β Scribed by Benjamin Black
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Starred Review. Black's engrossing third crime thriller set in 1950s Dublin (after The Silver Swan) finds pathologist Garret Quirke fresh from a stint in alcohol rehab. Quirke reluctantly agrees to help his daughter, Phoebe Griffin, with whom he has a tenuous relationship, find her missing best friend, April Latimer, a junior doctor at a local hospital. Quirke soon finds that members of the powerful Latimer family have all but disowned April, and yet he's sure they know more than they're letting on. Phoebe does her own sleuthing among the group of friends she shared with April, including a stage actress, a handsome Nigerian surgical student, and a reporter. Black (the pen name of Booker Prizeβwinner John Banville) is equally concerned with exploring the idea of family and loyalty as with spinning a suspenseful whodunit, and his depiction of a fragile father-daughter relationship is as powerful as the unsettling truth behind April's disappearance. Author tour. (Apr.)
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If Elegy for April isn't the author's best book to date, it certainly boasts the elements for which he is known: a brooding, dark main character; a literary elegance; and, most of all, an evocation of a gloomy Dublin in which "class and religious divisions and [the city's] urgent, albeit repressed, sexual atmospheres helps his characters spring from the page" (Los Angeles Times). The only major point of contention was the plot, which a couple of critics felt was too contrived and slow. ("Mystery plotting is hardly [Banville's] primary concern," noted the New York Times.) But if readers won't lie awake turning the pages, they will cherish Banville's style. "When English prose looks like it's dying, the critic Cyril Connolly once said, an Irishman comes along with something to revive it and demolish the clichΓ©s" (Los Angeles Times).
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Quirkeβthe hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologistβis back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctorApril Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal soci
**Quirke--the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist--is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor** April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarc
SUMMARY: Quirkethe hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologistis back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctorApril Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriar
SUMMARY: Quirkeβthe hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologistβis back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctorApril Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriar
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