Nightspawn

by John Banville

‘They took everything from me. Everything.’ So says the central character of Nightspawn, John Banville’s elusive, first novel, in which the author rehearses now familiar attributes: his humour, ironies, and brilliant knowing. In the arid setting of the Aegean, Ben White indulges in an obsessive quest to assemble his ‘story’ and to untangle his relationships with a cast of improbable figures. Banville’s subversive, Beckettian fiction embraces themes of freedom and betrayal, and toys with an implausible plot, the stuff of an ordinary ‘thriller’ shadowed by political intrigue. In this elaborate artifact, Banville’s characters ‘sometimes lose the meaning of things, and everything is just . . . funny’. There begins their search for ‘the magic to combat any force’.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Irish Literature, Literature, 20th Century

200 pages, ebook

First published November 11, 1971

About the author

William 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.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The language of the novel is fancifully baroque of the kind that never fails to charm me.
The story begins with the protagonist’s self-portrait painted in the exterior of an island…

I am a sick man, I am a spiteful man. I think my life is diseased. Only a flood of spleen now could cauterize my wounds. This is it. Hear the slap and slither of the black tide rising. The year has blundered through another cycle, and another summer has arrived, bringing the dogrose to the hedge, the clematis swooning to the door. The beasts are happily ravening in the sweltering fields of June. How should I begin? Should I say that the end is inherent in every beginning?

What has really happened and what has been just a figment of the imagination? Nightspawn is as stylish and misty as William Turner’s paintings…

What did I say? It was a lie. I was not happy. There was no peace. Lust was the least of my terrors. The land was waste, nothing flourished. Time trammelled me in all my days, the light blinded me, broke my sight, and I saw nothing, nothing.

Everything is uncertain and blurry… Everything is delirious and ridiculous… Love story turns into an amorous farce and revolutionary struggle becomes a farcical burlesque…

You have touched the mystery of things. In time that moment in that strange town becomes itself a memory, and merges with the one which eluded you. Life goes on. Spring sunshine wrings your heart, spring rain. Love and hate eventually become one. I am talking about the past, about remembrance. You find no answers, only questions. It is enough, almost enough.

Conspirators and schemers of this world – they are spawn of the night.

[Kathy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The masterful writer John Banville had to start somewhere, and this is his first book. I even had a librarian running around the stacks with me to locate this hidden gem as it was not filed as represented in the data record. Now I regret carrying it home, though Banville is truly one of my favorite authors.
Published 1971 back when a hardback book cost $5.95.
It is described as representing political intrigue on a Greek island, but it reads like someone waking from a drugged sleep and attempting to form sentences and communicate. I am laughing at some of the sentences and phrasing, but it was not written as a comedy. Should I share some of the sentences randomly, or would it be unkind. A poltergeist just stopped my writing of this, but did not succeed in erasing it. Just for that I will share some of the crazy stuff chosen at random.

"Something touched my arm. It was a tear, with a perfect, tiny miniature of the lamp on the dressing table trapped inside it. ..I moved my arm so that those stars could freely fall, but they were extinguished so brutally by the sheets, and turned into grey smudges, that I put back my hand and caught a whole sky falling." and another -
"I took the little silver box from my pocket, and clicked it open. I lifted the...wait, this is too mundane. The occasion deserves something. How about a roll on the drums, a blast of sennets and tuckets, and a few bars from the massed choir? O well. I lifted the piece of paper out of the box, marvelling yet again that such a small thing could cause so much agony and death, and gave it to him. It was so easy, I almost fainted."

Library Loan

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am left stunned. I think have been bludgeoned by beauty. It could be said that this early Banville lacks the finesse of his later work, I guess, but that is hardly the point. The books runs amok from the beginning and I totally enjoyed taking the ride!

[Read By RodKelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much an early work, but nonetheless an incredibly strong debut novel. Banville himself disowned this, which is crazy, because there's so much beauty in it. But I guess that means I can look forward to some amazing writing as I progress through this author project.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

easy four stars for the beautiful prose... seeds of later wonders from Banville abound... the tale itself was not so wondrous... i had a hard time following what was happening, or if in fact anything was happening in reality... still, the turns of phrase and original ways Banville handles themes like eroticism, love, friendship, and beauty are spectacularly elucidated... not too many wordsmiths like Banville, sadly...

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

The avid readers of Banville are being (understandably) kind. This is an early book in every respect, and while there are signs of the writer that Banville will become, Nightspawn is only worth the time of his already committed fans. His style is still very raw. Sentence-by-sentence he reaches for just the right word but too often misses the mark. He strives for that particular detail to make an entire scene suddenly come together in the reader's mind--the thing he will do so brilliantly later on--but he falls short, offering something odd but also uninteresting.

Inanimate objects are given volition in clumsy fashion. Characters act nonsensically, their discussions little more than pieces of dialogue thrown together on the page. There are hints of the future--his delightful command of language and the allure of his voice--but Nightspawn is too much warmed-over Beckett and not enough Banville.

First-time readers of Banville should not start here. Better to read a later work (Book of Evidence is the usual recommendation), and then come back here only if your passion for his work warrants it.

A second star for this one because--as another reviewer here noted--even a great writer must start somewhere.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nightspawn is one of John Banville's earliest works, published nearly 50 years ago. Ostensibly the story of a expatriate writer caught up in political and revolutionary happenings on a Greek island, this book is hardly about that at all. Chronology, perspective, and narrative voice are all in flux. Some of Banville's later preoccupations are in evidence, and it is interesting to see which elements develop to an almost-overwhelming degree (prose, the experience of the passage of time), and which are given less emphasis.

Recommended.

[Stef · Rating 3 out of 5]

Only Because It's Banville

There's a well-known adage among writers: 'show, don't tell.' It seemed, at times, that sixty percent of 'Nightspawn's' words were adjectives, resulting in far too much 'showing', and way too little 'telling'. I finished reading 'Nightspawn', and gave it three stars, only because it's Banville. Disappointing.

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject matter (weird political thriller?) and the story plot (is there any?) are of no import. The vivid imagery constructed by splendid prose, littered with emotions you can touch, that alone is worth the ride.

[Keelanash · Rating 3 out of 5]

eloquence doesn't hide misogyny

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Banville's first novel, I was about half-way through before I began to hear that "voice" so characteristic of his work. It was worth the wait, if only from an academic standpoint. I've now completed Banville's entire fiction opus, including the limited edition 1996 work for children, The Ark, which I read in Dublin in September at the National Library of Ireland.

[Jennifer P]

I didn't understand most of it, but the writing was lovely. I believe that the writing style was a bit too verbose with too many things left undescribed or open ended and double meanings left and right.

[James M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This humorous Irish fantasy political thriller delivers a twist from the norm.

[Estelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unusual thriller.

[mjleandro · Rating 2 out of 5]

the war in Greece .
Not into the book.
stopped reading.