"Soft rain was falling on the glass above our heads. I'm fond of that kind of rain. I pity it, in my sentimental way; it seems to be trying so hard to say something and always just failing."
John Banville's latest leaves a soft taste of sadness in your mouth. The lump is lost without a trace before you can feel it in all its shapes and colours. This self-indulgent and yet self-deprecating confessional account combines kleptomania and art with love, both in stealing and in being stolen.
The tale of lost love and lost self responds to Banville's characteristic dwellings on mourning, ghosts, objects, memory and infinite worlds. It's perhaps his most grumpy and "sentimental" novel! If one thing it is, as always with Banville, it's a great read. Not many novelists today write from this poetic and synesthetic intensity of language. Banville's "painster" Oliver Orme is delectable for that, if not anything else.
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