Reading this, I found myself quite aware of how out-of-practice I am when it comes to quality reading and comprehending. Banville often left me in his dust with the need to backtrack and make sense of what he was saying, and it made me wish I had put this off a little bit as I steadily exercise the ol' brain back up to game shape. My reading has slowed down over the years, especially from the years of reading for study, and I felt kind of exposed here. Having said that, the book is wonderfully written, constantly poetic, frequently funny, even more frequently sad, and most of all impressive in capturing the way our memories bounce from topic to topic, how things can solidify in our memories, how "Memory dislikes motion, preferring to hold things still" like a preserved "tableau". Those well-articulated descriptions of the narrator's memory resonated with me.
Reviewed on Thursday, November 30th, 2023, 9:50am.
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