What do you think?
Rate this book
Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir
From the internationally acclaimed and Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea and the Benjamin Black mysteries--a vividly evocative memoir that unfolds around the author's recollections, experience, and imaginings of Dublin.
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions (not playing an identifiable role in his work until the Quirke mystery series, penned as Benjamin Black), it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments. The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived. And though, when he came of age and took up residence there, and the city became a frequent backdrop for his dissatisfactions (not playing an identifiable role in his work until the Quirke mystery series, penned as Benjamin Black), it remained in some part of his memory as fascinating as it had been to his seven-year-old self. And as he guides us around the city, delighting in its cultural, architectural, political, and social history, he interweaves the memories that are attached to particular places and moments. The result is both a wonderfully idiosyncratic tour of Dublin, and a tender yet powerful ode to a formative time and place for the artist as a young man.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2016
243 people are currently reading
1570 people want to read
About the author
John Banville
133 books2,391 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
Read
December 14, 2019I'm always fascinated by the links and coincidences between my reading life and my real life, so when John Banville mentioned early in this book that there are no such things as coincidences, I wondered about his wisdom. Admittedly, he didn't say that this was his own opinion but that it was a Borges quote relayed to him by someone else. As it turns out, I now think that Banville believes firmly in coincidence. Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir seems to me to be a book that is quite shot through with coincidence - literary, geographical and temporal.
The book is well named. It's a series of pieces which are part memoir, as in a search for the gems that Time and Memory have created out of the everyday stuff of the author's Past, and part chronicle, in this case of the city of Dublin, showing how Time has both burnished and decayed its streets and monuments. And tying the memoir and the chronicle together is a literary record of Ireland in the middle decades of the twentieth century, linking John Banville's future destiny as a writer with the major literary figures of his youth via a series of sightings and chance encounters in the bookshops, pubs and parks they all frequented.
Although many Dublin based writers are mentioned, for me, the chief literary figure dominating these pieces is Marcel Proust, even if his name never appears. That connection struck me in the early pages when I realised that Banville had chosen to begin the book with an account of a train journey he took each year as a child, a trip that his child's mind endowed with mystery and magic but which always left him melancholic at the end, exactly like Proust's narrator after his annual trip to Combray or his many train rides to Balbec.
Banville closes his Time Pieces with a chapter entitled 'Time Regained' in which a chance encounter in a pub propels him instantly backwards to the memory of himself as a young man. There's a sense that the present moment of that encounter, happening as it did after a day spent rediscovering various forgotten corners of Dublin, is when Banville begins to compose the text we've just read. Again, the parallels with Proust are strong: Proust's narrator ends his own 'time regained' volume with the intention of writing the entire Recherche du temps perdu, of which Le Temps retrouvé is of course the final part.
Between the first and last chapters of Banville's search for lost time, we are treated to various recollections of the jeunes filles en fleurs who inspired his youthful heart. Chief among them is a girl who could pass for Proust's Gilberte Swann. Banville's girl is friendly towards the young writer but she is extraordinarily elusive too. He is invited often to her home for afternoon tea reminding us of Proust's narrator taking tea in the Swann home in the hope that Gilberte might show him particular attention, which she never does, though he only gives up finally when he sees her in the street with another man. Young Banville has exactly the same experience down to the encounter in the street - there are just so many parallels between the two narratives.
But there are other parallels in Banville's Time Pieces, links that connect the text very concretely with my own life. Many of the places he mentions are familiar to me, and I've read the work of most of the Irish literary figures whose names he mentions throughout the text, writers such as John McGahern, Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, JP Dunleavy, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and James Joyce.
Re Joyce, I have an anecdote. On page 184 of this book, John Banville mentions meeting a Jesuit priest in Joyce's old school, Belvedere College, and discussing the infamous pupil with him. I read that passage the day I attended a literary event in Belvedere College. One of the speakers at that literary event just happened to be John Banville. Afterwards, I asked him to sign my copy of Time Pieces, which I just happened to have in my bag.
How's that for a string of coincidences!
The book is well named. It's a series of pieces which are part memoir, as in a search for the gems that Time and Memory have created out of the everyday stuff of the author's Past, and part chronicle, in this case of the city of Dublin, showing how Time has both burnished and decayed its streets and monuments. And tying the memoir and the chronicle together is a literary record of Ireland in the middle decades of the twentieth century, linking John Banville's future destiny as a writer with the major literary figures of his youth via a series of sightings and chance encounters in the bookshops, pubs and parks they all frequented.
Although many Dublin based writers are mentioned, for me, the chief literary figure dominating these pieces is Marcel Proust, even if his name never appears. That connection struck me in the early pages when I realised that Banville had chosen to begin the book with an account of a train journey he took each year as a child, a trip that his child's mind endowed with mystery and magic but which always left him melancholic at the end, exactly like Proust's narrator after his annual trip to Combray or his many train rides to Balbec.
Banville closes his Time Pieces with a chapter entitled 'Time Regained' in which a chance encounter in a pub propels him instantly backwards to the memory of himself as a young man. There's a sense that the present moment of that encounter, happening as it did after a day spent rediscovering various forgotten corners of Dublin, is when Banville begins to compose the text we've just read. Again, the parallels with Proust are strong: Proust's narrator ends his own 'time regained' volume with the intention of writing the entire Recherche du temps perdu, of which Le Temps retrouvé is of course the final part.
Between the first and last chapters of Banville's search for lost time, we are treated to various recollections of the jeunes filles en fleurs who inspired his youthful heart. Chief among them is a girl who could pass for Proust's Gilberte Swann. Banville's girl is friendly towards the young writer but she is extraordinarily elusive too. He is invited often to her home for afternoon tea reminding us of Proust's narrator taking tea in the Swann home in the hope that Gilberte might show him particular attention, which she never does, though he only gives up finally when he sees her in the street with another man. Young Banville has exactly the same experience down to the encounter in the street - there are just so many parallels between the two narratives.
But there are other parallels in Banville's Time Pieces, links that connect the text very concretely with my own life. Many of the places he mentions are familiar to me, and I've read the work of most of the Irish literary figures whose names he mentions throughout the text, writers such as John McGahern, Anthony Cronin, Patrick Kavanagh, Brendan Behan, JP Dunleavy, Samuel Beckett, Flann O'Brien and James Joyce.
Re Joyce, I have an anecdote. On page 184 of this book, John Banville mentions meeting a Jesuit priest in Joyce's old school, Belvedere College, and discussing the infamous pupil with him. I read that passage the day I attended a literary event in Belvedere College. One of the speakers at that literary event just happened to be John Banville. Afterwards, I asked him to sign my copy of Time Pieces, which I just happened to have in my bag.
How's that for a string of coincidences!
September 23, 2024
Quirke, a flayed character with his propensity to drink too much (like many Irish people), is more than endearing. He goes to the end of things and sincerely tries to do his best for everyone (or almost)
Even if we are in the twentieth century, we still fully measure the impact and the power of the Irish (and Catholic) Church on its flock and their behavior.
An actual noir novel immerses us in Dublin in the fifties and takes us across the Atlantic to Boston.
Writing is chiseled and addictive because I enjoyed this reading and the author's style.
Even if we are in the twentieth century, we still fully measure the impact and the power of the Irish (and Catholic) Church on its flock and their behavior.
An actual noir novel immerses us in Dublin in the fifties and takes us across the Atlantic to Boston.
Writing is chiseled and addictive because I enjoyed this reading and the author's style.
March 10, 2018
Born in Wexford, a small town that in Banville’s youth was both more isolated and more of a rural community, Dublin fascinated him, captivating him in his youth. The annual trips, by train, for him and his family, fell around the date of his birthday, and their purpose centered around Christmas shopping, Christmas lights and a chance to be a part of something bigger, grander. In the 1950’s, I expect that the memories of the differences from his everyday life would be even more remarkable, the draw of Dublin even more enchanting.
”Dublin, of course, was the opposite of ordinary. Dublin was for me what Moscow was for Irina in Chekov’s Three Sisters, a place of magical promise towards which my starved young soul endlessly yearned.”
”That the city itself, the real Dublin, was, in those poverty-stricken 1950s, mostly a grey and graceless place did not mar my dream of it—and I dreamed of it even when I was present in it, so that mundane reality was being constantly transformed before my eyes into his romance; there is no one more romantic than a small boy, as Robert Louis Stevenson knew better than most.”
”When does the past become the past? How much time must elapse before what merely happened begins to give off the mysterious, numinous glow that is the mark of true pastness?”
”Let us say, the present is where we live, while the past is where we dream. Yet if it is a dream, it is substantial, and sustaining. The past buoys us up, a tethered and ever-expanding hot-air balloon.”
This is less a memoir of Banville’s life as it is a tribute to his Dublin, his childhood views of the mystery and magical draw of this city, and his views of this city that has seen so much in its time. The transition of the Dublin of the past to the Dublin that helped form him into the man he became, and a glimpse back through those years.
How I wish I’d read this before I had gone to Ireland, although I spent too little time in Dublin to recognize all of the places he writes of, there was enough to draw out memories of my time there, in particular his writings on the Iveagh Gardens, near St. Stephen’s Green.
”I had a sense of the magical timelessness of such places, and of the uses to which we put them. We change, we age, we stay or move away, and in time we end. The park, however, endures. It is a thought, I think, to comfort, if only by a little, the most distressed of hearts.”
Included are some stunning photographs by London-based portrait photographer and film-maker, Paul Joyce.
This might seem a strange choice to begin reading Banville, but I think it has given me some insight into the man, and while I have looked forward to reading his books for a while, this has given me added incentive.
Read
March 18, 2019Banville is our best.
He was not born in Dublin,but in Wexford like Colm Tobin.
Banville s memoir is a personal reflection on Dublin it’s streets and architectural heritage and the literary characters dead and alive that Banville has encountered.And much more.
Banvilles childhood train journeys to Dublin are recalled.
I know all these streets and stones and pubs and parks.I worked as a young lawyer on Mount Street with its elegant Georgian streetscape.
Banvilles memoir captivates.
The style reminds me of Sebald.
A must for anybody interested in Dublin and it’s literary traditions evoked by a master.
He was not born in Dublin,but in Wexford like Colm Tobin.
Banville s memoir is a personal reflection on Dublin it’s streets and architectural heritage and the literary characters dead and alive that Banville has encountered.And much more.
Banvilles childhood train journeys to Dublin are recalled.
I know all these streets and stones and pubs and parks.I worked as a young lawyer on Mount Street with its elegant Georgian streetscape.
Banvilles memoir captivates.
The style reminds me of Sebald.
A must for anybody interested in Dublin and it’s literary traditions evoked by a master.
September 25, 2024
I am going to visit Dublin early next year and was interested to learn what John Banville made of the city. I enjoyed his reminisces. Here are two quotes that I liked the most:
The first regards a visit to the Pearse Street Library aka the Dublin City Library and Archive: "I suppose love sickness for books is a malady that every librarian can diagnose straight off."
The second regards a winter scene on Grafton Street in Dublin: "there was a general sense of hilarious misrule. It was midafternoon and already the Christmas lights were glowing brightly in the frost laden air and the waft of roasting coffee beans from the door of Bewley's Oriental Café was a soft brown breath of warmth."
This eAudiobook was narrated warmly by the wonderful John Lee.
The first regards a visit to the Pearse Street Library aka the Dublin City Library and Archive: "I suppose love sickness for books is a malady that every librarian can diagnose straight off."
The second regards a winter scene on Grafton Street in Dublin: "there was a general sense of hilarious misrule. It was midafternoon and already the Christmas lights were glowing brightly in the frost laden air and the waft of roasting coffee beans from the door of Bewley's Oriental Café was a soft brown breath of warmth."
This eAudiobook was narrated warmly by the wonderful John Lee.
July 21, 2023
I took my slow sweet time reading Banville's love letter to Dublin. What's the rush? The city has endured for centuries, Banville for many decades.....Surely I can afford to spend a couple of weeks working my way through this slender but thoroughly enjoyable memoir.
In seven chapters, he describes his favorite parks, pubs and landmarks; the clear, enjoyable writing that lifts his novels above the ordinary is much in evidence here.
Seven chapters? But this book has eight. The second-to-last took on a different tone entirely, and described in quite heartbreaking fashion his first love. (His first love but, to his regret, not hers.) Most of us have been there, and I'm not sure there's a writer born who can truly capture the misery and anguish of being passed over by the object of your affection. Banville's too smart to try, so he does something else with the story, recounting little details of his surroundings that are still burned into his memory sixty years later. Beautifully and powerfully done.
Maybe I'll tell the library I accidentally spilled paint on this or something. It's a beautiful hardbound edition with dense heavy paper, and a book I'd be happy to put in my permanent collection.
In seven chapters, he describes his favorite parks, pubs and landmarks; the clear, enjoyable writing that lifts his novels above the ordinary is much in evidence here.
The most illustrious tenant of the Mount Street house was Anne Yeats, the daughter of W.B. Yeats. The oddest observable fact about her was that she used to take delivery every week of two ounces of fresh yeast dispatched directly from the Dublin Yeast Company in College Green. I would see the neat little brown-paper package where the postman had left it on the hall table, and wonder what possible use Miss Yeats could have for such substantial and constant quantities of the stuff. She did not make bread with it -- we would have smelt the loaves baking -- and I could think of no use she could possibly have put it to in her painting. Nor could I imaging that the daughter of William Butler Yeats, Nobel laureate and contentious member of the Irish Senate, would have been running a micro-brewery in her back bedroom.Banville also provides a loving look at many of the most interesting architectural sights in town, which is the sort of stuff I could read about for hours.
Seven chapters? But this book has eight. The second-to-last took on a different tone entirely, and described in quite heartbreaking fashion his first love. (His first love but, to his regret, not hers.) Most of us have been there, and I'm not sure there's a writer born who can truly capture the misery and anguish of being passed over by the object of your affection. Banville's too smart to try, so he does something else with the story, recounting little details of his surroundings that are still burned into his memory sixty years later. Beautifully and powerfully done.
Maybe I'll tell the library I accidentally spilled paint on this or something. It's a beautiful hardbound edition with dense heavy paper, and a book I'd be happy to put in my permanent collection.
May 4, 2018
John Banville is a wonderful writer ... We met him in Key West (and also later in Dublin) and talked with him about writing ... he said something then I try to remember every time I write: make every single word as good as it can be ... every single word ... great advice for any writer
The "pieces" in this memoir are soft and gentle and often moving ... Banville's description of places he cares about are simply superb.
The "pieces" in this memoir are soft and gentle and often moving ... Banville's description of places he cares about are simply superb.
September 16, 2018
I am certain I loved this book because much of it explores a Dublin that is on the verge of disappearing. But Banville is assuring in that he uncovers hidden parts of the city that have survived. I loved the pre-Celtic Tiger Dublin before it became jammed with tourists brought in on cheap flights to binge drink in Temple Bar, and rove the streets in huge bands. In summer, hoards of European teens who come to learn English cram buses, and sidewalks, jostling everyone in their vicinity, and crowding places like the Dublin Writers Museum, where they don't want to be, preventing others from seeing or enjoying anything. Despite those deterrents, I have managed to squeeze in short visits on my way to other destinations in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and on my post university graduation trip, I spent over a month there.
Banville is, of course, an exquisite writer. He is not a Dubliner by birth, but since his childhood in Wexford, has known the city. As a boy, he traveled with his mother and sister every year in December for a day of shopping:
December days in the approach to Christmas are short, and end with a sense of soft collapse. I loved the melancholy of those Dublin evenings, despite the weight they laid upon my young heart. Railway stations at night are always incurably sad, and as the train pulled out of Westland Row at the start of the return trip to Wexford, I would have to turn my face away and press it close up against the window to hide my tears from my mother and my sister....I could not have said why or for what exactly it was that I was weeping...I suppose it was because something was ending, being folded up, like a circus tent, was becoming, in short, the past.
He describes the destruction of Georgian Dublin, the most famous example being the demolition of one of the longest blocks of Georgian buildings in Europe to construct the hideous Electricity Supply Board building. Baggotonia, the neighborhood around Baggot Street, south of the River Liffey, was an area full of artistic types. Michael MacLiammor and his partner Hilton Edwards lived there, down the street from friends who were often involved in fighting the rampant wrecking of Dublin. Patrick Kavanagh, poet and curmudgeon, spent his time in this part of Dublin, which is commemorated by a sculpture, along the Royal Canal. http://www.johncollsculptures.com/pat...
The mother of a friend I knew in Boston years back is mentioned. Margaret Gaj was Scottish-born of Irish parents. She married a Pole and ended up in Dublin. Gaj's Restaurant opened in Molesworth St. but moved to Lower Baggot St. It was a haven for leftists and others involved in progressive causes, and is known as the location where the short-lived Irish Women's Liberation Movement met. It closed in 1980. I was fortunate to visit there in the late 1970's with a friend where we were treated by Margaret to a meal because we were friends of her son. https://comeheretome.com/2016/12/02/f...
Banville notes :
A lot of the Georgian city was still standing when I first came to live there, but a lot of it was gone, too. ...in the postwar years and up to the end of the 1960's, the city was subjected to appalling bouts of sanctioned destruction. The ultra-nationalist ideologues who ran the country then had scant regard for the delights of Georgian architecture, and indeed many of them would have seen Georgian Dublin as a despised monument to our British conquerors...
Banville's Dublin serves a contrast to the Dublin reflected in the poem Dublin You Are by the Spoken Word poet Stephen James Smith : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNQcw...
Both refer to Dublin characters and Banville writes :
This city, like all cities, had its complement of eccentrics, but Dublin was so small that they seemed uncommonly numerous. Most of them were poor, sad characters, maimed in body or spirit or both, but a few there were who added appreciably to the gaiety of the town.
The two, Banville and Smith, are of different generations. Banville is twice the age of Smith, and this book describes the more gentile Dublin. Smith describes the gritty Dublin, and his accent is more working class than leisure class. These are disparate visions of the same city.
The book is greatly enriched by the splendid but understated photography of Paul Joyce. His black-and-white photographs reflect and create a melancholy tone. The Brazilian term "saudades" comes to mind, a word that reflects more than nostalgia, but includes longing, a look back to a past that is missed. This is a book for anyone who loves Dublin, or the idea of Dublin. It is a treasure.
* I have created footnotes for the references in Stephen James Smith's poem 'Dublin You Are Me'. PM me for a copy.
Banville is, of course, an exquisite writer. He is not a Dubliner by birth, but since his childhood in Wexford, has known the city. As a boy, he traveled with his mother and sister every year in December for a day of shopping:
December days in the approach to Christmas are short, and end with a sense of soft collapse. I loved the melancholy of those Dublin evenings, despite the weight they laid upon my young heart. Railway stations at night are always incurably sad, and as the train pulled out of Westland Row at the start of the return trip to Wexford, I would have to turn my face away and press it close up against the window to hide my tears from my mother and my sister....I could not have said why or for what exactly it was that I was weeping...I suppose it was because something was ending, being folded up, like a circus tent, was becoming, in short, the past.
He describes the destruction of Georgian Dublin, the most famous example being the demolition of one of the longest blocks of Georgian buildings in Europe to construct the hideous Electricity Supply Board building. Baggotonia, the neighborhood around Baggot Street, south of the River Liffey, was an area full of artistic types. Michael MacLiammor and his partner Hilton Edwards lived there, down the street from friends who were often involved in fighting the rampant wrecking of Dublin. Patrick Kavanagh, poet and curmudgeon, spent his time in this part of Dublin, which is commemorated by a sculpture, along the Royal Canal. http://www.johncollsculptures.com/pat...
The mother of a friend I knew in Boston years back is mentioned. Margaret Gaj was Scottish-born of Irish parents. She married a Pole and ended up in Dublin. Gaj's Restaurant opened in Molesworth St. but moved to Lower Baggot St. It was a haven for leftists and others involved in progressive causes, and is known as the location where the short-lived Irish Women's Liberation Movement met. It closed in 1980. I was fortunate to visit there in the late 1970's with a friend where we were treated by Margaret to a meal because we were friends of her son. https://comeheretome.com/2016/12/02/f...
Banville notes :
A lot of the Georgian city was still standing when I first came to live there, but a lot of it was gone, too. ...in the postwar years and up to the end of the 1960's, the city was subjected to appalling bouts of sanctioned destruction. The ultra-nationalist ideologues who ran the country then had scant regard for the delights of Georgian architecture, and indeed many of them would have seen Georgian Dublin as a despised monument to our British conquerors...
Banville's Dublin serves a contrast to the Dublin reflected in the poem Dublin You Are by the Spoken Word poet Stephen James Smith : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNQcw...
Both refer to Dublin characters and Banville writes :
This city, like all cities, had its complement of eccentrics, but Dublin was so small that they seemed uncommonly numerous. Most of them were poor, sad characters, maimed in body or spirit or both, but a few there were who added appreciably to the gaiety of the town.
The two, Banville and Smith, are of different generations. Banville is twice the age of Smith, and this book describes the more gentile Dublin. Smith describes the gritty Dublin, and his accent is more working class than leisure class. These are disparate visions of the same city.
The book is greatly enriched by the splendid but understated photography of Paul Joyce. His black-and-white photographs reflect and create a melancholy tone. The Brazilian term "saudades" comes to mind, a word that reflects more than nostalgia, but includes longing, a look back to a past that is missed. This is a book for anyone who loves Dublin, or the idea of Dublin. It is a treasure.
* I have created footnotes for the references in Stephen James Smith's poem 'Dublin You Are Me'. PM me for a copy.
May 25, 2021
Traduzi este livro para a Relógio D'Água em 2017, tendo viajado até Dublin para melhor conhecer a cidade. Pareceu-me indispensável fazê-lo para traduzir esta obra. Usei o livro de Banville como guia, tendo percorrido todos os lugares da cidade que ele refere.
«Retalhos do tempo» é um livro espantoso. Não é um guia de Dublin, longe disso. É um objecto híbrido, e os objectos híbridos são sempre os mais interessantes. É um misto de autobiografia e de memorial da cidade. Banville conta-nos uma parte da história de Dublin, ao mesmo tempo que nos conta a maneira como a sua relação com esta cidade foi evoluindo, desde o fascínio infantil até ao seu amor pela urbe onde passou a morar em jovem.
Banville é magistral na maneira como conta pequenos episódios reveladores, sem nunca se tornar didáctico nem cair na pose de guia turístico. O primeiro capítulo, «Do tempo», em que Banville conta a sua experiência infantil das viagens de comboio até Dublin (Banville nasceu numa povoação de província, Wexford), é arrebatador. Ao descrever a vista na margem do Grand Canal, desde a Baggot Street até à Lower Mount Street, Banville classifica este lugar como «a paisagem aquática mais encantadora» do mundo. E cita, a propósito, um soneto de Patrick Kavanagh, que traduzi assim:
Versos Escritos num Banco com Vista para o Grand Canal, Dublin
«Erigido à memória de Mrs. Dermot O’Brien»
Irmão, onde água houver rende-me preito,
Um canal, se puder ser, água limosa,
Serena em pleno Verão no verde leito.
Preiteia-me assim, com a vista formosa
Da comporta onde ruge a catarata,
Niágara no silêncio do Estio.
Não mais a prosa quer, feita de lata,
Quem o ouro do Parnaso aqui sentiu.
O colo verga um cisne com brandura,
Espreita das pontes uma luz tão pura —
Ali! Lendas traz no convés uma barcaça
De Athy e doutras terras da lonjura.
Tumba não quero a celebrar minha bravura —
Só um banco no canal para quem passa.
Haverá maneira mais bela de celebrar uma cidade?
As fotografias que ilustram o livro são também muito interessantes.
«Retalhos do tempo» é um livro espantoso. Não é um guia de Dublin, longe disso. É um objecto híbrido, e os objectos híbridos são sempre os mais interessantes. É um misto de autobiografia e de memorial da cidade. Banville conta-nos uma parte da história de Dublin, ao mesmo tempo que nos conta a maneira como a sua relação com esta cidade foi evoluindo, desde o fascínio infantil até ao seu amor pela urbe onde passou a morar em jovem.
Banville é magistral na maneira como conta pequenos episódios reveladores, sem nunca se tornar didáctico nem cair na pose de guia turístico. O primeiro capítulo, «Do tempo», em que Banville conta a sua experiência infantil das viagens de comboio até Dublin (Banville nasceu numa povoação de província, Wexford), é arrebatador. Ao descrever a vista na margem do Grand Canal, desde a Baggot Street até à Lower Mount Street, Banville classifica este lugar como «a paisagem aquática mais encantadora» do mundo. E cita, a propósito, um soneto de Patrick Kavanagh, que traduzi assim:
Versos Escritos num Banco com Vista para o Grand Canal, Dublin
«Erigido à memória de Mrs. Dermot O’Brien»
Irmão, onde água houver rende-me preito,
Um canal, se puder ser, água limosa,
Serena em pleno Verão no verde leito.
Preiteia-me assim, com a vista formosa
Da comporta onde ruge a catarata,
Niágara no silêncio do Estio.
Não mais a prosa quer, feita de lata,
Quem o ouro do Parnaso aqui sentiu.
O colo verga um cisne com brandura,
Espreita das pontes uma luz tão pura —
Ali! Lendas traz no convés uma barcaça
De Athy e doutras terras da lonjura.
Tumba não quero a celebrar minha bravura —
Só um banco no canal para quem passa.
Haverá maneira mais bela de celebrar uma cidade?
As fotografias que ilustram o livro são também muito interessantes.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 3, 2023
John Banville’s memoir, or as he calls it, “quasi-memoir,” focused on his travels to Dublin. In addition to his memories, it includes Dublin-related historic and literary references. Banville grew up in Wexford, and he shares fond memories of his trips into the city with his family, which occurred annually around his birthday. Later, he and his friend, Cicero, roam around Dublin and we get to know many of its places as well as the ambiance of the city. It is not a travelogue, per se, but it does provide a feel for the architecture, streets, parks, and buildings. Its tone is wistful and melancholy. It is lyrically written. For example, this passage is a wonderful description of the feeling of nostalgia: ”Let us say, the present is where we live, while the past is where we dream. Yet if it is a dream, it is substantial, and sustaining. The past buoys us up, a tethered and ever-expanding hot-air balloon.” I’ve never been to Dublin, but this book makes me want to visit.
July 29, 2018
“The Present is where we live, while the past is where we dream. But what transmutation must the present go through in order to become the past?”
Memory is a dishonest narrator. If we cannot control the present let’s reinvent our past. John Banville writes about the Dublin where he has resided since adulthood. But having grown up in the provinces, his early memories of Dublin are infused with Christmasy-wonder. He confesses that he observed nothing of his village, the coastal Wexford-- and for much of his life, little of Dublin.
If Banville’s characters seem like an amalgamation, so is his "past." "When does the past become the past? How much time must elapse before the ordinary goes off the mysteries numinous glow that is the mark of true pastness? What is the magic that is worked upon experience? "Our mood influences memory. When the mood shifts, Banville strikes a memory to the page— He remembers aching pleasure at river bends and a canal’s towpath. He remembers his first date over afternoon tea at a theater’s cafe and the sting of the rejection from a woman.
Poignant are his musings about how those closest to him always ranked distant seconds to his writing.
Banville concludes:
Publisher’s Weekly states it better than I.
Memory is a dishonest narrator. If we cannot control the present let’s reinvent our past. John Banville writes about the Dublin where he has resided since adulthood. But having grown up in the provinces, his early memories of Dublin are infused with Christmasy-wonder. He confesses that he observed nothing of his village, the coastal Wexford-- and for much of his life, little of Dublin.
I have never in my life paid much attention to my surroundings wherever it was I happened to find myself–artistic attention, that is. For good or ill, as a writer, I am and always have been most concerned not with what people do… but with what they are. Art is a constant effort to strike past the mere doings of humankind in order to arrive at, or at least to approach as closely as possible to, the essence of what it is, simply, to be. (55)I recall that, in one of Banville’s books, a narrator declares, “Memory is a cunt!” Dishonest. Untrustworthy. Whorish. Base. Banville’s narrators in the half-dozen novels I’ve read are reliably untrustworthy narcissists— despite their disarming honesty. So is Memory a narrator of our past? Though Banville's fiction taught me to distrust words, I cannot argue with these:
In a sense, childhood never ends but exists in us not merely as a memory, but as a part of what we are. Childhood is a deep source of inspiration, if for no other reason and that it was as children that we first apprehended the world as mystery. The process of growing up is a process turning the mysterious into the mundane. We cease to be amazed by things only because we have grown accustomed to them. We do not grow up; all we do is grow dull.Banville sports around in a convertible, revisiting Dublin's nooks with “Cicero,” a friend possessing granary silos of arcane knowledge of hidden history. Evocative photographs offset the elusive text. Most of the photos are of benches, mailboxes, black-speared fencing, pubs, closed front doors, bridges, towpaths, canals, pigeons, mossy bricks, theaters, park ponds, streets denuded of people, eccentrics dressed like fakirs, eroded statues, open portals overhanging vegetation, brick streets, rusting ships, enormous Georgian buildings, and the back of Banville’s head.
If Banville’s characters seem like an amalgamation, so is his "past." "When does the past become the past? How much time must elapse before the ordinary goes off the mysteries numinous glow that is the mark of true pastness? What is the magic that is worked upon experience? "Our mood influences memory. When the mood shifts, Banville strikes a memory to the page— He remembers aching pleasure at river bends and a canal’s towpath. He remembers his first date over afternoon tea at a theater’s cafe and the sting of the rejection from a woman.
Poignant are his musings about how those closest to him always ranked distant seconds to his writing.
Yet when I look back now at all that I rejected in those early years, and ponder the unheeding and heartless manner in which I rejected it, I am pierced with what is if not sorrow then something that feels sharply like it. I left a place that I thought harsh and ungenerous, but that, in reality, was tender, and to engrossed in its own hopes and sorrows to bother much with me. (56)James Joyce already mined Dublin’s precious metallurgic memory, and Marcel Proust already owns literary meditations on memory. Banville channels both and mixes them with himself--or perhaps those Nabokovian narrators. This book is neither a memoir of Banville nor a tourist guide to Dublin. Though I have never been to Dublin, “Time Pieces” makes me feel like a traveler who has lived here once. Perhaps a home I have never found. Another of memory’s jokes.
Should have lived more, written less.
Banville concludes:
The sun is shining, and dust motes drift in the air. I feel like Odysseus come home at last to Ithaca, but with all in order and no usurping suitors in need of slaughtering. I feel– yes, I feel at home. Cicero in Dublin between them have, I realize, granted me the freedom of the city. I offer a toast just to being there– Because being here is much– and smile, inanely, I fear, at the sunlight in the doorway. A shadow falls there, and who should come in–no such thing as coincidence– But my eldest son, my firstborn, who is a man now, middle-aged and taller than I am. He is on his way home from work, and has stopped in for a pint, just like my father used to do, all those years ago, in another world, in another age, O time, O tempora, what places we have been to–and where will you take me yet? (202)QUOTATIONS I LIKED:
Publisher’s Weekly states it better than I.
January 3, 2018
Review soon.
December 4, 2022
An excellent book to read if you are soon to visit Dublin as a tourist, as I did. It is not a guide book, of course, but it will give you a great feel for the way Dublin was until very recently, and the enormous changes of recent vintage. It may even help you understand the Dublin of today and, perhaps, of tomorrow.
I started this book in the final days before my trip to Dublin, and finished it on the flight there. I had visited Dublin briefly 35 years before. The Dublin of Banville’s book has more in common with the Dublin I saw in 1986 than today’s Dublin, but knowing how it was might help you understand today’s Dublin, prosperous, cosmopolitan, polyglot, yet suffering from the many ailments of modern cities (e.g., homelessness).
For example, I had an opportunity while I was there to see a production of a new play at Dublin’s Gate Theater while I was there, and the experience was enriched by knowing a little gossipy background of the theater which, I must admit, didn’t immediately overwhelm with its architectural grandeur. The fact that Orson Welles began his theatrical career at the Gate Theater is mentioned in passing. Much more entertaining is Banville’s brief narration (p. 52) about a pair of eccentrics – Michael Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards – who long made the Gate their theatrical home.
Many existing pubs, restaurants, hotels, gardens, etc., get a shout out in this book. I wasn’t able to find the time to construct a walk based on the places mentioned in this book, as we had a tight schedule of tourist attractions. I wish I had found the time. Perhaps I should have skipped the seemingly obligatory trip to the Disney-fied Guinness Brewery Storehouse. I might have gotten a better idea of what Dublin is really like.
I started this book in the final days before my trip to Dublin, and finished it on the flight there. I had visited Dublin briefly 35 years before. The Dublin of Banville’s book has more in common with the Dublin I saw in 1986 than today’s Dublin, but knowing how it was might help you understand today’s Dublin, prosperous, cosmopolitan, polyglot, yet suffering from the many ailments of modern cities (e.g., homelessness).
For example, I had an opportunity while I was there to see a production of a new play at Dublin’s Gate Theater while I was there, and the experience was enriched by knowing a little gossipy background of the theater which, I must admit, didn’t immediately overwhelm with its architectural grandeur. The fact that Orson Welles began his theatrical career at the Gate Theater is mentioned in passing. Much more entertaining is Banville’s brief narration (p. 52) about a pair of eccentrics – Michael Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards – who long made the Gate their theatrical home.
Many existing pubs, restaurants, hotels, gardens, etc., get a shout out in this book. I wasn’t able to find the time to construct a walk based on the places mentioned in this book, as we had a tight schedule of tourist attractions. I wish I had found the time. Perhaps I should have skipped the seemingly obligatory trip to the Disney-fied Guinness Brewery Storehouse. I might have gotten a better idea of what Dublin is really like.
March 13, 2018
A sentimental journey of sorts or a coming of age story in a city that the author gravitated towards for most of his life? I admit he grabbed me right away as he described his annual birthday trip on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, to Dublin from County Wexford where he lived the rest of the year. His child's perspective is authentic right down to the impatience of waiting for his mother and sisters to finish their Christmas shopping while he couldn't wait to get his ice cream. Unfortunately this is a Dublin that has transitioned from a depressing backwater to a city where the charms of the old have blended with the new. Banville laments this change, relishing the reader with the rough and tumble times of an eccentric city. We are treated to neighborhoods where raconteurs and hustlers ruled the day, real people who charmed and regaled.
This is not the Dublin that I've come to know, though my knowledge is very spotty I recognize many of the spots he visits with his friend, "Cicero," in his ancient roadster. With any good memoir, this is more about Banville than about Dublin, his sensibilities and his biases. As a reviewer in the Irish Times so adeptly puts it, "The impression is not so much of a writer haunted by memory as of one choosing to haunt memories of his own past."
He skill as a master of simile and metaphor is present throughout. One of my favorites is, "the shop assistants in Clery's, a local department store on O'Connell Street, were brisk and competent in a martyred sort of way, like an order of secular nuns." There was often a wee bit of humor like when he recalls a story about one of his friend's encountering one of Belvedere College's retired teacher priests, and in mentioning James Joyce, a former student, the father drolly murmured: "Ah, yes, Joyce. Not one of our successes." There are many gems like this sprinkled throughout. So not so much a travelogue but a tribute to one man's remembrances as the New York Times review is titled, "An Irish Flaneur Greeting the Past on his Present Wanderings." It's well worth the journey.
This is not the Dublin that I've come to know, though my knowledge is very spotty I recognize many of the spots he visits with his friend, "Cicero," in his ancient roadster. With any good memoir, this is more about Banville than about Dublin, his sensibilities and his biases. As a reviewer in the Irish Times so adeptly puts it, "The impression is not so much of a writer haunted by memory as of one choosing to haunt memories of his own past."
He skill as a master of simile and metaphor is present throughout. One of my favorites is, "the shop assistants in Clery's, a local department store on O'Connell Street, were brisk and competent in a martyred sort of way, like an order of secular nuns." There was often a wee bit of humor like when he recalls a story about one of his friend's encountering one of Belvedere College's retired teacher priests, and in mentioning James Joyce, a former student, the father drolly murmured: "Ah, yes, Joyce. Not one of our successes." There are many gems like this sprinkled throughout. So not so much a travelogue but a tribute to one man's remembrances as the New York Times review is titled, "An Irish Flaneur Greeting the Past on his Present Wanderings." It's well worth the journey.
March 5, 2018
'Time Pieces' is like going for a stroll in Dublin with a crusty, erudite and highly entertaining tour guide. Although from Wexford, Banville's love for Dublin shines through. It is full of wonderful snippets of social history pertaining to Dublin of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Unsentimental, he dispels myths but it is still essentially a middle-class reflection on his Dublin.
Banville is as you would expect from such a great writer, is really interesting on memory and truth and how it shapes our reality and art. And of course there's the wonderful prose. Banville is incapable of writing a bum sentence. It is truly a pleasure to read. His brief description of Pierrepoint is majestic and very funny (p163-4) and he deserves a novel to himself (and perhaps he has in 'The Book of Evidence'?). The book it should be noted is a beautiful object. Hardback with gorgeous photographs by Paul Joyce, it is a book for holding and admiring and definitely not for kindle or ebook.
Banville is as you would expect from such a great writer, is really interesting on memory and truth and how it shapes our reality and art. And of course there's the wonderful prose. Banville is incapable of writing a bum sentence. It is truly a pleasure to read. His brief description of Pierrepoint is majestic and very funny (p163-4) and he deserves a novel to himself (and perhaps he has in 'The Book of Evidence'?). The book it should be noted is a beautiful object. Hardback with gorgeous photographs by Paul Joyce, it is a book for holding and admiring and definitely not for kindle or ebook.
June 8, 2018
I hope that, if you were to read this memoir, you would find it in a hard cover version because the book itself, the weight of it, the sturdy pages and wonderful photographs, will remind you why actual books that you can hold in your hands are essential. This memoir, a tour of the author's beloved city of Dublin is slow and written at a walking pace. The author takes the time to trace the history of the buildings and the people who shaped Dublin throughout the centuries. He adds memories of events in his own life that took place in certain locations. His descriptions of his own memories include so much detail and he recalls not only the things that happened but attaches to them vivid sensory recollections--the brilliance of a color or the scent of something in the air.
January 12, 2017
For one who loves Dublin, every page of this book is total joy. For those not so familiar with the city, it will bring delightful insight into what makes the city so special: the rich history, and the stories that lurk everywhere. Beautifully written by the great John Banville, it exudes affection for the city, as well as informing and entertaining. It is a handsome book, too, beautifully illustrated with superb photographs by Paul Joyce.
September 12, 2017
Banville, winner of the Booker Prize, shares his reminiscences of growing up near Dublin, and changes that have come to the area.
October 25, 2025
This was a wonderful memoir about Banville’s love for Dublin. It began when he was a young boy and went with his parents to Dublin every year around his birthday. It developed into something bigger and more important as he became a man.
Banville was born in Wexford where some of my Irish ancestors came from and it makes me feel his family and mine are linked in some tiny way.
Enjoy this beautiful sharing of his life. I read it on audiobook and highly recommend its old style format.
Banville was born in Wexford where some of my Irish ancestors came from and it makes me feel his family and mine are linked in some tiny way.
Enjoy this beautiful sharing of his life. I read it on audiobook and highly recommend its old style format.
April 21, 2019
Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir by John Banville skims through Banville's own history, in bits and pieces, and Dublin's history, also in bits and pieces. This is book that feels dashed off, cribbed in part from more thoroughly researched sources, and yet it is well-written and with passages recounting Banville's life in Dublin it acquires a certain pleasing authority nonetheless.
I came away from the book with the impression that much of Dublin has been mangled, particularly Georgian Dublin, and yet many remaining stolid old houses and monumental public buildings conspire to give certain neighborhoods a bit of "feeling" that is much improved by visits to pubs and theaters and especially parks and "greens" along the way. And there are canals and docks and the varied colors of Dublin's bricks, yellow to blood red, Banville accounts for vividly.
So much for Dublin, then. What about Banville? The best passages cover his thwarted love at age sixteen for a girl named Stephanie who agreed to walk with him and receive a few kisses but was never to be his. No, a tall, thin, pallid lad a few years older really made her smile. It just hurt, and he makes his little romance pretty real.
Among memorable personal observations, we also read that, in fact, he isn't very observant when he's living somewhere, missing the kinds of things Thomas Hardy swore he wouldn't miss. We also read that he wasn't entirely facetious when he wrote that he should have spent more time living and less time writing--a sentiment he expressed as he entered his eighth decade.
Banville is always worth reading even when he doesn't have much to say and wishes he'd found time to say less.
I came away from the book with the impression that much of Dublin has been mangled, particularly Georgian Dublin, and yet many remaining stolid old houses and monumental public buildings conspire to give certain neighborhoods a bit of "feeling" that is much improved by visits to pubs and theaters and especially parks and "greens" along the way. And there are canals and docks and the varied colors of Dublin's bricks, yellow to blood red, Banville accounts for vividly.
So much for Dublin, then. What about Banville? The best passages cover his thwarted love at age sixteen for a girl named Stephanie who agreed to walk with him and receive a few kisses but was never to be his. No, a tall, thin, pallid lad a few years older really made her smile. It just hurt, and he makes his little romance pretty real.
Among memorable personal observations, we also read that, in fact, he isn't very observant when he's living somewhere, missing the kinds of things Thomas Hardy swore he wouldn't miss. We also read that he wasn't entirely facetious when he wrote that he should have spent more time living and less time writing--a sentiment he expressed as he entered his eighth decade.
Banville is always worth reading even when he doesn't have much to say and wishes he'd found time to say less.
March 17, 2018
3.5 stars for me, because I was unable to enjoy reading this hardback book published in small font. I use reading glasses and had to add magnifying glass! A book I had so looked forward to became an irritant - so frustrating. Oh well. I am pretty close in age to Banville.
Lovely pictures included, charming musings, informative details of Dublin architecture, remembrances from youth with sharp honesty and references including Dublin's writers, actors, artists.
Detachment appears to be a thing in his life.
I admire and even love much of Banville's writing.
I liked:
"The process of growing up is, sadly, a process of turning the mysterious into the mundane. We cease to be amazed by things--the sky, the turning of the seasons, love, other people--only because we have grown accustomed to them." "Can the old man be the same being as the child he once was?"
His childhood memories of going from his Wexford home to Dublin for birthday/Christmas shopping were quite brilliant and moving.
His tribute to his aunt he lived with in Dublin who died whilst he was enjoying Mykonos as a young man would.
His appreciation of the history of Dublin as amplified by a friend.
--and much more, but now I must bathe my poor eyes. Alfred A Knopf - I should write a letter to you!
Lovely pictures included, charming musings, informative details of Dublin architecture, remembrances from youth with sharp honesty and references including Dublin's writers, actors, artists.
Detachment appears to be a thing in his life.
I admire and even love much of Banville's writing.
I liked:
"The process of growing up is, sadly, a process of turning the mysterious into the mundane. We cease to be amazed by things--the sky, the turning of the seasons, love, other people--only because we have grown accustomed to them." "Can the old man be the same being as the child he once was?"
His childhood memories of going from his Wexford home to Dublin for birthday/Christmas shopping were quite brilliant and moving.
His tribute to his aunt he lived with in Dublin who died whilst he was enjoying Mykonos as a young man would.
His appreciation of the history of Dublin as amplified by a friend.
--and much more, but now I must bathe my poor eyes. Alfred A Knopf - I should write a letter to you!
June 6, 2018
This is an excellent memoir, with nice photos and anecdotes, and lovely writing. I liked how Banville situated his story within the context of other writers from his part of Ireland, drawing in the current events that helped shape his story without turning his book into just another history of Ireland (not that I dislike histories of Ireland). It is also fun sometimes to see how good novelists tell their own personal stories. I have not read any of his novels yet, but if he writes as well in fiction as in autobiography, I am looking forward to starting in on one of his novels soon (one of the few in our public library; for some reason our city library hardly has any of Banville's books in its collection, aside from this rather new memoir).
May 25, 2018
I read Banville’s novel, “The Sea” and loved it, especially his thoughts on time. The book is billed as a memoir but is more of an odd reflection of his experiences in Dublin, the recollections of the Dublin literary scene, and a travel book about the sights and sounds of historical Dublin. We recently visited Dublin and wished that we had such a guide to help us away from the tourist tracks. I will be sure to reread this before I visit Dublin again. He is a superb writer who makes a travel narrative seems like quite a story. The book is supplemented with lots of nice photos of the places he visits. This was a very enjoyable read.
April 6, 2018
Although I wasn't charmed by Banville's novel, The Sea, I found this memoir very pleasing. His personal experience of Dublin is informed by his love of the city and his knowledge of its past. Excellent photos enhance the reading experience and are essential for those who haven't spent time there. For those who know the city, Banville's memoir will bring back memories. A lovely book.
September 21, 2021
Mais um magnífico livro de Banville. A cultura e o conhecimento deste brilhante escritor associados à sua sensibilidade maravilham o leitor permitindo-o viajar em Dublin, num espaço e num tempo de um modo muito especial.
April 17, 2018
The author (whose novels I have never read) gives a literary and historical walking tour -memoir of Dublin. Since Dublin is porbalby my favorite city in the world, I loved the trip.
October 31, 2020
John Banville is one of my favorite authors -- Ancient Light and The Sea are treasures of language and introspection, focusing on the ordinary and revealing its significance. In Time Pieces : A Dublin Memoir, he gives us a memoir like no other. In the memoir, Banville walks around Dublin, describing sights, musing, and reminiscing about his experiences there.
What I love about this book is the descriptive language:
"One lemony sunlit Sunday in July...."
Cups of tea “the colour of tree trunks sunk for centuries in swamp-water.”
Shop assistants "brisk and competent in a martyred sort of way, like an order of secular nuns.”
"I am old now, or oldening...."
An ice cream parlor “as colourful as California.”
This is a memoir of what he observed, not his life story. It felt like walking an unfamiliar city with a chatty native, and in fact led me to start a list of places to visit in Dublin. In the reading, I learned a bit about Banville's life, but mostly just enjoyed the meandering tour and marveled at the gentle and luminous descriptions. As he writes, "It is out of such moments, commonplace yet plangent, that the past, the longed-for past, assembled itself."
Evocative photographs are sprinkled throughout -- of cobblestones and rock bridges and doorways, and only a few of the author, viewed from the rear as he looks off down the road, perhaps thinking -- as he writes in the closing line of the book -- "O time, O tempora, what places we have been to -- and where will you take me yet?"
A lovely meditative book.
What I love about this book is the descriptive language:
"One lemony sunlit Sunday in July...."
Cups of tea “the colour of tree trunks sunk for centuries in swamp-water.”
Shop assistants "brisk and competent in a martyred sort of way, like an order of secular nuns.”
"I am old now, or oldening...."
An ice cream parlor “as colourful as California.”
This is a memoir of what he observed, not his life story. It felt like walking an unfamiliar city with a chatty native, and in fact led me to start a list of places to visit in Dublin. In the reading, I learned a bit about Banville's life, but mostly just enjoyed the meandering tour and marveled at the gentle and luminous descriptions. As he writes, "It is out of such moments, commonplace yet plangent, that the past, the longed-for past, assembled itself."
Evocative photographs are sprinkled throughout -- of cobblestones and rock bridges and doorways, and only a few of the author, viewed from the rear as he looks off down the road, perhaps thinking -- as he writes in the closing line of the book -- "O time, O tempora, what places we have been to -- and where will you take me yet?"
A lovely meditative book.
June 16, 2024
Tenía que recuperar la fe en la literatura después de leer lo de la monja woke, queer y todas esas patrañas que soportaba la novela que acababa de terminar, y qué mejor forma que hacerlo que con un escritor que tiene la facilidad de embelesar con el continente, con su estilo, el gran John Banville. En este caso se trata de una narración autobiográfica, un “memoir” repleto de recuerdos sinestésicos de lugares dublineses, lleno de erudición literaria y artística, que, en pluma de otros, sería pedante pero que, en la suya, no cabe más que rendirse. Y es que, si sólo hiciera instrucciones para montar muebles, merecería la pena comprarlos sólo por leerlas. Es un mago de la palabra bien puesta. Así que sí, me gustaría conocer más Dublín, visitarla, para disfrutarla más pero, qué duda cabe, que uno se reencuentra con la literatura cuando lee a Banville, como cuando despierta de una pesadilla y ve que todo va bien.
Read
December 6, 2019I am abandoning ship about 1/4 of the way in. Banville is a beautiful writer, but I am far, far less interested in the Dublin of yore, and his youth in general, than he is. I understand he loves his city, I love mine like a person, when I lived elsewhere I pined for its filthy, loud, smelly, sticky, wonderful embrace. I want to love this book, but I am just bored to tears
Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews