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A review by mark_lm
The Book of Evidence by John Banville
3.0
Banville is a well-known prize-winning Irish novelist and The Book of Evidence is delightfully well-written, but it comes across as a sort of exercise –the protagonist is a self-involved arrogant zip who kills a woman for the same reason that Meursault did. The difference is that Meursault was a reliable witness and Freddie Montgomery is not – ultimately we are bored. Banville's sentences are beautiful, though.
As an aside...there are two or three sentences that seem out of place in the first half of the book. They seem analogous to a trick used in the cinema where we are shown a few frames of something that hasn't happened yet. Two of the sentences mention blood on a woman's shoes. Unfortunately I can't figure out to what, exactly, they refer. Nobody ever has bloody shoes.
As an aside...there are two or three sentences that seem out of place in the first half of the book. They seem analogous to a trick used in the cinema where we are shown a few frames of something that hasn't happened yet. Two of the sentences mention blood on a woman's shoes. Unfortunately I can't figure out to what, exactly, they refer. Nobody ever has bloody shoes.