Lost in the past
MORROW lives for the past. His present is bleak and he has little hope for the future. All that he loved and cherished has either died or disappeared and he hopes that by writing about it, he will kill the pain of loss.
The house in Rue Street is now empty but when he visited it on that first, fateful day, it was occupied by the strange Morden and his scruffy assistant Francie. It was their invitation to him to catalogue Morden's collection of supposedly rare works of art that pulled Morrow into their threatening and perplexing world.
While in the house he met and had a passionate affair with a mysterious woman known only as A. It was not the perfect relationship. A's personal hygiene left a lot to be desired, she enjoyed sado-masochism and had a penchant for a particularly rough-trade prostitute called Rosie. But Morrow was besotted.
'This I am convinced is what sex is, the anaesthetic that makes bearable the flesh of another. And we erect cathedrals upon it.' Who was A? Why did she leave? Where did she go? Is it just a coincidence that since she and her friends left the city, a series of brutal murders, where victims had their throats slit, has come to an abrupt end? This is not a novel which will fit into any category: it is part detective story, part romance of a somewhat sordid variety and part fabulist.
Nothing is as it appears. Each character has a different story to tell, stories which smack of half-truths and ill-concealed scandals.
Even Morrow's closest surviving relative is revealed after her death not to have been the person she claimed she was.
No John Banville novel is easy to read but they are intellectually challenging. If I have to keep reaching for an encyclopaedia with a novel, then I usually soon abandon it. But I always make an exception with Banville. The complexity of his prose is always worth the effort of unravelling.
He draws you slowly into his bizarre world, but once inside, it is easy to become engrossed and to work with him, trying to separate the clues from the red herrings.
Athena by John Banville Secker & Warburg $272
