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What are readers saying about Athena A Novel?
| Reviews of Athena A Novel - Page 1 of 1 | «1»
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-03-03 03:34:02.
(Language: English)
  
see the quote from this book in my "favorite quotes" section.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-08-23 11:27:52.
(Language: English)
John Banville’s Athena is one of those books to be read for the language, not for the plot. The back of the Vintage edition advertises it as “ literary thriller and...a gripping love storyâ€. It’s not as immediately suspenseful as that blurb suggests. Certainly there are elements of romance, and criminals figure heavily throughout the book. But all plot elements are secondary to the inner life of the protagonist, expressed through long, rambling monologues. As you might expect from a winner of the Booker Prize, the quality of Banville’s writing is high. The narrator, who calls himself “Morrow†but early on admits this is not his real name, is hired by a local crime boss to authenticate and catalog eight seventeenth century Flemish paintings. Morrow has spent most of his adult life around criminals-he has something of an (unexplained) criminal past-and he takes the job without asking too many questions, and without coercion. Over the course of the job he falls in love with a woman, only identified as “Aâ€, and develops an obsessive and likely destructive relationship with her. There are other elements to the “plot†but again, it’s Banville’s language which ultimately makes the book worth reading. He also plays games with time; the story is being recounted by the protagonist, and though he tries to stick to an order of events, he drifts away from the timeline into tangential situations, throwing pertinent details at the reader as they become necessary or sometimes, as they’re recalled. The writing reminded me of John Barth, in the way that Banville can devote an entire page to a character’s dilemma over something which should be absolutely mundane, yet in the end is absolutely riveting and essential to the story. I found myself rereading passages not because the author wasn’t communicating information necessary to move the story along but because I loved his way with words. I was also reminded of another “literary†crime story, one told without bombast, extreme violence or out-of-left-field plot twists: Madison Smartt Bell’s Straight Cut (recently reissued by Hard Case Crime).
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-03-21 12:56:45.
(Language: English)
Banvilles best work. Very overlooked. Excellent imagery. The plot is vague and confusing. the characters and their immediate surroundings are the focus, and he "paints" these images well. Has some of my favorite images ever.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-11-20 08:41:36.
(Language: English)
If all you are looking for in a novel is a suspenseful plot, this is not the book for you. If you love reading for the sheer joy of how the written language can take you away with guided imagery then this book is a must read.
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