Critical Essay | Critical Review by Derek Stanford

SOURCE: A review of The Newton Letter, in Books and Bookmen, No. 328, January, 1983, p. 32.

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 feeling of experience steeped in all its local habitation"]

C. P. Snow once opined that "James Joyce led novels up a blind alley" (and Finnegan's Wake is clearly sign-posted "No thoroughfare for most fiction readers"). Mr Banville's surface technique presents no difficulties and few idiosyncrasies whilst nevertheless leaving us with a feeling of experience steeped in all its local habitation (a lodge cottage and half ruined 'great house' in the deep country of the south of Ireland). By frequently using short chapters or sections, he guards against our ever getting satiated with the atmosphere each so differingly conveys. That was a ploy the de Goncourt brothers first...
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