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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
(3.5 stars) "If you don't know who the patsy in the room is, it's you.", June 24, 2008
Under the Benjamin Black pseudonym, John Banville offers a view into the luxury of wealth in Manhattan. John Glass, a former journalist unafraid to face the grit of the world, now labors in a glass-walled office high above the clouds. Intimidated by the spaciousness of his environment and tasked with the authorized biography of his father-in-law, Big Bill Mulholland, communications magnate and ex-CIA agent, Glass toys with hiring a researcher to pry into Mulholland's past- not for public consumption, but for his own curiosity. Glass nicknames the odd young man The Lemur. When the researcher (The Lemur) calls, making demands for what he has discovered, John is immediately anxious. What has he found out? But before Glass can take any action, The Lemur is murdered. With little information, John assembles what facts he can, guilt eventually pointing back to himself and his extended family: wife, Louise; step-son, David; and father-in-law, Big Bill Mulholland. I greatly enjoyed Black's other novels (Christine Falls, The Silver Swan) and was delighted to start this one after finishing Australian Peter Temple's latest work, an appropriate segue from one angst-riddled author to another. However, I am not a great fan of short stories and the length of The Lemur does not, in my opinion, favor Black's style, the usual depth of character, layered plots and seductive language that are this author's trademark. Although not imperative, I didn't find any of these characters even remotely likeable: John Glass has betrayed his youthful ideals for a marriage of privilege, long-inured to the luxury his wife's money provides; Louise, Big Bill's daughter, has looked to John for a comfort he cannot deliver, relief from her father's demands; Louise's son, David, snide and rude, assumes his place in the family with ill-disguised contempt for his step-father; Big Bill is shocked that Glass didn't understand the implied rules of the biographical assignment; even Alison O'Keeffe, Glass's extramarital lover, has grown weary of his company. Black making a clear distinction between the vast differences that separate social classes, these characters seem to float from day to day, from Manhattan to the Hamptons with an ennui that borders on sleepwalking. All has been reduced to image, perception, continuing the façade of marriage and family while the relationships decay from lack of honesty and commitment. If John has been secure in his ivory tower, the murder is an opportunity to reclaim some significance from life. He faces a conundrum once the murderer has been revealed: whether to become- or stay- complicit or to cling to the privilege that has protected him while savaging his humanity, a difficult, if not impossible choice for one such as John Glass. (The Lemur was formerly serialized in The New York Times Magazine.) Luan Gaines/ 2008.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smooth oddity, July 9, 2008
I was half-way through this book in no time, came up for a breather, and thought that it was an awfully quick read. The cynical side of me wanted to ask if this were meant as made-for-movie book, sort of like McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Maybe Banville needed to fulfill a contract or was banking on a new car (surely he's one of the names who can support himself with writing). But it is published as a paperback, in the summer, and so that alone seems to calibrate expectations. So ultimately I've come down somewhere else. I think the book accomplishes what it sets out to do; on it's own terms it is complete and does not need to be longer. Banville does write lengthier novels as a rule, much more involved. I actually wanted Silver Swan though to move a bit faster. I think the first person narrator works for this short approach. Here's my ultimate test: short, narrative driven books can often be consumed like writerly candy--tastes good going down, doesn't nourish, and you certainly don't remember it next day. This book though, three days later, another novel read in the interim, stays with me. There is a consistent voice, a masterly control of plot, enough insight into character...the narrator still lives for me in all of his existential complexity. That's enough.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Aristotle was right: he that holds a secret holds power.", June 24, 2008
Set in New York, not Dublin, this novella by Benjamin Black (the pen name used by Booker Prize-winning author John Banville for his mystery novels) follows the attempts by John Glass, a former journalist from Ireland, to write the biography of his American father-in-law. Big Bill Mulholland, described as "South Boston Irish," is a legend. Recruited for the CIA upon his graduation from Boston College, he was a specialist in electronic surveillance in Korea, Latin America, Europe, and Vietnam. Later he went into the communications business, set up Mulholland Cable, became a millionaire many times over. Now Mulholland lives the good life, having set up a charitable trust, which is run by Glass's wife Louise, who is also a UN Special Ambassador for Culture, and he wants Glass to write his biography. "Not a hagiography--I don't merit one, I'm no saint," he insists. "What I want is the truth." Glass, who has covered Northern Ireland, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and the Rwandan genocide, fears that writing this biography may undermine any journalistic credibility he ever earned, but he has no choice. He secretly hires a young man, Dylan Riley, to gather information for him, and Riley soon discovers something--something so secret that he tries to blackmail Glass into giving him half of the money Mulholland is paying Glass, or he will reveal his information publicly. Before Riley can meet Glass to talk, however, Riley turns up dead, shot through the eye. John Glass turns detective, fearing that his own affair with a young artist may be the damaging secret. When a journalist injects himself into the story of Riley's death, the backgrounds of the various Mulholland family members are gradually revealed. As always, author John Banville (writing as Black) writes with powerful descriptive skills, and his sense of narrative pacing is unerring. This novella, however, is too short to allow for much development of mood or atmosphere, and there is little opportunity for him to develop the kinds of complications which make mystery stories challenging. His characters, too, are sketches, rather than fully developed human beings, and they remain stereotypes, their behavior fairly predictable. As a result, the kind of last minute revelations and dramatic tours de force which sometimes make short mysteries such a delight to read never occur here. Ultimately, the book feels like the outline for a much longer and more complex novel. n Mary Whipple Writing as Benjamin Black: Christine Falls: A NovelThe Silver Swan: A NovelWriting as John Banville: The UntouchableShroudThe Sea (Man Booker Prize)
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