"The prose is rich with similes and the plot shocks."—Wall Street Journal
"Great fun from a masterful writer."—Kirkus STARRED review
“[April in Spain] crackles with the kinetic energy of an approaching thunderstorm as Banville brilliantly contrasts the blue skies of Spain with the wine-dark seas roiling inside his characters' heads.”—Booklist STARRED review
"Banville rewards his readers with some of the finest prose in the mystery genre...and villains worthy of Agatha Christie’s poisoned pen."—BookPage
"A compelling addition to Banville’s extensive body of work."—LitHub
"Banville is, as always, so firmly in charge of his storytelling...[a tale] of mini-Shakespearean proportions."—Toronto Star
"Hurrah! Quirke is back."—The Globe and Mail
"A sordid, splendid mystery."—Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star
Praise for John Banville
“John Banville is one of my favorite writers alive, and I pick up his books whenever I need a reminder how to write a good sentence.” —R.F. Kuang
“The Irish master.” —New Yorker
“One of the best novelists in English.” —The Guardian
“John Banville deserves his Booker Prize.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“A grand writer with a seductive style.” —New York Times Book Review
“Banville is a master at capturing the most fleeting memory or excruciating twinge of self-awareness with riveting accuracy.” —People
“Prodigiously gifted. He cannot write an unpolished phrase.” —The Independent
“[Banville’s] books are like baroque cathedrals.” —Paris Review
“One periodically rereads a [Banville] sentence just to marvel at its beauty.” —USA TODAY
08/02/2021
Banville’s slow-moving eighth crime thriller featuring Irish pathologist Quirke (after 2015’s Even the Dead) finds Quirke and his wife, Evelyn, vacationing in San Sebastián, Spain. When the couple forget to buy an oyster-opening tool, Quirke tries to use a nail scissors instead and accidentally wounds himself badly enough that Evelyn insists they go to a hospital. There, he’s initially examined by Angela Lawless, an Irish physician who looks familiar, but who never returns to the exam room, leaving another doctor to tend to the injury. Her appearance and her initials lead Quirke to suspect that she’s actually April Latimer, a woman believed to be dead. April’s brother, who was sexually involved with his sibling, had confessed to killing her before taking his own life. Quirke shares his suspicions with his daughter, Phoebe, who had been April’s friend, and Phoebe travels to Spain to see for herself. Meanwhile, a psychotic hit man emotionally attached to his gun lurks in the background. The melodramatic ending doesn’t compensate for a story line too slight for the book’s length. Banville has been much better. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Oct.)
Narrator John Lee delivers a well-constructed, ably paced, and stylish performance of this elegantly written mystery. His portrayal of Banville’s garrulous pathologist, Quirke, sets the tone. His subtle rendering of Quirke’s wife Evelyn’s Austrian accent contrasts nicely with his broader Irish posturing for the malevolent Terry Tice, who “liked killing people.” Banville has a novelist’s ability to get inside the thoughts and feelings of his characters, and this plot has an inevitable but finely crafted ending. The double meaning of the title—which refers to vacationing in April in Spain and finding the missing April Latimer—is but one example of the author’s skill with language. There are fine set pieces of corrupt politicos misbehaving, and the atmosphere of San Sebastian feels hot and wet. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Narrator John Lee delivers a well-constructed, ably paced, and stylish performance of this elegantly written mystery. His portrayal of Banville’s garrulous pathologist, Quirke, sets the tone. His subtle rendering of Quirke’s wife Evelyn’s Austrian accent contrasts nicely with his broader Irish posturing for the malevolent Terry Tice, who “liked killing people.” Banville has a novelist’s ability to get inside the thoughts and feelings of his characters, and this plot has an inevitable but finely crafted ending. The double meaning of the title—which refers to vacationing in April in Spain and finding the missing April Latimer—is but one example of the author’s skill with language. There are fine set pieces of corrupt politicos misbehaving, and the atmosphere of San Sebastian feels hot and wet. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
★ 2021-07-28
A literary period piece featuring colorful characters and a mysterious crime.
In postwar Ireland, “Terry Tice liked killing people,” and he offs his gay friend Percy on a whim. Meanwhile, in Donostia in the Basque region of Spain, a semihappy couple named Quirke and Evelyn are visiting for an April holiday. He’s an Irish pathologist—hero of earlier mysteries Banville published under the name Benjamin Black—and she’s an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. Quirke is the perfect name for the husband, who “could never say the word ‘love’ without flinching.” And he “made love deftly, in an exploratory sort of way, like a doctor searching for the source of an obscure malady.” Evelyn loves to tease him: “You love to be miserable,” she says. “It’s your version of being happy.” Meanwhile, a young woman named April Latimer is dead, murdered by her brother, but her body has never been found. April is the catalyst who eventually brings the storylines together—but well before that, readers will savor the author’s imagery and playful language. After doing in his pal, Terry finds Percy’s photos of nude “fellows with enormous how’s-your-fathers.” In a restaurant, Quirke and Evelyn’s “waiter looked like a superannuated toreador.” Earlier, the odors in a fish stall made Quirke think of sex. They buy oysters, an innocent act that lands Quirke in the hospital, where Doctor Angela Lawless haunts his thoughts but he doesn’t know why. Meanwhile, Doctor Cruz demands to know why the couple is really in Spain. Are they poking into the April Latimer business? The bulk of the story focuses on the two vacationers, but Tice may have the last word on whether they can ever return to the Emerald Isle. The plot is good, but the prose—ah, the prose: A woman watches fat raindrops fall, and she “imagined them to be tiny ballerinas making super-quick curtseys and then dropping through little trapdoors hidden in the stage.” And who can’t smile at a woman’s observation that a fellow may be “inclined to the leeward side of Cape Perineum”?
Great fun from a masterful writer.