The Silver Swan: A Novel

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Customer Reviews:

Pleasure is in the writing, not the whodunnit aspect [Posted on 2008-06-27]
Banville is a wonderful writer (I enjoyed THE SEA), but he is not, as others have noted, a good mystery plotter. The pleasures of this text lie in his evocation of 50s Dublin and his characterizations. Anyone who reads mysteries will guess the murderer early in the plot, which relies too much on coincidence, irrational behavior, and implausibility.

Depressing, Moody and Good [Posted on 2008-08-20]
The Silver Swan takes place in the mid-fifties with character Quirke who is a pathologist. A woman named Deirdre Hunt's body is found drowned in the Dublin Bay and at first they think it was a suicide. The husband of Deirdre is overally sensitive of them performing an autopsy on her body not being able to face the fact of her body being cut open. Quirke says okay, but does the autopsy only to discover it wasn't a suicide at all, but more of a murder due to a puncture wound on one of her arms.

The story then jumps into Deirdre's past introducing Mr. Plunkett (co-worker from a local pharmacy), Dr. Kreutz (an Austrian) and Leslie White (friend of the doctor and business partner of Deirdre). Deirdre and Leslie had a beauty parlor named The Silver Swan and for business purposes only Laura called herself Laura Swan'

The book also reveals that White had many scams in the past with failing business ventures. So this leaves Quirke curious and determined to pursue the Hunt case and answer all the questions surrounding the murder. The Silver Swan is a depressing and shady novel. Most of the characters are unhappy and miserable with their own lives. In the end the murder is solved which is a good thing but the book still lacks in the happy moment department. But don't get me wrong I don't think a book has to be all cheerful and positive to be a great novel, you just have to be in the right mood for it.

"The world has fallen asunder": a city of paralysis [Posted on 2008-09-05]
Many readers appear to be disappointed by this follow-up, but I liked it much better. The only drawback here is the reliance on coincidence, but this in Dublin where everyone knows everyone's business may be less of a fault than I found the set-up for Quirke's début. Here's why.

I reviewed recently the first installment of John Banville's sideline from his more philosophical novels. Quirke returns as an driven, yet awkward, amateur investigator into another series of murders in middle-class 1950s Dublin. The pace here quickens from "Christine Falls," which I found murky and plodding. The characters here gain energy, and their depth expands and sinks into the pages more satisfactorily, and disturbingly. Mal and Rose and of course Phoebe all join Quirke, along with closer attention to Inspector Hackett. Sinclair, Q's assistant coroner, lurks intriguingly in the background, but I'd like to learn more about him.

Similar to Jack Taylor's battle with the bottle in Ken Bruen's "Galway noir" series of mysteries, Quirke finds himself starting this narrative sober and haunted. The raffish Leslie, the creepy Hakkim Kreutz (I sense a Nazi "crooked cross" buried in this name), the elusive Kate, and thuggish Billy Hunt all surround the doomed Silver Swan, Deirdre-Laura, in her attempts to enter a more exotic and daring realm of the body and imagination than that afforded her by her mundane Irish prospects. The author moves from one character to another, and this kaleidoscopic presentation allows greater detail and variety than the monochromatic and to me more monotonous prequel.

As with my reviews of most of Banville's fiction, I always highlight a chosen passage. Banville here reaches his mark more readily as Black, closer to his erudite and ambitious character studies under his given name. Here's two excerpts. Rose comes on to Quirke, and he hesitates as his daughter watches. "Rose took a cigarette, and he held the lighter for her and she leaned forward, touching her fingertips to the back of his hand. When she lifted the cigarette from her lips it was stained with lipstick. He thought how often this little scene had been repeated: the leaning forward, the quick, wry, upwards glance, the touch of her fingers on his skin, the white paper suddenly, vividly stained. She had asked him to love her, to stay with her." (141) Quirke elsewhere has noted that the touch of man's fingers to another man's can happen also sharing a light; one of the only permissible times.

Quirke later comes upon a crime scene. The plot has been cleverly choreographed, and the payoff's better than in "Christine Falls." The author plays fair with you, hinting at all that transpires, but unless you're smarter than Quirke or most any mystery writer, chances are you will be entertained by how rapidly Banville-Black has shuffled the pea under the shell before your eyes. The climactic scenes crackle with intensity and they'd make a great film, so visually are they described.

"Over every scene of violent death Quirke had attended in the course of his career there had hung a particular kind of silence, the kind that falls after the last echoes of a great outcry had faded. There was shock in it, of course, and awe and outrage, the sense of many hands lifted quickly to many mouths, but something else as well, a kind of gleefulness, a kind of startled, happy, unable-to-believe-its-luckness, Things, Quirke reflected, even inanimate things, it seemed, love a killing." (248-49)

As Deirdre-Laura puts it on her death-day, "The world has fallen asunder." The author takes you into her mind, drugged and erotic, and as with other characters, you pass from Dublin's stilted shabby-chic facades into fevered lust, hatred, or inarticulate longing. The author here excels at pitting the real-life dullness of his dramatic personae against their dreams of escape, as if Joyce's "Dubliners" still were paralyzed in post-war Ireland, still struggling to break free of the city.

But, they cannot. Irish complacency shrouds this novel. As American Rose critiques: "The way you go about in a cowed silence, not protesting, not complaining, not demanding that things should change or be fixed or made new." (256) Quirke, in a magnificent long single paragraph of an epilogue, achieves the level of Banville's best creations, and I look forward to another encounter with him and his ineradicable meddling.

Second noir tale establishes Dublin protagonist [Posted on 2008-09-06]
A sequel to Black's first Quirke novel, this second Dublin 1950s noir tale takes place two years later. And if you start with this one, a certain amount of confusion is inevitable. The repercussions from "Christine Falls" still echo through the lives of Quirke and his family, their relations (and circumstances, for some) forever changed. This is more of a continuing series than most and readers should begin with "Christine Falls."

That said, Quirke has given up alcohol. It's been six months and his thirst still rages, becoming almost crippling at times. Sobriety does not seem to have helped his judgment any though.

An old school acquaintance, Billy Hunt, comes to him, asking Quirke to forego an autopsy on his young wife. She has drowned herself and he can't bear the thought of her being cut open. Though Quirke doesn't for a second believe Billy killed her, he discovers she was indeed murdered - drugged, not drowned - but does not report his findings to the inquest.

He does, however, continue investigating. And he tells his friend (not that they socialize) Inspector Hackett. Point of view switches between several of the characters, allowing the dead woman to relate her own increasingly lurid (and somewhat farfetched) story and exploring several other dangerous sexual relationships.

Sex, in its darkest and most repressed form, is at the heart of this tale of blackmail, degradation and jealousy. Upon reflection, some elements of the plot seem strained, but Black weaves a spell that brings grim Catholic Dublin and its social strata to life and most readers will be too absorbed to notice. Quirke now feels fully established in the pantheon of great, flawed crime-series protagonists.

Dark and Brooding with a Soul that is All too Real [Posted on 2008-09-26]
Dublin Pathologist Garret Quirke is back in a book that is even darker than Christine Falls as if that could be possible. Quirke is no longer drinking, but he's still as moody, broody and, well, as quirky as ever and we now know his niece is really his daughter, if you haven't read Christine Falls, please stop right here, go out and get it, you won't be disappointed as it's a thoroughly enjoyable read. You can read this book as a stand alone if you want and enough is explained so you won't feel like you're missing too much, but you will be.

It's two years since Quirke investigated the death of Christine Falls when he has Deirdre Hunt on the slab. She washed up, an apparent suicide, by Dalkey Island, by Dublin Harbor. Quirke knew her husband Billy in school and when Billy asks him not to do an autopsy, because he didn't want his wife cut up, also he didn't want her death ruled a suicide, because he didn't want her denied Catholic rites, remember it's Ireland in the 50's. Quirke agrees, but does the autopsy anyway.

And, of course, Quirke finds evidence of murder, this is a mystery after all. But unlike some of the other mysteries you'll find on the shelf, Black does it differently, his characters are not only all too real, but they're steeped in a mire of moods and darkness, but there's a heart in them too. The live and breath as real people. Somehow John Banville has managed to channel both Earnest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler at the same time when he writes as Benjamin Black, let them take control of his fingers and the result isn't just art, but a dark and brooding affair with a soul that is all too real.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

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