Autumn is beginning to make its entry in rural Ireland. An expensive car stands in the middle of a field. An oddly-dressed man runs up, tells a passer-by and the inhabitants of a nearby house that his wife has left the car after a tiff and has jumped off a cliff, drowning herself into the chilly Irish sea. But something is off, and the man’s behaviour is suspicious. Days pass, and the woman is not found. It is unclear if she has ever even existed. Garda detective St John Strafford (with an r) investigates.
I say investigates, but he does the bare minimum and mostly ponders things – the crime, his love life, the human bloody condition – over glasses of whiskey and cups of tea. A lot is going on here, and at the same time not much at all.
I’ve heard these books, and various others, described as the crime fiction equivalent of slow cooking. That’s a pretty good description. These books are not for those who want to be kept on the edge of their seat; they’re sedate, detached, melancholy. If you’re looking for an adrenaline fix, look elsewhere.
There are other things to be had, though. Strafford and his erstwhile friend, the pathologist Quirke, grow on you – this is, depending on how you look at it, the 10th, 5th or 2nd book in a series – and people of all standings are described with a detached sort of curiosity. Do not go in here looking for clear-cut answers or moral clarity; the characters do not encounter this in their lives, so why should the reader?
Banville is a literary stalwart, with a Booker under his belt and a persistent Nobel prize buzz. He writes what one might be tempted to label as difficult books. I don’t have much experience with his non-crime books other than The Sea, which won a Booker in 2005. It came out when I was 20 and I don’t think I understood it very well. The joke is that Banville writes these books to unwind after strenuous mornings of High Art. That also explains why he’s been churning them out fairly reliably every year or so. It’s funny because it’s still better writing than most of the genre, and Banville ostensibly does this for a laugh, though I would imagine the added income is nice too.
It’s not perfect; I love the rounded characters, but their passivity and the time spent on issues not pertaining to the investigation can be frustrating. 1950s Ireland is a man’s world and though Banville by no means gives women the short shrift, there’s still something hollow about them. And there are no neat resolutions here; life is frequently unfair and inconsistent, so why shouldn’t books be? I have no issues with that, but it does make for a rather depressing read.