Summary
Books: THE SEA BY JOHN BANVILLE Picador, 264pp, GBP 16.99
JOHN BANVILLE IS A NOV-elist always praised for the quality of his prose. It gives, Martin Amis is quoted as saying, "continuous sensual delight". (I think he should have said "sensuous", not "sensual", but let that pass.) The praise is justified. Banville writes beautifully in a manner far removed from today's fashionable demotic. He is both vivid and elaborate; there is something of the 1890s about his jewelled sentences. There are descriptive passages in all his novels that are likely to find their way into anthologies of English prose. His work is, as Maugham's Roy Kear says of the novelist Edward Driffield, in Cakes and Ale, "instinct with beauty".See the full content of this document
Extract
Reviews: Point of No Return
This is all very fine, but it has its drawbacks. There are times when Banville's prose seems too carefully wrought for a novelist. It is i...
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