If recent reviews of Christine Falls are anything to go by, John Banville's (writing under the name Benjamin Black) recent foray into the mystery/crime genre has been a success. My only experience with Banville's work is his Booker Prize winner, The Sea. His prose is elegant, sophisticated and carefully crafted. I always find the distinction between "fiction" and "literature" a difficult one, but if I had to choose, Banville's work easily falls into the "literature" category. If anyone found his work difficult or disconcerting (I had a few of those moments while reading The Sea), however, they'll find that happily, Benjamin Black writes with "no fancy flourishes and a modest vocabulary." This is not to say his writing is not elegant, though; it is simply a bit more accessible.
Christine Falls is not your usual police procedural or detective story. Set in Dublin (and later Boston) of the 50s, it has a decidedly noir-ish feel to it. Dark, dank, foggy--the story is atmospheric. I'm not sure how much of the plot to reveal to you. There have already been so many good reviews and plot summaries written, I'll just give you the bare bones. The story opens with a young nurse leaving Dublin for Boston. She takes with her a newborn baby--not her own. At the center of the story is Quirke, a pathologist. He's just who you would expect in a story like this--alone, bitter, hard-drinking, and a bit of a cynic. He essentially stumbles into the mystery of what happened to Christine Falls. Recently deceased she lies waiting for her autopsy, but before Quirke can attend to it, he discovers a colleague altering her file. Not satisfied to leave things alone, he is compelled to find out what happened to her no matter what the costs.
The story is complex and multilayered. There are different threads of the plot running back and forth. Sometimes you can follow a thread easily, and other times it seems tangled up someplace you don't expect it, and you have to work your way through the knot. Everything leads back to Christine Falls, and many hands have had a role in her death. Not only are members of Quirke's own family possibly involved, but the Catholic Church as well--both in Dublin and Boston. One reviewer likened this story to an onion with many layers being peeled back, and at its core it was rotten. That is an excellent description of this novel. One dead woman. One baby. So many secrets. Banville/Black deftly reveal all. I had read enough beforehand to think I would not be surprised by the story, but Banville still managed to throw in a few twists that I didn't expect. Although the ending was satisfying, there are enough loose ends to leave me wanting to know more about Quirke. I'm curious to see where Benjamin Black goes from here, and I'll likely follow along.
If you are wondering what the impetus was for Banville to write a crime novel, in an essay he writes:
"What we get from crime novels is a sense of completion. Life is a mess--we do not remember being born, and death, as Ludwig Wittgenstein wisely said, is not an experience of life, so all we have is this chaotic middle bit, bristling with loose ends, in which nothing is ever properly finished or done with. It could be said, of course, that all novels of whatever genre offer a beginning, a middle, and an end--even Finnegan's Wake has a shape--but crime stories do it better. No matter how unlikely the cast of suspects, or how baffling the strew of clues, we know with rare certainty that when the murderer is unmasked, as he or more or more rarely she inevitably must be, everything will click into place, like a jigsaw puzzle instantly assembling itself before our eyes."
Christine Falls is Banville's response to George Simenon's more hard boiled novels (known as romans durs). I will have to check out Simenon now, to see where Banville got his inspiration. You can read the whole essay here.