John Banville - The Infinities

badbuzz

Just finished The Infinities and doing a review of it for the local paper, not that anybody's going to read it or anything.

I enjoyed it to a certain extent, but Banville's prose still frustrates me - his emphasis on the language and overall poetry of the writing takes precedence over the plot, it often seems. But there is a message, at least I thought there was.
It centres so much around the death of the head of the household, but Banville is trying to find the life within that death - he shows the living part of dying, the dying man's thoughts etc...


Anybody read it?

pog it

I am someone who really gets a kick out of Banville's writing, obviously like most for his use of language.

I loved Kepler and it will always be one of my favourite books ever but sadly The Infinities was in a way just not even penetrable even though I had such a will to read it. He literally lost the plot on this book from a reader's perspective. It was pretentious and who knows but that this was always going to happen with his follow up book after writing The Sea.

He did say that a tree is the most erotic thing on earth.. and it's only now that I can understand this. He does ask a lot- and he asked too much in The Infinities.