An audio book.
A released lifer (a murderer) uses the new name Mordant. The narrator has a timeless viewpoint? Mordant drives to the house of Helen (39) and Adam Godley. She's an actress whose two children both died young. He says he was born there. he stays nearby. The mother of Adam (her late husband was called Adam) is upstairs, bedridden. Godley senior's multiverse theory had made him world famous. In his Brahma theory, a discovery causes darkness elsewhere. Consequently, maths and physics departments have been closed.
It’s in the future – no planes. Adam Godley Jr asks William JB to write a biography of his father, suggesting that he stay in their house. Mordent picks him up from the station in the car he’d borrow from his old cell mate Billy. “mute miles went liquidly past” during their journey.
Godley’s daughter Petra killed herself. His wife Dorothy, her sight failing, asks Mordent to kill her.
Mordant was married to Daphne, who slept with Godley senior. Mordant and Anna slept together with Daphne. William finds a letter by Godley senior suggesting that William's wife slept with him in Venice. Was it true?
The narrator says that his father is Zeus, and talks directly to the reader.
There are musings and memories by characters who sound much the same as each other - wondering if they've chosen the right word, etc. The Venice section (amongst others) seems far too long. Is it even needed?
Other reviews
- Alex Clark
- Tim Adams (Banville’s characters slip in and out of the overlapping worlds of his own imagining, like unwitting characters in an elevated bedroom farce.)
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