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Ancient Light (2012)

by John Banville(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

044901343X (ISBN13: 9780449013434)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Random House Audio

review 1: This is another incredible work of art by the Irish author John Banville. As in some of his other novels, the subject is memory and loss and how we make sense of our world. The novel consists of two interweaving stories, but in some ways the story line is almost immaterial. Yes, I cared about the main character, an aging actor who has lost his only daughter under mysterious circumstances, and who spends much of the book recalling his first love affair. Written in clear, smooth, poetic prose, filled with countless "exact and impossible" details, the book held me captivated. The descriptions are so beautiful that I wanted to read and reread each line. "One watercolour April day of gusts and sudden rain and vast, rinsed skies." "How tiny she looked, tiny and hol... morelowed out, propped there weightless-seeming as a fledgling fallen from the nest...." The narrator's endless introspection is fascinating as are his musings on the mysteries of memory. "Curious, these holes one enounters when one presses over-insistently upon the moth-eaten fabric of the past." Nothing is certain, memories just indeterminate wisps.One thing I love about Banville is his use of unusual words: Lubricious. Horrent. Mephitic. Aurate. Hoydens. Teporine. Oneirically.... Each word seems just perfect for the line and while I meant to look them up, I couldn't bear to stop reading long enough to find a dictionary. This is an amazing book for those who love words and contemplation. Not for plot-seekers.
review 2: Another masterful novel by Banville in which he looks at the working (or not) of memory. A bit slow but so very rich in description and language, which is breathtaking. Some may find the plot lacking in pace, and it may well be, but in the savouring of every exquisitely crafted sentence, this, to me, is inconsequential. The tale and its telling, though, is never lacking, and will stay with you long after you put this book down. I actually enjoyed it more than The Sea, for which he won the Booker Prize in 2005. less

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