stumbled upon, redolent of a content that never was but was only longed for achingly."
"Where do they come from, these mysterious, exalted flashes that are not memories yet seem far more than mere imaginings?"
Arguably, desire creates [false] memories of absences, or events that never occurred. They are not just works of invention, or the conscious imagination.
One wonders whether their purpose is to screen, block or conceal other memories (e.g., memories of traumatic events)(i.e., as does a screen memory).(1)
The Continuum of the Mind
While evaluating Morrow and his observations throughout the novel, I tried to locate different aspects of the mind on a continuum that consists of the following functions or actions:
...perception, analysis, understanding, memory, imagination, invention, dreaming, misapprehension, misunderstanding, illusion, delusion, self-deception, deception, misrepresentation, concealment, deceit, fraud...(2)
Free Fall (From the Collapse Board)
Morrow reflects on his wife (who played a bit part in the first novel, and subsequently divorced him while he was in prison) as someone "with whom long ago I wandered the world until one day we found we had used up world and selves, and I left her, or she left me, and I went into free fall."
He implies that there is a sense in which the self (and all that it consists of) is finite and therefore, inevitably, exhaustible. So, too, is a relationship, and Morrow is destined to go into a second free fall at the end of another relationship (whether imagined or invented).
Morrow lives in the present, as do we all. However, in his capacity as narrator, he resorts to the past, as far as he can recall, to make sense of his story and his present. However, what he finds in the past isn't totally reliable:
"I did not know myself (do I ever know myself?)"
Thus, at his own peril, he delves back into the past to make sense of where (and who) he is in the present,... and the novel documents his free fall.
"These Swoony Ruminations"
There appears to be (or there has recently been) a woman in Morrow's life (A.)(3). He wishes she had 'taken pity on me and led me to the couch and sat me down and said, "All right now, listen, this is what is really going on..." But no, that is not how you would have done it. You would have blurted it out and laughed, wide-eyed, with a hand over your mouth, and only later, if at all, would I have realised the full significance of what it was you had told me. I never understood you.' (4)
Once again, A. might be a creature/invention of Morrow's imagination or gaze. Alternatively, she might be the subject of a painting come alive (e.g., the Greek goddess, Athena, of the title, who is the equivalent of the Roman goddess, Minerva):
"I was like a lover who gazes in tongue-tied joy upon his darling and sees not her face but a dream of it. You were the pictures and they were you and I never noticed."
"I should say that A. herself was almost incidental to these swoony ruminations, which at their most concentrated became entirely self-sustaining."...
"The Flickering Simulacrum of a Duplicitous Reality"
Banville/Morrow foreshadows opposition to this idea:
"...I know, I know the objections, I have read the treatises: there is no real she, only a set of signs, a series of appearances, a grid of relations between swarming particles; yet I insist on it: she was there at those times, it was she who clutched me to her and cried out, not a flickering simulacrum foisted on me by the stop-frame technique of a duplicitous reality. I had her." (5)
At the same time that he is apparently in this relationship with A., Morrow has become ensconced in a criminal conspiracy to forge and distribute some paintings (including a work of Jean Vaublin called "Birth of Athena"). Morrow's role is to be the scholar and expert who can verify the authenticity of the paintings.
Rene-Antoine Houasse - 'The Birth of Minerva" (Minerva (archaic Menerva), a Roman goddess of handicrafts, was widely worshipped and regularly identified with Athena, but most scholars think her indigenous, and connect her name with the root of meminisse [‘to remember’]) Source
He interprets the conspiracy from the perspective of his relationship (which overrides and screens it from memory):
"Was I very ridiculous? I say again, I don't care about any of the rest of it, having been cheated and made a fool of and put in danger of going back to jail; all that matters is what you thought of me, think of me. (Think of me!)"
"The Fragile Theatre of Illusions"
Morrow's memory of A. (as unclear as it appears to be) screens other, potentially more important memories (such as the memory of his involvement in the conspiratorial scheme):
"Belief, trust, suspicion, these are chimeras that arise in hindsight, when I look back from the sad eminence of the knowledge of having been deceived."
A.'s role in Morrow's life is equally unclear:
"She desired to be seen, she said, to be a spectacle, to have her most intimate secrets purloined and betrayed. Yet I ask myself now if they really were her secrets that she offered up on the altar of our passion or just variations invented for this or that occasion."
He wonders whether their intimacy was authentic, or fabricated or fake:
"...but no, fake is not the right word. Unformed: that's it. She was not being but becoming. So I thought of her. Everything she did seemed a seeking after definition..."
"Transports of Doomy Pleasure"
A. reads de Sade's "Justine" (in the first of two scenes that recall de Sade's sado-masochistic fiction) -
"...yearning for some sort of final confirmation of...of what? Authenticity, perhaps. And yet it was precisely the inauthentic, the fragile theatre of illusions we had erected to house our increasingly exotic performances, that afforded us the fiercest and most precious transports of doomy pleasure. How keen the dark and tender thrill that shot through me when in the throes of passion she cried out my assumed - my false - name and for a second a phantom other, my jettisoned self, joined us and made a ghostly troilism of our panting labours...how dirty and even dangerous the games we played...
"In these sleepless nights I go over her inch by inch, mapping her contours, surveyor of all I no longer possess. I see her turning slowly in the depths of memory's screen, fixed and staring, too real to be real, like one of those three-dimensional models that computers make. It is then, when she is at her vividest, that I know I have lost her forever."
"Her Invented Lives"
Before he lost A., Morrow would sit "in some fake old-fashioned pub listening to her stories of herself and her invented lives."
Her invention gives Morrow a sense of licence, not just licentiousness:
"And I, what did I think, what [did I] feel? At first bemusement, hesitancy and a sort of frightful exultation at being allowed such a licence...I saw myself towering over her like a maddened monster out of Goya, hirsute and bloody and irresistible, Morrow the Merciless. It was ridiculous, of course, and yet no her own arm and I would not stop, no, I would not stop.t ridiculous at all. I was monster and at the same time man. She would thrash under my blows with her face screwed up and fiercely biting her own arm and I would not stop, no, I would not stop...Who else was there, to make her come alive?"
"That Intricate Dance of Desire and Deceit"
To the very end, Morrow can't figure out who or what A. was. Was she real or was she invented? If the latter, was she invented by Morrow or Banville? (Does this answer apply to every character in a novel?)
"The streets were thronged with the ghost of her. The world of women had dwindled to a single image."
"These memories. Where is she in them? A word, a breath, a turning look. I have lost her. Sometimes I wish that I could lose all recollection of her, too. I suppose I shall, in time. I suppose memory will simply fall away from me, like hair, like teeth. I shall be glad of that diminishment...
"What galled me, I think, was the way the whole thing, that intricate dance of desire and deceit at the centre of which A. and I had whirled and twined, was turned [by the papers] into a clumping caper, bizarre, farcical almost, all leering snouts and horny hands and bare bums, like something by Breughel."
Banville's novel is no clumping caper or bizarre farce, but it is an intricate dance of desire and deceit. I have dropped it a star rating, because the novel's lyricism doesn't match the quality of the first two volumes of the trilogy, and it took much longer to take off.
FOOTNOTES:
(1). Thanks to Ipsa for pointing me in the direction of Sigmund Freud's concept of "screen memories".
(2). This is a subjective list. It's not meant to be complete.
(3). "It's not even the initial of her name, it's only a letter, but it sounds right, it feels right."
(4). Does the mention of a couch imply that A. might be an analyst?
(5). Banville makes, but doesn't explicitly explore, an allusion to Galatea.
SOUNDTRACK:
March 15, 2014
Sometimes I think the hardest concept to explain to people who don't write about the act of writing itself is the idea of presentation, that just because a story essentially boils down to "this happened, then this happened, then this happened, and then it turned out it was the dog all along" doesn't mean you have to write it that way. Many a person has an amazing idea for a plot but doesn't quite grasp that you can tell me what happened, but that doesn't mean I'm going to find it all that interesting if you don't dress it up a little bit. Good ideas don't automatically translate into gripping reading. Just like my parents told me when I drew my awesome schematics for my volcano science project in elementary school: if you want it to come out right, you're going to have to put some effort into it.
Banville seems to understand effort. In fact, sometimes he comes across as having made it his life's goal to make us aware of just how many words exist in the English language, and how they can be used in a sentence. I'd be surprised if he ever used the same description twice, at least not intentionally. It makes for oddly rich reading, as if every other author you've been reading prior to this has only be using half the colors available in the palette, like Dorothy wandering out into Oz.
However, there is a fairly thin line between "marvelously descriptive" and "tediously overwritten". That line is probably going to be different for everyone depending on your taste and there's probably a subset of people trying to read any of his novels that is tempted to throw it across the room in frustration screaming, "Just say he's in a hotel room already!" Still, it is difficult to call a novel that is a hair under two hundred and fifty pages "bloated" by any yardstick and points to one of Banville's greatest strengths: it's not how many words you know, it's knowing the right place to use them.
Thus: the plot. A semi-crooked man with a shady past who narrates our story is recruited by even shadier people to authenticate some paintings they have stashed away and are probably not planning on selling to the local gallery. Meanwhile, he runs into a woman and becomes obsessed with her, despite knowing absolutely nothing about her, not even her name. Sometimes it seems like the cops are onto him, sometimes it seems like he's in a dangerous world that has put him in over his head. Meanwhile, he's tangled up in prose. Oh, and his aunt is sick.
See, that doesn't sound terribly exciting. Mix some of the basic elements up and add about seven hundred pages and it could be William Gaddis' "The Recognitions", but with a slightly higher chance for car chases (don't get your hopes up, though). Yet Banville manages to make it all compelling through the use of his prose, which seems determined to plunge the reader into a languid, dream-like affair, held together by a narrator who seems to drift in and out of his own story, sometimes settling into a scene with a startlingly concrete presence, and other times anchored to absolutely nothing at all. There's hints that he could be the same narrator that graced some of Banville's other novels but that's not really a requirement here (good, because I read those several years back and don't remember the details), instead you're just asked to go along with events, like being blindfolded with a ratty cloth and forced to fill in the details from the splashes of blurry light that you catch as you're jostled down dingy hallways, all the while listening to someone describe to you exactly what he sees. Thing is, he could be lying. Or maybe you just can't see very well.
Plunging us in a world where it seems to be constantly on the verge of dusk no matter what time of day it is, there isn't much to grasp and so the book has to succeed on both mood and pacing. Which it does. The hazy nature of the narrative allows Banville to shift the scene pretty much at will, and when we're tired of the elusive sexual shenanigans of our narrator and his single-lettered sort of lover, we can have some criminals show up. And when the vague hints of something bad about to happen linger for too long and start to lose their edge, maybe some police inspectors can come by, or we have some fun with his dying aunt. In a sense it becomes not unlike a playland created by children under a blanket, where every fold can bring about another scene no matter which way you turn, held together by a playful dream-logic where everything makes sense because absolutely nothing makes sense. It doesn't go to David Lynch levels of absurdist surrealism, but it seems to hover right on the edge of it, with one foot existing enough in the real world that we can start to think, "oh, maybe this is really happening."
It's not even the kind of story where you mind that the ending isn't so much an ending as everyone deciding the story is over, like parents calling all their kids back into the house because it's getting late. There's a risk with this of letting the story go on for too long that all the ambiguity becomes more annoying than anything else. At this length, all the muscles and tendons lay nicely over the skeleton, with the increasingly unhinged reviews of paintings I've never seen a particular highlight, as the narrator feels things boiling to a fever pitch, even if the fever winds up becoming dissipated in a chill night. But it hardly matters. The images linger, like being surprised that a hand pressed that lightly into skin can leave such a mark. It's a testament to how just any old set of words won't do, and even if the narrator never seems to be totally in control, you never doubt that the author is. Skill and craft do count for something. If I tried to write a story based on this plot, it would come across as an inept documentary put together by well-meaning preschoolers. In his hands, it winds up being the dream that doesn't quite startle you enough to wake you up, but lingers long enough to make you wonder if you ever did wake up completely.
Banville seems to understand effort. In fact, sometimes he comes across as having made it his life's goal to make us aware of just how many words exist in the English language, and how they can be used in a sentence. I'd be surprised if he ever used the same description twice, at least not intentionally. It makes for oddly rich reading, as if every other author you've been reading prior to this has only be using half the colors available in the palette, like Dorothy wandering out into Oz.
However, there is a fairly thin line between "marvelously descriptive" and "tediously overwritten". That line is probably going to be different for everyone depending on your taste and there's probably a subset of people trying to read any of his novels that is tempted to throw it across the room in frustration screaming, "Just say he's in a hotel room already!" Still, it is difficult to call a novel that is a hair under two hundred and fifty pages "bloated" by any yardstick and points to one of Banville's greatest strengths: it's not how many words you know, it's knowing the right place to use them.
Thus: the plot. A semi-crooked man with a shady past who narrates our story is recruited by even shadier people to authenticate some paintings they have stashed away and are probably not planning on selling to the local gallery. Meanwhile, he runs into a woman and becomes obsessed with her, despite knowing absolutely nothing about her, not even her name. Sometimes it seems like the cops are onto him, sometimes it seems like he's in a dangerous world that has put him in over his head. Meanwhile, he's tangled up in prose. Oh, and his aunt is sick.
See, that doesn't sound terribly exciting. Mix some of the basic elements up and add about seven hundred pages and it could be William Gaddis' "The Recognitions", but with a slightly higher chance for car chases (don't get your hopes up, though). Yet Banville manages to make it all compelling through the use of his prose, which seems determined to plunge the reader into a languid, dream-like affair, held together by a narrator who seems to drift in and out of his own story, sometimes settling into a scene with a startlingly concrete presence, and other times anchored to absolutely nothing at all. There's hints that he could be the same narrator that graced some of Banville's other novels but that's not really a requirement here (good, because I read those several years back and don't remember the details), instead you're just asked to go along with events, like being blindfolded with a ratty cloth and forced to fill in the details from the splashes of blurry light that you catch as you're jostled down dingy hallways, all the while listening to someone describe to you exactly what he sees. Thing is, he could be lying. Or maybe you just can't see very well.
Plunging us in a world where it seems to be constantly on the verge of dusk no matter what time of day it is, there isn't much to grasp and so the book has to succeed on both mood and pacing. Which it does. The hazy nature of the narrative allows Banville to shift the scene pretty much at will, and when we're tired of the elusive sexual shenanigans of our narrator and his single-lettered sort of lover, we can have some criminals show up. And when the vague hints of something bad about to happen linger for too long and start to lose their edge, maybe some police inspectors can come by, or we have some fun with his dying aunt. In a sense it becomes not unlike a playland created by children under a blanket, where every fold can bring about another scene no matter which way you turn, held together by a playful dream-logic where everything makes sense because absolutely nothing makes sense. It doesn't go to David Lynch levels of absurdist surrealism, but it seems to hover right on the edge of it, with one foot existing enough in the real world that we can start to think, "oh, maybe this is really happening."
It's not even the kind of story where you mind that the ending isn't so much an ending as everyone deciding the story is over, like parents calling all their kids back into the house because it's getting late. There's a risk with this of letting the story go on for too long that all the ambiguity becomes more annoying than anything else. At this length, all the muscles and tendons lay nicely over the skeleton, with the increasingly unhinged reviews of paintings I've never seen a particular highlight, as the narrator feels things boiling to a fever pitch, even if the fever winds up becoming dissipated in a chill night. But it hardly matters. The images linger, like being surprised that a hand pressed that lightly into skin can leave such a mark. It's a testament to how just any old set of words won't do, and even if the narrator never seems to be totally in control, you never doubt that the author is. Skill and craft do count for something. If I tried to write a story based on this plot, it would come across as an inept documentary put together by well-meaning preschoolers. In his hands, it winds up being the dream that doesn't quite startle you enough to wake you up, but lingers long enough to make you wonder if you ever did wake up completely.
July 11, 2021
The last of my current set of library books, this is the final part of a loose trilogy that started with one of Banville's most memorable creations The Book of Evidence. Banville never quite confirms that the narrator of this one is the same Freddie Montgomery, but this book's narrator admits that he has changed his name to Morrow by deed poll, and the clues are there. His new first name is never stated, but all of his rejected options are names starting with the letter F.
Morrow finds himself called in by the shady Morden as an art expert, to authenticate a set of paintings that may be fakes, or may be the spoils of a recent burglary. The narrative chapters are interrupted by two or three page descriptions of these paintings. There is also a strong love story element, though the mysterious woman at its centre is never named.
Reading this book after Anita Brookner, it is clear that both share a love of language and use unusual words with great precision - I found myself looking up a lot of definitions. It is a very visual book, strong on atmosphere.
Morrow finds himself called in by the shady Morden as an art expert, to authenticate a set of paintings that may be fakes, or may be the spoils of a recent burglary. The narrative chapters are interrupted by two or three page descriptions of these paintings. There is also a strong love story element, though the mysterious woman at its centre is never named.
Reading this book after Anita Brookner, it is clear that both share a love of language and use unusual words with great precision - I found myself looking up a lot of definitions. It is a very visual book, strong on atmosphere.
October 28, 2014
I have about 20 pages to go and I'm looking forward to moving on to something more authentic, even if it's not as exquisitely well written as Athena, I don't care. There are so many echoes of Nabokov in Athena I can barely hear Banville at times, though Nabokov rarely if ever got as explicit in his nastiness as sir Banville. I don't mind nasty explicitness, but when coupled with an academic-type grace it can strike me as inauthentic, as a sort of slumming exercise. I have no idea what Banville's other books are like, or what they're about, but I get the feeling he could write as well about St. Theresa of the Flowers and her days of pure and limpid grace as he did here in Athena about a nasty scumbag sex-obsessed intellectual. I guess what has bothered me about the book, and what gives it the air of an academic exercise, is that Banville has tremendous literary talents that might very well not stem from or have any connection to his inner life or overall vision of earthly experience.
But I should say that there are many vivid descriptions in the book of all things derelict and decrepit and decaying, and there is an undeniable dark sexiness and black humor in the writing. So I am torn and at some point I will try something else by him.
But I should say that there are many vivid descriptions in the book of all things derelict and decrepit and decaying, and there is an undeniable dark sexiness and black humor in the writing. So I am torn and at some point I will try something else by him.
July 20, 2025
When I began reading Athena, I did not know that it is, in a sense, a continuation of The Book of Evidence and Ghosts. But then I found the name Vaublin in the text, which I first had seen about six years ago, when I reviewed both novels on Goodreads. Then it became obvious that Mr. Morrow, the narrator of Athena, is really Mr. Montgomery. Well, probably... Unreliability of the narrator is on full display here!
Athena is basically a love story expressed in the form of Mr. M's letter to his lover, whose name is only given as A., and whom he is missing much. The love story is intertwined with the plot thread, in which the narrator, who might be an art expert, is used by various shady characters from the underworld to examine the authenticity of several 17th-century paintings. A police inspector is involved too.
I do not think, though, that the plot is important at all. It is the beautiful prose that makes this book. Yes, the prose is often breathtakingly beautiful, yet it is also complex and, in my view, too hermetic. One-hundred-word-long sentences make Athena quite a challenging read. The author seems to make fun of himself: Ah, this plethora of metaphors! I am like everything except myself. On the other hand, the reader will discover some exquisite characterizations, such as the author's description of A.: She was not being but becoming.
John Banville seems to have had a lot of fun writing Athena. The novel contains detailed descriptions of seven pictures by 17th-century Dutch painters. Their names are Johann Livelb, J van Hollbein, L E van Ohlbijn, Job van Hellin, L van Hobelijn, and two very similar ones. This alphabet-related joke made me round up my rating to three stars.
Athena is basically a love story expressed in the form of Mr. M's letter to his lover, whose name is only given as A., and whom he is missing much. The love story is intertwined with the plot thread, in which the narrator, who might be an art expert, is used by various shady characters from the underworld to examine the authenticity of several 17th-century paintings. A police inspector is involved too.
I do not think, though, that the plot is important at all. It is the beautiful prose that makes this book. Yes, the prose is often breathtakingly beautiful, yet it is also complex and, in my view, too hermetic. One-hundred-word-long sentences make Athena quite a challenging read. The author seems to make fun of himself: Ah, this plethora of metaphors! I am like everything except myself. On the other hand, the reader will discover some exquisite characterizations, such as the author's description of A.: She was not being but becoming.
John Banville seems to have had a lot of fun writing Athena. The novel contains detailed descriptions of seven pictures by 17th-century Dutch painters. Their names are Johann Livelb, J van Hollbein, L E van Ohlbijn, Job van Hellin, L van Hobelijn, and two very similar ones. This alphabet-related joke made me round up my rating to three stars.
September 21, 2023
Glutton for punishment that I am, I finally broke down and picked up the third of the Freddie Montgomery novels. (Don't be so damn coy, Banville and "Morrow": We all know it's Freddie from about page 1.) Oh well, Mommy always did make me finish everything on my plate.
This entry is somewhat more palatable than the previous two simply because we're somewhat less confronted by the fact that Freddie is far from being equal to his crimes (participating in art fraud is somewhat more in character than wimping his way through a murder): he's a total nebbish or, better (as I will argue) a wanker, although admittedly one with an unusual gift for not only words but self-reflection. In fact, one's appreciation of the novel hinges entirely on the degree to which one is charmed by those words and that self-reflection. Or perhaps one's appreciation of Banville's literary production hinges on this: having also read his *Untouchable*, I begin to wonder whether all of his protagonists are art-loving wankers. Those who are intrigued by a Humbert Humbert and charmed by his words and thoughts will be pleased here too, although Freddie's prose, although eloquent to a fault, lacks Humbert Nabokov's extravagant musicality.
The object of the Freddie's erotic obsession is, unlike Humbert Nabokov's, of legal age, for which I guess we should be thankful. Unfortunately, it's here that, in my opinion at least, the novel overplays its hand. For the object of the obsession is nothing more than a collection of visual stimuli (which of course eventually get translated into tactile stimuli) and is, as a character, a cipher. (Well, okay, she ends up displaying a masochistic streak. Let's not act all surprised now.) As with every erotic obsession since man started to walk on two (and a half) legs, the obsession tells us nothing about its object and always everything about its subject. Thus she ends up being (even) less interesting than the paintings Freddie Montgomery ("Morrow") has agreed to examine, although his descriptions of the paintings themselves, which intersperse the narrative, become increasingly preoccupied with her -- or rather, his obsession with her. Add to this the frequent apostrophizing to someone who doesn't even have a name (she's simply "A"), and the result is one obsessive but ultimately masturbatory fantasy. To his credit, Freddie does seem to realize this at some level of consciousness.
There are a few pointless teases in the plot, wouldn't you know, no doubt the dues Banville has to pay to be a member of good standing in the PoMo Lit club. But since they're teases, I guess I shouldn't spoil them for you.
Awfully fine writing though -- rather a necessity in a novel in which the only real action is inaction, namely, the main character's self-examination -- and the workings of Freddie's mind are fascinating, although perhaps only in small doses. Five stars for Banville's intellect; four for his clever inhabiting of the Nabokovian mindset -- but only three for this novel.
This entry is somewhat more palatable than the previous two simply because we're somewhat less confronted by the fact that Freddie is far from being equal to his crimes (participating in art fraud is somewhat more in character than wimping his way through a murder): he's a total nebbish or, better (as I will argue) a wanker, although admittedly one with an unusual gift for not only words but self-reflection. In fact, one's appreciation of the novel hinges entirely on the degree to which one is charmed by those words and that self-reflection. Or perhaps one's appreciation of Banville's literary production hinges on this: having also read his *Untouchable*, I begin to wonder whether all of his protagonists are art-loving wankers. Those who are intrigued by a Humbert Humbert and charmed by his words and thoughts will be pleased here too, although Freddie's prose, although eloquent to a fault, lacks Humbert Nabokov's extravagant musicality.
The object of the Freddie's erotic obsession is, unlike Humbert Nabokov's, of legal age, for which I guess we should be thankful. Unfortunately, it's here that, in my opinion at least, the novel overplays its hand. For the object of the obsession is nothing more than a collection of visual stimuli (which of course eventually get translated into tactile stimuli) and is, as a character, a cipher. (Well, okay, she ends up displaying a masochistic streak. Let's not act all surprised now.) As with every erotic obsession since man started to walk on two (and a half) legs, the obsession tells us nothing about its object and always everything about its subject. Thus she ends up being (even) less interesting than the paintings Freddie Montgomery ("Morrow") has agreed to examine, although his descriptions of the paintings themselves, which intersperse the narrative, become increasingly preoccupied with her -- or rather, his obsession with her. Add to this the frequent apostrophizing to someone who doesn't even have a name (she's simply "A"), and the result is one obsessive but ultimately masturbatory fantasy. To his credit, Freddie does seem to realize this at some level of consciousness.
There are a few pointless teases in the plot, wouldn't you know, no doubt the dues Banville has to pay to be a member of good standing in the PoMo Lit club. But since they're teases, I guess I shouldn't spoil them for you.
Awfully fine writing though -- rather a necessity in a novel in which the only real action is inaction, namely, the main character's self-examination -- and the workings of Freddie's mind are fascinating, although perhaps only in small doses. Five stars for Banville's intellect; four for his clever inhabiting of the Nabokovian mindset -- but only three for this novel.
January 27, 2023
Athena is the last of Banville's Frames trilogy and the second loose sequel to The Book of Evidence, which was the best in my opinion. The writing, as usual, is top-tier, and though Banville loves to frequently flex the muscle of his staggering lexicon, I find this never really hampers the narrative (and I get to learn a bunch of obscure words).
Now I'm not at all interested in love affair stories as a general rule, but when from the disturbed mind of Freddie Montgomery-cum-Morrow it's more an excursion into mania, and I'm always down for that, so I can forgive the central plot. One thing that left me annoyed, though, was the sub-subplot of the serial killer dubbed The Vampire working in the furthest margins of the novel.
Ultimately very good. I highly recommend The Book of Evidence to anyone who likes fantastic writing and fatally dark character studies. If you like that you'll probably like this and Ghosts.
Now I'm not at all interested in love affair stories as a general rule, but when from the disturbed mind of Freddie Montgomery-cum-Morrow it's more an excursion into mania, and I'm always down for that, so I can forgive the central plot. One thing that left me annoyed, though, was the sub-subplot of the serial killer dubbed The Vampire working in the furthest margins of the novel.
Ultimately very good. I highly recommend The Book of Evidence to anyone who likes fantastic writing and fatally dark character studies. If you like that you'll probably like this and Ghosts.
October 4, 2014
I have absolutely loved everything else I've read by John Banville, and was really excited about this going in. About halfway through in a haze I realized I had picked up the third book in a trilogy (definitely not clearly marked) but even still, found this book tough to get through. Beautiful writing as I would expect from Banville, but tough to follow the plot, the relationships between the characters, and what is real versus what the narrator believes is real. Reminded me of the more opaque of Ishiguro's writing.
June 21, 2007
I love this book. I love this book so much. John Banville is a much under appreciated author, i think. read him. its delicious!
April 22, 2010
I don't know what I think of this book. I had trouble concentrating & don't know if that's my fault or the books,
June 2, 2021
“Amor mío. Si las palabras pueden llegar a cualquiera que sea el mundo en el que quizá estés sufriendo, entonces escucha. Tengo cosas que contarte. Ahora que concluye en silencio un año más, merodeo por las calles sombrías de nuestro barrio contigo en la cabeza.”
Con estas palabras da inicio la ultima novela de la Trilogía Freddie Montgomery del escritor John Banville. Un texto con una buena redacción, pero a la vez con muchas interrogantes sobre la naturaleza de la verdad y la fiabilidad de la memoria. Una historia, donde el narrador incursiona o se ve involucrado en pinturas robadas y una historia de amor que a todas luces es Freddie Montgomery , el protagonista de El libro de la evidencia y el narrador de Fantasma. El protagonista rinde un homenaje a su amor, que ha desaparecido, pero a medida que va transitado se ve visitando una casa, que podríamos decir mal alienta o podrida y siniestra en la avenida que llama Rue Street.
Como expresé anteriormente, es un transitar entre el reino del arte y el inframundo criminal. “Tengo —lo reconozco— una lamentable debilidad por la mala vida. Algo en mi interior se aferra a lo turbio y lo desvencijado, hay una grieta en mi constitución que disfruta llenándose de suciedad. Me digo que esta predilección vulgar se da en todos los auténticos entendidos de la cultura, pero no acabo de convencerme. ” esas son las palabras de Morrow, un tipo de una sensibilidad contradictoria, el cual sigue a una mujer llamativa, la cual se le conoce con el nombre de A, que lo invita a su habitación, y esto da lugar a un romance. Este romance desencadena el examinar unas pinturas, que ese ir de su casa a la casa de la mujer, n se entera que ha sido robadas.
Indiscutiblemente, la culminación de este trilogía, no solo amplifica la trama, desarrolla con temas cruciales para cada obra, pero Atenea tampoco esta a la altura de El libro de la evidencia, pero si la colocaría en segundo lugar por encima de Fantasma, pues su prosa es mas rica, atractiva. Combinando los tres libros, si algo nos invita es a convertirnos en los personajes para ir con ello el proceso narrativo, que es lo propio de la ficción de Banville de mantener su compromiso inquebrantable con un arte técnicamente de complejidad.
Con estas palabras da inicio la ultima novela de la Trilogía Freddie Montgomery del escritor John Banville. Un texto con una buena redacción, pero a la vez con muchas interrogantes sobre la naturaleza de la verdad y la fiabilidad de la memoria. Una historia, donde el narrador incursiona o se ve involucrado en pinturas robadas y una historia de amor que a todas luces es Freddie Montgomery , el protagonista de El libro de la evidencia y el narrador de Fantasma. El protagonista rinde un homenaje a su amor, que ha desaparecido, pero a medida que va transitado se ve visitando una casa, que podríamos decir mal alienta o podrida y siniestra en la avenida que llama Rue Street.
Como expresé anteriormente, es un transitar entre el reino del arte y el inframundo criminal. “Tengo —lo reconozco— una lamentable debilidad por la mala vida. Algo en mi interior se aferra a lo turbio y lo desvencijado, hay una grieta en mi constitución que disfruta llenándose de suciedad. Me digo que esta predilección vulgar se da en todos los auténticos entendidos de la cultura, pero no acabo de convencerme. ” esas son las palabras de Morrow, un tipo de una sensibilidad contradictoria, el cual sigue a una mujer llamativa, la cual se le conoce con el nombre de A, que lo invita a su habitación, y esto da lugar a un romance. Este romance desencadena el examinar unas pinturas, que ese ir de su casa a la casa de la mujer, n se entera que ha sido robadas.
Indiscutiblemente, la culminación de este trilogía, no solo amplifica la trama, desarrolla con temas cruciales para cada obra, pero Atenea tampoco esta a la altura de El libro de la evidencia, pero si la colocaría en segundo lugar por encima de Fantasma, pues su prosa es mas rica, atractiva. Combinando los tres libros, si algo nos invita es a convertirnos en los personajes para ir con ello el proceso narrativo, que es lo propio de la ficción de Banville de mantener su compromiso inquebrantable con un arte técnicamente de complejidad.
December 12, 2022
"The rain falls through me silently, like a shower of neutrinos."
"I am done with blaming people for their weaknesses. I am done with blaming anyone for anything. Except myself, that is. No end to that."
Oh John Banville, making me look up so many words and feel for a moment like a drunk brilliant poet.
"I am done with blaming people for their weaknesses. I am done with blaming anyone for anything. Except myself, that is. No end to that."
Oh John Banville, making me look up so many words and feel for a moment like a drunk brilliant poet.
May 4, 2016
Bizarre Baroque
The old dilemma: award stars according to the author's mastery (close to 5) or to reflect my own enjoyment of the book (2 or 3 at most)? There, right on the front cover, is a quotation from the San Francisco Chronicle: "A thriller… by Ireland's master of the exquisite and uncanny whose brilliant use of prose narration places him in a league with Joyce and Beckett." True—yet it made me reflect what a dubious legacy Joyce bequeathed to Irish intellectuals who followed after.
"My love. If words can reach whatever world you may be suffering in, then listen…." The book begins in words, with this incantation, and it continues in words. Not events, not characters, not time and place, not even any tangible reality, but words pure and by no means simple, creating the atmosphere of a dream that may at any moment turn into nightmare, words spun out, questioned, erased, words rich in apparent meanings that the next moment may well be denied. The narrator must have a past, but we are not told what it is; even his name, Morrow, is assumed, chosen almost at random and since regretted. His love is referred to within the same paragraph sometimes as "she" and sometimes as "you"; he calls her "A… It's not even the initial of her name, it's only a letter, but it sounds right, it feels right." The town house in which they meet seems impossibly vast at first description, though later it shrinks to more more normal proportions. Although some facts and details eventually emerge from the swirling verbal fog, the prevailing atmosphere is one of hallucination. Banville is indeed a master of words, but he uses them less to pin down normal meanings than to create a shifting web in which meaning itself is questioned.
Nonetheless, several narrative strands do begin to come visible; quite separate at first, they gradually intertwine, but never become entirely connected. The narrator appears to be some kind of expert in Flemish baroque art, and he is called in to authenticate some paintings in an old deserted house. On the fringes of this are a number of lowlife characters (many of them quite bizarre), a hovering police presence (called "The Guards" in Ireland), a possible theft, and some unexplained murders. The narrator also looks after his Aunt Corky, a woman of equally mysterious background, who is in a home. But his most significant relationship is with A—an erotic obsession that escalates through physical passion into some of the darker reaches of sexuality; these sections are among the best in the book, because at least they use the realities of flesh to anchor vagaries of feeling.
Another kind of quasi-objective anchor is provided by the catalogue descriptions of various paintings that come in between the chapters. But even these artworks are displaced; although supposedly painted by artists from the Low Countries (all imaginary), their themes from classical mythology are more typical of the Italian Baroque. Yet the progression of subjects, with their undertones of eroticism and violence, parallel the narrator's developing obsession in a way that, to an art historian, may actually be clearer than the main narrative.
The one negative in my review of Banville's Man Booker prizewinning novel, The Sea (written ten years after Athena, in 2005), was a certain self-consciousness about the style; however, as it becomes apparent that the narrator is a writer, we come to understand that stylistic fingerprints such as questioning his word-choices or narrative technique reflect on the character, not on Banville. But in Athena, we never learn much about the background of the man who calls himself Morrow, so the same stylistic tricks seem more like the author showing off. If you admire verbal legerdemain and have a liking for Mannerism or the Baroque, certainly give the book a try. But it is not for everyone. [The color cover of the Vintage paperback edition, incidentally, is entirely misleading. Its bland watercolor portrait is the polar opposite of Banville's highly-wrought style, and its subject totally lacks the fascination of the erotic earth-spirit in the book.]
The old dilemma: award stars according to the author's mastery (close to 5) or to reflect my own enjoyment of the book (2 or 3 at most)? There, right on the front cover, is a quotation from the San Francisco Chronicle: "A thriller… by Ireland's master of the exquisite and uncanny whose brilliant use of prose narration places him in a league with Joyce and Beckett." True—yet it made me reflect what a dubious legacy Joyce bequeathed to Irish intellectuals who followed after.
"My love. If words can reach whatever world you may be suffering in, then listen…." The book begins in words, with this incantation, and it continues in words. Not events, not characters, not time and place, not even any tangible reality, but words pure and by no means simple, creating the atmosphere of a dream that may at any moment turn into nightmare, words spun out, questioned, erased, words rich in apparent meanings that the next moment may well be denied. The narrator must have a past, but we are not told what it is; even his name, Morrow, is assumed, chosen almost at random and since regretted. His love is referred to within the same paragraph sometimes as "she" and sometimes as "you"; he calls her "A… It's not even the initial of her name, it's only a letter, but it sounds right, it feels right." The town house in which they meet seems impossibly vast at first description, though later it shrinks to more more normal proportions. Although some facts and details eventually emerge from the swirling verbal fog, the prevailing atmosphere is one of hallucination. Banville is indeed a master of words, but he uses them less to pin down normal meanings than to create a shifting web in which meaning itself is questioned.
Nonetheless, several narrative strands do begin to come visible; quite separate at first, they gradually intertwine, but never become entirely connected. The narrator appears to be some kind of expert in Flemish baroque art, and he is called in to authenticate some paintings in an old deserted house. On the fringes of this are a number of lowlife characters (many of them quite bizarre), a hovering police presence (called "The Guards" in Ireland), a possible theft, and some unexplained murders. The narrator also looks after his Aunt Corky, a woman of equally mysterious background, who is in a home. But his most significant relationship is with A—an erotic obsession that escalates through physical passion into some of the darker reaches of sexuality; these sections are among the best in the book, because at least they use the realities of flesh to anchor vagaries of feeling.
Another kind of quasi-objective anchor is provided by the catalogue descriptions of various paintings that come in between the chapters. But even these artworks are displaced; although supposedly painted by artists from the Low Countries (all imaginary), their themes from classical mythology are more typical of the Italian Baroque. Yet the progression of subjects, with their undertones of eroticism and violence, parallel the narrator's developing obsession in a way that, to an art historian, may actually be clearer than the main narrative.
The one negative in my review of Banville's Man Booker prizewinning novel, The Sea (written ten years after Athena, in 2005), was a certain self-consciousness about the style; however, as it becomes apparent that the narrator is a writer, we come to understand that stylistic fingerprints such as questioning his word-choices or narrative technique reflect on the character, not on Banville. But in Athena, we never learn much about the background of the man who calls himself Morrow, so the same stylistic tricks seem more like the author showing off. If you admire verbal legerdemain and have a liking for Mannerism or the Baroque, certainly give the book a try. But it is not for everyone. [The color cover of the Vintage paperback edition, incidentally, is entirely misleading. Its bland watercolor portrait is the polar opposite of Banville's highly-wrought style, and its subject totally lacks the fascination of the erotic earth-spirit in the book.]
October 15, 2019
Upon rereading this, I'm thankful that the review I wrote after my first reading was mercifully less embarrassing than those I wrote for Ghosts and the Book of Evidence. My takeaway from rereading the three Freddie Montgomery novels in general and Athena in particular is that, as much as I love Banville, I don't think I totally get his work. Too much of what's happening here feels slightly outside my reach. Perhaps he's too smart for me. I'm okay with that.
Previous review [for anti-posterity]:
Unorganized thoughts:
- I really enjoyed this. I almost want to give it five stars, but I feel like I should save those for the best of the best, and this lacked that little something to push it over the top. It's fantastic, though, and I'm really in awe of John Banville (I recently said the same thing about Alain Robbe-Grillet. In their own weird way they have a lot in common). His prose is basically perfect. I don't know how else I can put it. His careful word choices, his careful details, his tone, it's all perfect.
- There are events and there's a plot, but it's interesting how little emphasis Banville puts on them (at least until almost the end) as he buries them in layers of prose, like objects covered by a large blanket. You know they're there, but their shape has been reduced to a simple lump. I realize this sounds like a criticism, but I don't mean it to be. The prose itself also feels...thick somehow. It creates an interesting effect, like you're slowly wading through the novel. You can feel currents moving around you, but they're too weak to really impact your progress, slow as it is.
- There are also parts, especially towards the end (this was true for a lot of The Book of Evidence as well), where it almost becomes difficult to separate your own mental state from Freddie's. Of course the prose is always evocative and gives you a wonderful window into his world, but during the more event-oriented parts it becomes so intense and so real that it was almost like I became Freddie. That's a pretty incredible achievement on Banville's part.
- I was also completely wrong about Ghosts. He introduced a plot at the beginning of that novel and almost immediately let it recede to the background and then never resolved it. I assumed it was going to continue here, but instead we find Freddie Montgomery in a completely different situation. I guess it's possible he meant to, because it seems so odd that he would introduce those plot thread in Ghosts just to ignore them. But Banville is such a careful writer that I refuse to believe he just got bored of the plot, but decided to keep its introduction anyway. Was he playing with our expectations? I didn't mind, because Freddie's musings on post-jail life were far more interesting to me anyway. In Athena, however, he does actually resolve his plot threads and in a very satisfactory way. The plot and Freddie's musings also merge very well. There's something about his character that I find fascinating and I never got tired of his meditations on life.
- I'm starting to regret having compared Banville to Nabokov so much in the past. Their styles superficially have a lot in common, but I think I'm finally starting to get past that and appreciate Banville for what he is, rather than as a replacement for Nabokov. B's prose is less playful, less self-satisfied, but maybe more...human I want so say? It's hard to put into words, but it has its own distinct flavor.
- I'm glad John Banville exists. I feel like too often when a writer is this good, it never lasts. They either die or fall off or retire or something, and you're left with only one or two really good works. But Banville just keeps going, and everything I've read by him has been worthwhile and I've still got plenty more to go.
Previous review [for anti-posterity]:
Unorganized thoughts:
- I really enjoyed this. I almost want to give it five stars, but I feel like I should save those for the best of the best, and this lacked that little something to push it over the top. It's fantastic, though, and I'm really in awe of John Banville (I recently said the same thing about Alain Robbe-Grillet. In their own weird way they have a lot in common). His prose is basically perfect. I don't know how else I can put it. His careful word choices, his careful details, his tone, it's all perfect.
- There are events and there's a plot, but it's interesting how little emphasis Banville puts on them (at least until almost the end) as he buries them in layers of prose, like objects covered by a large blanket. You know they're there, but their shape has been reduced to a simple lump. I realize this sounds like a criticism, but I don't mean it to be. The prose itself also feels...thick somehow. It creates an interesting effect, like you're slowly wading through the novel. You can feel currents moving around you, but they're too weak to really impact your progress, slow as it is.
- There are also parts, especially towards the end (this was true for a lot of The Book of Evidence as well), where it almost becomes difficult to separate your own mental state from Freddie's. Of course the prose is always evocative and gives you a wonderful window into his world, but during the more event-oriented parts it becomes so intense and so real that it was almost like I became Freddie. That's a pretty incredible achievement on Banville's part.
- I was also completely wrong about Ghosts. He introduced a plot at the beginning of that novel and almost immediately let it recede to the background and then never resolved it. I assumed it was going to continue here, but instead we find Freddie Montgomery in a completely different situation. I guess it's possible he meant to, because it seems so odd that he would introduce those plot thread in Ghosts just to ignore them. But Banville is such a careful writer that I refuse to believe he just got bored of the plot, but decided to keep its introduction anyway. Was he playing with our expectations? I didn't mind, because Freddie's musings on post-jail life were far more interesting to me anyway. In Athena, however, he does actually resolve his plot threads and in a very satisfactory way. The plot and Freddie's musings also merge very well. There's something about his character that I find fascinating and I never got tired of his meditations on life.
- I'm starting to regret having compared Banville to Nabokov so much in the past. Their styles superficially have a lot in common, but I think I'm finally starting to get past that and appreciate Banville for what he is, rather than as a replacement for Nabokov. B's prose is less playful, less self-satisfied, but maybe more...human I want so say? It's hard to put into words, but it has its own distinct flavor.
- I'm glad John Banville exists. I feel like too often when a writer is this good, it never lasts. They either die or fall off or retire or something, and you're left with only one or two really good works. But Banville just keeps going, and everything I've read by him has been worthwhile and I've still got plenty more to go.
May 10, 2015
I read this book many years ago, and since I could not remember a thing about it, I decided to re-read it. But alas, I found out why it was not worth remembering. While the plot here is paper-thin, the narrator is so unreliable that most of the story remains completely opaque and surreal. Once more, Banville gives us the solipsistic musings of a middle-aged man in rapture, tangled up in an affair with a woman decidedly not of his age group.
To understand the plot a bit better, it helps to know that Morrow, the narrator, formerly known as Freddie Montgomery, was the main character of the first and second book in what is actually a trilogy, namely "The Book of Evidence" and "Ghosts", which I haven't read, but this time I did some research. (Banville likes to publish his books in the form of a triptych.) So, the narrator is an art expert and a thief, who in the first instalment felt compelled to kill a house maid in the country estate he broke in to steal a painting. Apparently he has served his prison term and now makes a shady living with commissional work.
Concerning the plot, there is a labyrinthine house wherein Morrow is accommodated, where he evaluates art and becomes utterly captivated by an inscrutable young woman. His perception of his surroundings is, however, completely out of sync, and his narration and its chronology cannot be trusted. There is an obscure employer, his fiendish sidekick and a formidable black dog. Outside of the boundary of the abandoned house, there is a whimsical old lady who is dying - who might be Morrow's aunt or not - it's difficult to tell as each character has adopted a shadow identity. Also, there is a serial killer on the lose, and a cop pesters Morrow with questions about his past and his current work. In the end, the woman mysteriously disappears, as do the paintings and his commissioner. Morrow is left behind, bewildered and bereft.
It is unclear what the purpose of this story is. It's not a murder mystery, it is not a crime novel, it is not a tragic love story. For me, it is yet another Banville book: lots of erudite vocabulary, allusions to Greek mythology, impressive intellectual treatises (all those art reviews), sexual obsessions with occasional lewd explicitness, claustrophobic notions inside the head of a confused pundit - in short, a glimpse into the intellectual maze of an obsessive mind BUT no plot to speak of.
It's not that there isn't any actual plot, but Banville doesn't explore it. He is too caught up in the internal, poetic and self-absorbed voice of his unreliable narrator. Which makes it a tiresome and perplexing read.
By the way. The commissioner's name is Max Morden. Here, he seems to be an art forger. He will reappear as the central character of "The Sea", without a hint of a criminal past, at least as far as I recall.
All this is just too pretentious and too artificially structured to win me over. I just don't buy it.
To understand the plot a bit better, it helps to know that Morrow, the narrator, formerly known as Freddie Montgomery, was the main character of the first and second book in what is actually a trilogy, namely "The Book of Evidence" and "Ghosts", which I haven't read, but this time I did some research. (Banville likes to publish his books in the form of a triptych.) So, the narrator is an art expert and a thief, who in the first instalment felt compelled to kill a house maid in the country estate he broke in to steal a painting. Apparently he has served his prison term and now makes a shady living with commissional work.
Concerning the plot, there is a labyrinthine house wherein Morrow is accommodated, where he evaluates art and becomes utterly captivated by an inscrutable young woman. His perception of his surroundings is, however, completely out of sync, and his narration and its chronology cannot be trusted. There is an obscure employer, his fiendish sidekick and a formidable black dog. Outside of the boundary of the abandoned house, there is a whimsical old lady who is dying - who might be Morrow's aunt or not - it's difficult to tell as each character has adopted a shadow identity. Also, there is a serial killer on the lose, and a cop pesters Morrow with questions about his past and his current work. In the end, the woman mysteriously disappears, as do the paintings and his commissioner. Morrow is left behind, bewildered and bereft.
It is unclear what the purpose of this story is. It's not a murder mystery, it is not a crime novel, it is not a tragic love story. For me, it is yet another Banville book: lots of erudite vocabulary, allusions to Greek mythology, impressive intellectual treatises (all those art reviews), sexual obsessions with occasional lewd explicitness, claustrophobic notions inside the head of a confused pundit - in short, a glimpse into the intellectual maze of an obsessive mind BUT no plot to speak of.
It's not that there isn't any actual plot, but Banville doesn't explore it. He is too caught up in the internal, poetic and self-absorbed voice of his unreliable narrator. Which makes it a tiresome and perplexing read.
By the way. The commissioner's name is Max Morden. Here, he seems to be an art forger. He will reappear as the central character of "The Sea", without a hint of a criminal past, at least as far as I recall.
All this is just too pretentious and too artificially structured to win me over. I just don't buy it.
October 29, 2012
This is a recent novel that is both difficult and enjoyable - which means it is not written by an American author. Athena is a novel with all of Thomas Pynchon's ambition though a fraction his impenetrability.
Banville's unreliable (and self-deprecating) first-person narrator is a treat who, despite most of his confessions coming parenthetically, fills parts of this novel with pleasant surprises. The story doesn't really materialize, certainly in no obvious way for a reader unfamiliar with this book's two predecessors, but it delights nevertheless with its author's precise prose:
She lied with such simplicity and sincere conviction that really it was not lying at all but a sort of continuing reinvention of the self. (p. 22)
There are surprising and insightful observations about art too:
What affects me most strongly and most immediately in a work of art is the quality of its silence. This silence is more than an absence of sound, it is an active force, expressive and coercive. The silence that a painting radiates becomes a kind of aura enfolding both the work itself and the viewer as in a color-field. (p. 79)
And humorous personifications:
The front door as I approached it across the hall had a pent-up, gloating aspect, as if it were just dying to fly open and unleash on me a shouting throng of accusers. (p. 102)
and
After that brief skirmish something that had been standing rigidly between us sat down and folded its arms. (p. 111)
and
I like pubs in the morningtime with that stale, jaded, faintly shamefaced air they have, as if a night-long debauch has just stumbled exhaustedly to an end. (p. 213)
Banville joins Edward St Aubyn on a list of European authors making their American counterparts feel rather small.
Banville's unreliable (and self-deprecating) first-person narrator is a treat who, despite most of his confessions coming parenthetically, fills parts of this novel with pleasant surprises. The story doesn't really materialize, certainly in no obvious way for a reader unfamiliar with this book's two predecessors, but it delights nevertheless with its author's precise prose:
She lied with such simplicity and sincere conviction that really it was not lying at all but a sort of continuing reinvention of the self. (p. 22)
There are surprising and insightful observations about art too:
What affects me most strongly and most immediately in a work of art is the quality of its silence. This silence is more than an absence of sound, it is an active force, expressive and coercive. The silence that a painting radiates becomes a kind of aura enfolding both the work itself and the viewer as in a color-field. (p. 79)
And humorous personifications:
The front door as I approached it across the hall had a pent-up, gloating aspect, as if it were just dying to fly open and unleash on me a shouting throng of accusers. (p. 102)
and
After that brief skirmish something that had been standing rigidly between us sat down and folded its arms. (p. 111)
and
I like pubs in the morningtime with that stale, jaded, faintly shamefaced air they have, as if a night-long debauch has just stumbled exhaustedly to an end. (p. 213)
Banville joins Edward St Aubyn on a list of European authors making their American counterparts feel rather small.
July 19, 2007
I read this after reading The Sea, which I thought was one of the most beautifully written books I've come across. Banville is an extraordinarily poetic author; he employs unexpected, uncommon, but perfectly chosen words as one would apply just the right amount of paint to a canvas. This is true of Athena as well, apt given the plot. However, I had been expecting a thriller, having seen the novel described that way somehwere, and as a result was disappointed generically. To clarify, I had been expecting an intelligent thriller, not just the run of the mill supermarket/summer read. But even so, I found the pace of this novel slower than I'd like. I did appreciate the narrator's circumlocution (for the most part) and Banville's cleverness with art history and anagrams of his name.
In two of Banville's novels, the narrators admit to disliking dogs, and bad things happen to them (the dogs). I can't think of a quicker way to establish for readers (me at least) that something is wrong with these narrators' personalities. I'll need to remember that if I ever write a novel with a villain or deeply flawed hero.
In two of Banville's novels, the narrators admit to disliking dogs, and bad things happen to them (the dogs). I can't think of a quicker way to establish for readers (me at least) that something is wrong with these narrators' personalities. I'll need to remember that if I ever write a novel with a villain or deeply flawed hero.
November 5, 2012
Almost inevitably a disappointment, given my fascination with The Book of Evidence. I haven't read Ghosts, the middle title in this loose trilogy, nor am I particularly inclined to, after this slight failing. It felt to me like a sketch for a book, rather than a finished project. Freddie's voice in TBOE is so hideously seductive, I feel drunk and debauched every time I pick that novel up. But here, it is wan and slightly out-of-focus. Still a good book, because you can always count on Banville for a fancy prose style. But a disappointment, nevertheless.
December 4, 2015
A difficult, frustrating book that I was relieved to finish. Banville always works close to the boundary between daring stylistic originality and Martin Amis-esque pretentiousness but Athena unfortunately falls on the wrong side. Feels as though it may have been as painful to write as it was to read. It would be interesting to know whether there was any correlation between the writing of this book and Banville’s diversification into the more direct, narrative-driven style of his alter-ego Benjamin Black.
November 11, 2007
The first Banville book I read and an unforgettable experience. I only learned after reading it that it was part of a triology, which explains some of the plot's obscurity to me. Still, I was riveted by the writing. So far my favorite Banville, followed by "The Book of Evidence."
July 7, 2020
"Did I ever describe to you Aunt Corky's smile? She opened her eyes wide and peeled her lips back from a set of dentures that would have fitted a small horse . . "
June 29, 2025
I feel that I need to take a deep breath before entering John Banville's world. I know that I will get gorgeous writing, a succession of impressions and intimations - but also (usually) a deeply unpleasant protagonist. I also know that I will have to manage my expectations about linear plot (I have a theory that those of us who fell in love with books as children never wholly let go of the desire to encounter a rollickin' good yarn) and that I will have to be prepared to be left with ambiguity and vagueness at the book's close.
I can't say that this book has caused me to revise that opinion. I knew it was part of the Freddie Montgomery trilogy so I had no trouble divining from the protagonist's opaque ramblings that, despite his new name of "Mr. Morrow", he was, indeed, Freddie Montgomery, released from prison after his theft and manslaughter charge, but again up to no good. Essentially the book is a long memory, of Montgomery/Morrow recounting how he got drawn into a shady art deal. The mysterious Morden asks him to put his expertise and genuine passion for 17th Flemish art to use to evaluate and authenticate a set of paintings, apparently inherited from an eccentric 19th century collector. Montgomery/Morrow thus visits the abandoned house where the paintings are stored, not just to feast his eyes on the paintings, but also, and increasingly, to tryst with a beautiful woman who seems loosely connected to Morden. Their erotic games become increasingly disturbing, but Montgomery/Morden is totally in thrall to her, even as he becomes vaguely aware that the police is keeping an eye on him, and that another underworld character, "Da" keeps popping up in his life in the most disquieting ways. To round out this collection of disturbing characters, there is also the sudden reappearance in his life of his Aunt Corky, now slowly dying in a retirement home but still capable of the occasional confabulation.
It's all very indirect, and much of the book consists of Montgomery/Morrow bemoaning the loss of his lover and describing himself as a purely passive bystander, or plaything of fate, a puppet in the hands of more devious characters like Morden, Da or even the police. He seems to have lived this episode in his life in a sort of fog, just like most of the story takes place in a hazy, drizzly Irish autumn. I have a hard time with these characters who seem to have no agency in their own life - but as always, the beautiful writing saves the book for me.
I can't say that this book has caused me to revise that opinion. I knew it was part of the Freddie Montgomery trilogy so I had no trouble divining from the protagonist's opaque ramblings that, despite his new name of "Mr. Morrow", he was, indeed, Freddie Montgomery, released from prison after his theft and manslaughter charge, but again up to no good. Essentially the book is a long memory, of Montgomery/Morrow recounting how he got drawn into a shady art deal. The mysterious Morden asks him to put his expertise and genuine passion for 17th Flemish art to use to evaluate and authenticate a set of paintings, apparently inherited from an eccentric 19th century collector. Montgomery/Morrow thus visits the abandoned house where the paintings are stored, not just to feast his eyes on the paintings, but also, and increasingly, to tryst with a beautiful woman who seems loosely connected to Morden. Their erotic games become increasingly disturbing, but Montgomery/Morden is totally in thrall to her, even as he becomes vaguely aware that the police is keeping an eye on him, and that another underworld character, "Da" keeps popping up in his life in the most disquieting ways. To round out this collection of disturbing characters, there is also the sudden reappearance in his life of his Aunt Corky, now slowly dying in a retirement home but still capable of the occasional confabulation.
It's all very indirect, and much of the book consists of Montgomery/Morrow bemoaning the loss of his lover and describing himself as a purely passive bystander, or plaything of fate, a puppet in the hands of more devious characters like Morden, Da or even the police. He seems to have lived this episode in his life in a sort of fog, just like most of the story takes place in a hazy, drizzly Irish autumn. I have a hard time with these characters who seem to have no agency in their own life - but as always, the beautiful writing saves the book for me.
January 14, 2023
On my bookshelf Banville’s writings are standing right next to the ones of Georges Bataille, and this is not because they both start with a B. It’s a little bit like Bach reincarnating as Glenn Gould to perform his own compositions with a better tool. Banville puts in mesmerizing prose a concept Bataille conceived in theory but wasn’t able to express with the splendor. And of all his books I would put Athena at the center right next to Bataille’s Erotism. The discontinuous self in constant longing to bridge the surrounding abyss of death to the other, to life. The photos of the death by a thousand cuts torture are a central aspect to both books. Yet Banville shrinks the isolated self even further, drifting unmoored from its own memories and perceptions.
But I’m still a little puzzled by Aunt Corky. Was it that she just knew better how to deal with all of this?
But I’m still a little puzzled by Aunt Corky. Was it that she just knew better how to deal with all of this?
September 22, 2022
Still one of my favorite authors, but not enthralled with this novel. The beautiful writing, clever similes, and closely observed moments are here, and some of the narrator's insights into the human condition are crafted magnificently. But I occasionally had the impression that Banville was showing off rather than applying his brilliance to the task at hand. Either way, the prose rewards close reading. In fact, it requires close reading, and for that reason I often found it difficult to stay focused for more than a few pages at a time.
P.S. I looked up some of the paintings described and found examples of the subjects, but not by the artists named. Perhaps one of the seven was real?
P.S. I looked up some of the paintings described and found examples of the subjects, but not by the artists named. Perhaps one of the seven was real?
November 22, 2022
Meh. If this is an example of his writing, I’m not interested in reading more. But then, I learned that this is book 3 of a trilogy. Still, it’s written in a stream of consciousness style that is most definitely not one of my favorites.
The narrator, whose name we never really know because he’s changed it, talks about some dodgy paintings in a secret room of a house. But he’s more interested in having sex with a woman he calls A - just an initial. Then there’s his aunt who’s dying or not, in a nursing home and then living in his third floor walk up with bathroom on the second floor.
I was never quite sure what actually happened and what was just in his head
The narrator, whose name we never really know because he’s changed it, talks about some dodgy paintings in a secret room of a house. But he’s more interested in having sex with a woman he calls A - just an initial. Then there’s his aunt who’s dying or not, in a nursing home and then living in his third floor walk up with bathroom on the second floor.
I was never quite sure what actually happened and what was just in his head
June 6, 2024
Banville weaves a dream-like narrative about a disgraced man (presumably Freddie Montgomery from Book of Evidence, now settled in a fairly decrepit city) getting involved with an art forgery ring and a beautiful woman, “A”. The chapters are punctuated by Montgomery’s curatorial analyses of fictitious artworks inspired by real paintings. These chart his unraveling as he loses A. Banville’s prose is really a joy to read as he gets inside the head of a lonely (and despicable) man mourning and obsessing over A.
April 22, 2018
Banville, in my opinion, elucidates our provincial nature—our base, a priori, affinities for hedonistic interactions; his glorious explications of our physiological abhorrent nature are quite funny as well; I enjoyed his descriptions of Aunt Corky the most! 😂😂😂
In short, he thwarts the mendacious Baudrillard simulation—the false rose-colored narrative that too many of us espouse when musing upon our essence.
We are *not* benevolent, altruistic beings; we are crude savages; this is neither good nor bad though; this is just the descriptive truth.
In short, he thwarts the mendacious Baudrillard simulation—the false rose-colored narrative that too many of us espouse when musing upon our essence.
We are *not* benevolent, altruistic beings; we are crude savages; this is neither good nor bad though; this is just the descriptive truth.
January 29, 2025
Though I preferred the premise of this story quite a bit more than the previous two, I couldn't get behind the characters as much. In the first and second instalments I was appalled and intrigued, respectively, by each book's characters. Here, however, I wasn't nearly as moved. Regardless, Baneville still puts on a masterful display of storytelling, his ghostly narration is both captivating and plainly beautiful.
June 26, 2025
There is both a lot, and nothing, going on in this book, but it's a whole universe in 240 pages (well, along with the two previous books in the series, and along with the real life case it's loosely based on)
February 14, 2011
In Athena, the narrator—Freddy Montgomery from The Book of Evidence—gets involved with some shady people who have acquired some minor 17th Dutch masters; they want Freddie (now "Morrow", he changed his name after getting out of prison to "Morrow", for—of course—tomorrow) to assess the paintings, give his opinion on whether they are in fact genuine. The main fellow, who is very creepy, almost gangster-ish, is named Morden (no first name); he's supposedly a real estate developer, bought this 18th Century town house in Dublin, which is where he discovered the paintings, apparently by chance. He has a driver/henchman (at least that's the way he's portrayed) named Francie; there's also a young woman only identified as "A." Freddie and A. have an intense love affair, that becomes apparent almost immediately, so it's not giving anything away to say so. We don't learn what A.'s relationship is to Morden or how she fits into that scheme of things until the final pages. I assume "Athena" represents A., although probably other things as well.
Now, flash forward to 2005 (in real life, not the story) to Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea. In that, a retired man moves into a guest house by the seaside in Ireland, near where he stayed as a boy. His wife, Anna, has recently died, and he's sort of lost and floating, not really knowing what to do with himself and how to handle the loss of Anna and memories of his childhood and events that happened at the guest house long, long ago. The man was an art historian. His name is Max Morden.
The Morden of The Sea and the Morden of Athena are not the same character. (Though I looked for clues throughout the reading, frustratingly so.) The Morden of Athena asked Morrow if he had any siblings: neither of them do, apparently. But they're all liars: the "good guys" (Freddie M. is a notoriously unreliable narrator) as well as the gangsters.
Another curious character in Athena (albeit a minor one) is a police inspector named Hackett. We can presume that Athena takes place roughly in "the present" (or at least the time the book was published in the mid-'90s), although no times or dates are mentioned (in fact no location is mentioned either, but from various clues we can safely assume the setting is Dublin). We know from piecing together the clues left throughout this book as well as Ghosts (the second installment in the trilogy), that Freddie served a number of years in prison for the murder of a young housekeeper in the course of stealing a painting from the estate of some wealthy acquaintances (depicted in the original of the trilogy, The Book of Evidence). Thus is the nature of a trilogy: the stories are interrelated, and in this case at least, chronological.
Finding Morden's name is something of a surprise: that this character's name should surface again in the writer's opus a decade later is startling. Hackett though is even more surprising. His name (and career) surfaces in 2008 in Banville's mystery novel The Silver Swan, published under the name of his crime-fiction-writing alter ego, Benjamin Black. That novel is set in Dublin in the grey and stifling 1950s. It is impossible to consider these two detectives are the same person—forty years have passed: pensions and gold watches have been distributed at boozy testimonial dinners surely. Could it be that the Inspector Hackett of Athena is the son of the Inspector Hackett who indulges Black's quirky pathologist Garrett Quirke? Holy intertextuality, Batman.
The book is brilliant, in that "Banville way"—I loved it. Athena is the steamiest thing I've read by Banville: the girl, A., is into transgressive sex. She's slender and not as young as she seems and has dark, blue-black hair. Banville owes at least some nominal debt to Nabokov's Lolita for his portrait of Freddie's self-destruction under the thrall of A. It's the first novel by Banville I can remember having any erotic content: others have had "sex scenes" (Shroud in particular comes to mind) but they were somewhat mechanical, most likely deliberately so.
The chapters, unnumbered and unnamed, alternate with brief (fictional) critiques of the (fictional) paintings by (fictional) artists. This is not Banville writing the critiques, but rather Freddie, which becomes apparent about a third of the way in, when he breaks the scholarly "fourth wall" and addresses A. directly, as "you". Indeed, randomly throughout the book, Freddie's narrative turns away from the "general reader" and he aims his tale of woe, his comments specifically to A., specifically to "you". It's a brilliant conceit. The change in "person" is jarring; it's just subtle enough to constantly catch one every time.
And what of the paintings? Are they real or fake? If real, they are inestimably valuable—and stolen. Stolen from the same collection where Freddie got into trouble originally, in The Book of Evidence. It almost doesn't matter, because the paintings are Banville's MacGuffin, setting off Freddie's ruminative flights of longing and loss.
Now, flash forward to 2005 (in real life, not the story) to Banville's Booker Prize-winning novel The Sea. In that, a retired man moves into a guest house by the seaside in Ireland, near where he stayed as a boy. His wife, Anna, has recently died, and he's sort of lost and floating, not really knowing what to do with himself and how to handle the loss of Anna and memories of his childhood and events that happened at the guest house long, long ago. The man was an art historian. His name is Max Morden.
The Morden of The Sea and the Morden of Athena are not the same character. (Though I looked for clues throughout the reading, frustratingly so.) The Morden of Athena asked Morrow if he had any siblings: neither of them do, apparently. But they're all liars: the "good guys" (Freddie M. is a notoriously unreliable narrator) as well as the gangsters.
Another curious character in Athena (albeit a minor one) is a police inspector named Hackett. We can presume that Athena takes place roughly in "the present" (or at least the time the book was published in the mid-'90s), although no times or dates are mentioned (in fact no location is mentioned either, but from various clues we can safely assume the setting is Dublin). We know from piecing together the clues left throughout this book as well as Ghosts (the second installment in the trilogy), that Freddie served a number of years in prison for the murder of a young housekeeper in the course of stealing a painting from the estate of some wealthy acquaintances (depicted in the original of the trilogy, The Book of Evidence). Thus is the nature of a trilogy: the stories are interrelated, and in this case at least, chronological.
Finding Morden's name is something of a surprise: that this character's name should surface again in the writer's opus a decade later is startling. Hackett though is even more surprising. His name (and career) surfaces in 2008 in Banville's mystery novel The Silver Swan, published under the name of his crime-fiction-writing alter ego, Benjamin Black. That novel is set in Dublin in the grey and stifling 1950s. It is impossible to consider these two detectives are the same person—forty years have passed: pensions and gold watches have been distributed at boozy testimonial dinners surely. Could it be that the Inspector Hackett of Athena is the son of the Inspector Hackett who indulges Black's quirky pathologist Garrett Quirke? Holy intertextuality, Batman.
The book is brilliant, in that "Banville way"—I loved it. Athena is the steamiest thing I've read by Banville: the girl, A., is into transgressive sex. She's slender and not as young as she seems and has dark, blue-black hair. Banville owes at least some nominal debt to Nabokov's Lolita for his portrait of Freddie's self-destruction under the thrall of A. It's the first novel by Banville I can remember having any erotic content: others have had "sex scenes" (Shroud in particular comes to mind) but they were somewhat mechanical, most likely deliberately so.
The chapters, unnumbered and unnamed, alternate with brief (fictional) critiques of the (fictional) paintings by (fictional) artists. This is not Banville writing the critiques, but rather Freddie, which becomes apparent about a third of the way in, when he breaks the scholarly "fourth wall" and addresses A. directly, as "you". Indeed, randomly throughout the book, Freddie's narrative turns away from the "general reader" and he aims his tale of woe, his comments specifically to A., specifically to "you". It's a brilliant conceit. The change in "person" is jarring; it's just subtle enough to constantly catch one every time.
And what of the paintings? Are they real or fake? If real, they are inestimably valuable—and stolen. Stolen from the same collection where Freddie got into trouble originally, in The Book of Evidence. It almost doesn't matter, because the paintings are Banville's MacGuffin, setting off Freddie's ruminative flights of longing and loss.
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