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More reviews by Peter Gordon
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Christine Falls by Benjamin Black
That BENJAMIN BLACK is really the Man Booker Prize-winning John Banville must be one of the worst-kept secrets in publishing, if, indeed, it was ever meant to be a secret at all. Given that the publishers themselves have announced the man behind the name, it would appear that this particular nom-de-plume is primarily an exercise in rebranding.
And while there may be a difference between a mystery and a novel which contains a mystery, or a difference between a crime novel and a novel about a crime, Banville has anyway been in this territory before with, at least, The Book of Evidence. And The Sea contains a mystery, unrevealed until right at the end.
All of which seems something of a distraction, because CHRISTINE FALLS is a pretty good book, Banville or not. OK, maybe the pages of CHRISTINE FALLS will turn faster for some readers than they do with Banville's Man Booker Prize-winning The Sea - but there are more pages, so it sort of balances out.
Banville's mystery-solver is a pathologist by the name of Quirke; CHRISTINE FALLS is set in the dark and rough-and-tumble Dublin of the 1950s. Quirke's family (by adoption and marriage) is involved in a murky business involving adoption of Irish babies into Boston families. There's a death of course, some bogus paperwork and Quirke finds himself inexorably involved in the darker side of his family's past and present.
Atmosphere - and an almost unrelenting dark atmosphere it is, too - is at least as important as plot here. But plot there is: love requited and unrequited, lost children, domineering parents, and a clutch of mysteries.
One gets the impression that Banville enjoyed writing CHRISTINE FALLS. Well, why not? He deserves it. If you liked The Sea, you'll recognize in CHRISTINE FALLS the same master of language; if you didn't like The Sea, you may find in Black a more accessible Banville.
Peter Gordon
14/02/2007
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Peter Gordon is editor of The Asian Review of Books. |
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