It’s been a long time since I have read anything by John Banville. I always forget how much I enjoy his writing until I pick up one of his books again.

The Blue Guitar is about an Irish artist by the name of Oliver Orme who conducts an affair with his best friend’s wife, Polly.

It’s a languid, richly immersive story that features all of Banville’s typical literary flourishes — long, flowery sentences, vivid detail and an impressive vocabulary — and his usual trademarks — men with secrets, an obsession with art and crimes of the heart.

The story is narrated by Oliver in a pompous, self-obsessed voice (Banville does these kinds of characters so well) after the affair is over. He’s nursing his wounds and looking back on how the affair started and then how it ended. His detail is forensic.

But for all Oliver’s narcissism, there is a vein of stark honesty running throughout his tale: he really wants to confess all (or maybe he just wants to brag?). He describes himself as old — “pushing fifty and feel a hundred, big with years” — and fat, a man with a shameful secret “of which, however, I am not as ashamed as I should be”. That secret is his penchant for petty thievery.

He even sees the affair as a form of thievery.

Similarly, Oliver views much of his world through the prism of an art lense, comparing events and scenes with famous paintings. In Edouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, for instance, he sees his wife, Gloria, as the woman “in the buff” and Polly “off in the background bathing her feet”.

Later, he describes Polly having “the look of a ravaged version of the flower-strewing Flora to the left of the central figure” in Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera.

Yet for all his high-brow observations and cultured view of the world, Oliver isn’t without a sense of humour. It’s understated, but I often laughed when I came across some of his funny remarks and witty one-liners.

As ever, reading anything by Banville is to have your own vocabulary expanded exponentially (which is why it’s always good to read him on an electronic device with a built-in dictionary). Here’s just a handful of the words I had to look up: haruspicating, virescence, turpitude, immanence, anaglypta, micturating, winceyette, casuistry, sibylline, phthisic, hobbledehoy, homunculus and autochthons.

But he’s excellent at describing people — he loves to tell us what they’re wearing — including how they move, what their expressions reveal and so on. This is his pen portrait of Polly’s father:

"He wore a three-piece suit of greenish tweed, and a venerable pair of highly polished brown brogues. Though his complexion was in general colourless, there was a ragged pink patch, finely veined, in the hollow of each cheek. He was a little deaf, and when addressed would draw himself quickly forwards, his head tilted to one side and his eyes fixed on the speaker’s lips with bird-like alertness."

I also like the way he uses metaphors and similes, with nary a cliché in site:

"It strikes me that what I have always done was to let my eye play over the world like weather, thinking I was making it mine, more, making it me, while in truth I had no more effect than sunlight or rain, the shadow of a cloud."

The story itself is a thin one — it’s just a self-obsessed man falling in love with someone he shouldn’t, after all — but no one could tell it in the same richly evocative way as Banville and through the eyes of a character only he could create.

My full review is online at: https://readingmattersblog.com/2020/09/06/the-blue-guitar-by-john-banville/

I wanted to love this book, as I really admire and enjoy Banville's writing. Unfortunately, while the prose is as thoughtful and compelling as ever, the almost non-existent plot and odd narrator meant I struggled to finish The Blue Guitar.

Banville's novel features a protagonist who should be interesting - artist/thief, and includes lots of themes - such as infidelity and the ethics of thievery, which should make for an interesting read. However, these distinct parts never came together to make an interesting read for me, and it felt more like an academic/experimental exercise than a novel.

Apologies as I didn't get around to reading this title and therefore not able to review it. If I do read it in the future I will come back and edit my review and also post to various websites and platforms. However, I would like to thank you for granting me access to read and review this title.