The Sea
I've now read each of these novels twice. They are deservedly praised. Of the two, I think The Untouchable is Banville's masterpiece: a virtuosic, unsettling though often humorous fictionalization of the life of Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge Five. The first-person narrator and protagonist, Victor Maskell (Blunt), has led a double life along many dimensions– as a spy for the Soviets and closeted gay man– and his deceptions definitely extend to himself. It is also a twisted story of unrequited love. Especially, it is a glorious exercise in style– I found myself wanting to read many of the sentences over again, wondering just how Banville pulls it off, page after poetic page.
The Sea, another novel written as a first-person reminiscence, is shorter; exceptionally well written and structured as well. In the end, the plot didn't quite convince me. Still, a fantastic book.
Three Japanese novellas
Snow Country
Yasunari Kawabata
Kitchen
Banana Yoshimoto
The Emissary
Yoko Tawada
I had read Snow Country before. It is justly regarded as a classic. The Kitchen is perhaps a trifle, but delightful. The Emissary is a near-future dystopia, deliberately quirky... too deliberately, in fact.
Miscellaneous "entertainments"
A Gentleman in Moscow
Amor Towles
A Certain Justice
P.D. James
Luminous
Sylvia Park
Exordia
Seth Dickinson
Of these, the P.D. James is– unsurprisingly– the best read. Nasty victim, nasty suspects... Dalgliesh and Miskin, getting it done. The Towles book is sweet, but the writing did not "cast a spell," as the blurb promised. The last two, sci-fi books, received some critical accolades, which goes to show that sci-fi critics have low standards and/or are starved for good literature. Luminous is a robot book, with a somewhat interesting kid robot character and a fairly perfunctory dose of family drama. But how many indifferently written disaffected robot books can you read? Exordia is a sprawling pull-out-all-the-stops alien encounter hard sci-fi meets woo-woo sci-fi with extended high-tech battle scene mess. I suppose it is the beginning of a series that I won't read.
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