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John Banville.
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John Banville is the most interesting and resourceful Irish novelist of his generation. A writer who has let his published work do most of his talking for him, he has done more than most of his contem...
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It would be unfair to label John Banville a "writer's writer," because it would suggest he is not a writer easily accessible to the majority of readers. Yet, there is no doubt that Banville's work has...
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In the following essay, Deane, a well-known poet, discusses Banville's awareness that the world he creates in his books is fictive.
John Banville has so far produced three books: Long Lankin, N...
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In the following review, Eder complains of the flat characterization in Banville's Ghosts.
Call me Ishmael.
No.
It's not that Melville needs us to say "yes" right at the st...
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In the following interview, Banville talks about his career and his approach to literature.
John Banville's narrators despair over the intractable chaos of life. They worry that chance and inco...
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In the following review, Norfolk calls Banville's Ghosts "a strange and austere book."
[In John Banville's Ghosts, a] drunken captain runs his boat aground, stranding seven...
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In the following review, MacCann discusses Banville's Athena and concludes that "At the heart of his writing appears to be a fear of uglification by the ordinary."
Joyce described...
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In the following review, Craig discusses the dream-like quality of Banville's Athena.
I've always likened writing a novel to a very powerful dream that you know is going to haunt you fo...
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In the following review, Gorra describes the mood of Banville's Athena and states that, "Plot counts for nothing here, or seems not to, and mood becomes all—a mood sustained by a ...
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In the following review, Glover asserts that Banville's Athena has a much more conventional plot than his earlier novels.
John Banville is an Irish author singularly unafraid of the stigma of h...
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In the following review. Tracy praises Banville's adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist's The Broken Jug as "funnier and grimmer" than the original.
Der Zerbrochene Krug/The Br...
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In the following review, Stanford states, "Mr Banville's surface technique [in The Newton Letter presents no difficulties and few idiosyncrasies whilst nevertheless leaving us with a fee...
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In the following essay, Jackson traces one of Banville's major themes: "the situation of living everyday life in the context of postmodern understandings of knowledge and truth."
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In the following excerpt, Driver complains that Banville's Mefisto "is massively overwritten with a distinctly Irish lyrical imperative and studious lexicality."
… Mefisto ...
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In the following essay, McMinn analyzes the way Banville portrays Ireland and its people in his fiction.
To examine the imaginative role which Ireland plays in the novels of John Banville might seem l...
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In the following essay, McIlroy examines the connection between scientific and literary pursuits in Banville's The Newton Letter, and asserts that it "is an ingenious exploration of how ...
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In the following review, Whiteside praises Banville's Ghosts, but calls it a difficult book.
It's fair to say that anyone approaching this dense, elusive, richly allusive novel without p...
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In the following review, Cunningham discusses the interrogative nature of Banville's Ghosts and asserts that, "It's at the centre of his power that his mood, his people's m...
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John Banville
Critical Essay by Seamus Deane
