Birchwood [Hardcover]

John Banville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1973

An early classic from the Man Booker-prize winning author of The Sea.

I am therefore I think. So starts John Banville’s 1973 novel Birchwood, a novel that centers around Gabriel Godkin and his return to his dilapidated family estate. After years away, Gabriel returns to a house filled with memories and despair. Delving deep into family secrets—a cold father, a tortured mother, an insane grandmother—Gabriel also recalls his first encounters with love and loss. At once a novel of a family, of isolation, and of a blighted Ireland, Birchwood is a remarkable and complex story about the end of innocence for one boy and his country, told in the brilliantly styled prose of one of our most essential writers.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This is one of the most startling of the century's varied achievements in Irish writing.”
—Seamus Deane

"John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language.”
—The Scotsman

"Birchwood represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing..”
—Colm Toibin --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

John Banville is the author of ten novels, including the Man Booker-prize winning novel The Sea. He lives in Dublin, Ireland. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 170 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (January 1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393085724
• ISBN-13: 978-0393085723
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,962,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Irish

More About the Author

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of thirteen previous novels including The Book of Evidence, which was shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A story filled with many small and big pleasures, July 24, 2007

By 

Armchair Interviews (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birchwood (Hardcover)

The novels of John Banville cannot be read in a rush. His phrases are achingly beautiful and so densely packed that they demand slowness and savoring. Birchwood, one of his earliest novels, from 1973, re-released in a Vintage International edition, is no exception.

Drawing on his Irish roots, Banville has set Birchwood on an estate by that name in Ireland. Gabriel Godkin is a man returned to his family's ruined estate, looking back through his childhood at the truths of his family and his country. Through an extended flashback, we see Gabriel struggle with a cold father, a crazed mother and grandmother, all wobbling on the edges of an insanity that Gabriel acknowledges runs through his own blood. At the same time, in the background, we see Ireland falling apart as the people starve through the potato famine, the landed gentry lose their precarious place in the society, and Gabriel escapes from his family and finds his way into the traveling circus.

Through this strange transition from landed gentry to itinerate performer, Banville allows Gabriel to explore the idea of family-the ones we are born into and with whom we are forever connected by blood, and the ones we cobble together in the courses of our strange lives-and come to terms with his own self and his history.

Banville is a master at developing characters and exploring their interior landscapes while the characters are exploring some exterior one. Poetic and careful, he affords the reader a series of small pleasures as he describes and conjures interesting people and places.

Early in the novel, Gabriel explains "...it was as if in the deep wood's gloom I had recognized, in me all along, waiting, an empty place where I could put the most disparate things and they would hang together." The novel Birchwood also has such places, recognized by Banville, where he has carefully placed, for the reader to discover, disparate things-the ideas of family and home, the Irish potato famine, and the circus, of all things-that hang together beautifully.

Armchair Interview says: Well worth the read of this reissued book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Most enjoyable, April 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Birchwood (Hardcover)

I read this straight after 'The Book of Evidence' and although it didnt captivate me to the same degree, it is nevertheless a well crafted piece of literature. The author has an awesome talent for creating interestingly offbeat characters. I look forward to reading more.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars birchwood by john banville, March 9, 2006

By 

banville fan (scotland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Birchwood (Hardcover)

Thoroughly enjoyed book. dig a little deeper, think a bit harder. beautiful prose, poignant symbolism viewed from a younger perspective with some dark humour thrown in. john banville sings to you.