Bullish for Banville

I offer my heartfelt congratulations to John Banville, the recipient of this year’s Booker Prize for his novel The Sea. Banville is apparently considered a somewhat controversial choice, as not everyone loves his new novel, and some see it a victory of style over substance. I say, whatever. I’ve suffered through several Booker Prize-winning novels that left me entirely cold, and I’m delighted that one of my favorite writers has taken the prize. In addition to being a novelist, Banville is also a critic (literary editor of the Irish Times), and he’s certainly earned some enemies with his take-no-prisoners style, including a devastating review of Ian McEwen’s generally lauded latest novel Saturday, which Banville called a “dismayingly bad book.” Ouch. But, hey, that’s what critics do. The Sea was called “a crashing disappointment” by David Grylls in the Sunday Times of London and “a chilly, desiccated and pompously written book” by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times. Double ouch. I have not yet read The Sea, but I am anxiously awaiting the end of my self-imposed moratorium on book-buying (no more purchases until I make a dent in my to-read pile) so I can dig into it. If my praise has at all piqued your curiosity, I urge you to check out some of his earlier works, including The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, and The Newton Letter. (I should add that a bit of my partiality toward Banville may come from the fact that he hails from Wexford, Ireland, the place where much of my family hails from and still lives, and where I spent many happy summers in my childhood. Nothing wrong with rooting for the hometown boy, is there?)