 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | John Banville |
|---|---|
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
Publication date | 1989 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover & Paperback) |
| Pages | 224 pp (hardcover) |
| ISBN | 0-436-03267-8 |
| OCLC | 45363983 |
| 823/.914 21 | |
| LC Class | PR6052.A57 B36 2001 |
| Followed by | Ghosts |
The Book of Evidence is a 1989 novel by John Banville. Many of the characters in The Book of Evidence appear in the 1993 sequel Ghosts .
The book is narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a 38-year-old scientist, who murders a servant girl during an attempt to steal a painting from a neighbour. Freddie is an aimless drifter, and though he is a perceptive observer of himself and his surroundings, he is largely amoral.
Freddie Montgomery is the unreliable narrator who tells his life-story and recounts the events leading up to his arrest for the murder of a servant girl in one of Ireland's "big houses". A cultured but louche Anglo-Irish scientist who has been living abroad for many years, Freddie returns to his ancestral home seeking money after falling foul of a gangster in the Mediterranean. Shocked to discover that his mother has sold the family's collection of paintings, Freddie attempts to recover them. This leads to a tragic series of events culminating in Freddie's killing of a maid while stealing a painting. On the run, he hides out in the house of old family friend Charlie, a man of some influence, before being arrested and interrogated. The novel ends as Freddie sits in jail and has the first feelings of remorse for the girl's death while casting doubt on the truth of what he has recounted.
Throughout his loquacious account, the narrator sporadically inserts complex and obscure words before admitting in one of the later chapters to having a dictionary beside him in his cell from which he is extracting these gems that embellish his prose.
The central events of the murder and subsequent flight are based on the 1982 case of Malcolm Edward MacArthur, who killed a young nurse in Dublin during the course of stealing her car. MacArthur, a well-known eccentric in the city's social circles, took refuge (as a guest) at the home of Patrick Connolly, then the Irish Attorney General, where he was ultimately arrested. A serious effort was made to prevent the relationship between Connolly and MacArthur becoming public. Taoiseach Charles Haughey described the incidents and MacArthur's taking shelter at Connolly's as "a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance". [1] The acronym GUBU (grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented) was coined by Conor Cruise O'Brien [2] and later applied to reflect the entirety of Haughey's March–December 1982 government, a government marred by constant turmoil.
In December 2012, Banville was being interviewed by Fintan O'Toole at an evening dedicated to the essayist Hubert Butler in Trinity College Dublin. MacArthur, recently released from prison, was in the audience. Banville left as soon as the interview was done; MacArthur attended the drinks reception. [3]
In reviewing the book, Publishers Weekly compared Banville's writing to that of Albert Camus and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The writing style continues Banville's attempt to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has". [4]
The Book of Evidence won the Guinness Peat Aviation Literary Award in 1989 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
The awarding of the GPA Award was mired by controversy. Graham Greene was part of the jury, though it was not noticed by the award organisers that he had included a clause in his contract that allowed him to overrule the decision of the other jury members. Consequently, when the jury chose The Book of Evidence as the winner, Greene chose to ignore this and picked The Broken Commandment by Vincent McDonnell as the winner. Eventually through the intervention of Tony Ryan a compromise was reached whereby Banville was awarded the £50,000 main prize while Guinness Peat Aviation provided an additional sum of £25,000 to be awarded to Vincent McDonnell, as a specially created GPA First Fiction Award. Banville later described the incident as "grubby" and said that Greene had behaved quite badly in the awarding of the prize. [5]
Colm Tóibín has stated that the book ought to have won Banville the Booker Prize. [6]
Charles James Haughey was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as Taoiseach on three occasions – 1979 to 1981, March to December 1982 and 1987 to 1992. Haughey led four governments while serving as Taoiseach; December 1979 to June 1981, March to December 1982, March 1987 to June 1989, and June 1989 to February 1992. He was also Minister for the Gaeltacht from 1987 to 1992, Leader of the Opposition from 1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1987, Leader of Fianna Fáil from 1979 to 1992, Minister for Social Welfare and for Health from 1977 to 1979, Minister for Finance from 1966 to 1970, Minister for Agriculture from 1964 to 1966, Minister for Justice from 1961 to 1964 and Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Justice from 1959 to 1961. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1957 to 1992.
The Government of the 23rd Dáil or the 18th Government of Ireland was the government of Ireland formed after the February 1982 general election. It was a minority Fianna Fáil government led by Charles Haughey as Taoiseach, reliant on the support of the Sinn Féin The Workers' Party and Independent TD Tony Gregory.
The first Irish prose fiction, in the form of legendary stories, appeared in the Irish language as early as the seventh century, along with chronicles and lives of saints in Irish and Latin. Such fiction was an adaptation and elaboration of earlier oral material and was the work of a learned class who had acquired literacy with the coming of Latin Christianity. A number of these stories were still available in manuscripts of the late medieval period and even as late as the nineteenth century, though poetry was by that time the main literary vehicle of the Irish language.
William John Banville is an Irish novelist, short story writer, adapter of dramas and screenwriter. Though he has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov", Banville himself maintains that W. B. Yeats and Henry James are the two real influences on his work.
Guinness Peat Aviation (GPA) was an aircraft leasing company set up in 1975 by Aer Lingus, the Guinness Peat Group and Tony Ryan, then an Aer Lingus executive.
Events from the year 2002 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1989 in Ireland.
Events from the year 1982 in Ireland.
The phrase grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented was paraphrased from a comment by then Taoiseach Charles Haughey, while describing a strange series of incidents in the summer of 1982 that led to a double-murderer, Malcolm MacArthur, being apprehended in the home of the Irish Attorney General Patrick Connolly.
It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance.
Patrick James Connolly was an Irish barrister who served as Attorney General of Ireland from March 1982 to August 1982.
John M. Feehan was an Irish author and publisher. The eldest son of a schoolmaster, Feehan was born in Dualla, County Tipperary.
John Boyne is an Irish novelist. He is the author of fourteen novels for adults, six novels for younger readers, two novellas and one collection of short stories. His novels are published in over 50 languages. His 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name.
Proinsias Mac Aonghusa was an Irish journalist, writer, TV presenter and campaigner. Born into an Irish-speaking household, Mac Aonghusa became one of the most noted Irish language broadcasters and journalists of the 20th century, appearing as the presenter of Irish-language programming for RTÉ, UTV and BBC and as a journalist for newspapers both domestic and international. Influenced by family friends Peadar O'Donnell and Máirtín Ó Cadhain as well as his own parents growing up, Mac Aonghusa pursued Irish republican and socialist politics as an adult and was heavily involved in the Labour Party during the 1960s, at one point serving as its vice-chairman. However, Mac Aonghusa's engagement in factionalism and infighting saw him expelled in 1967. Following the Arms Crisis of 1970, Mac Aonghusa became an ardent supporter of Charles Haughey, a relationship which later proved highly beneficial to Mac Aonghusa when Haughey gained control over Fianna Fáil in the 1980s and appointed Mac Aonghusa to a number of state-run positions. A prolific writer throughout his life, Mac Aonghusa continued to publish books up until his death.
Irish Socialist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War describes a grouping of IRA members and Irish Socialists who fought in support the cause of the Second Republic during the Spanish Civil War. These volunteers were taken from both Irish Republican and Unionist political backgrounds but were bonded through a Socialist and anti-clerical political philosophy. Many of the Irish Socialist volunteers who went to Spain later became known as the Connolly Column.
Ghosts is a 1993 novel by John Banville. It was his first novel since 1989's The Book of Evidence, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The second in what Banville described as a "triptych", to make "an investigation of the way in which the imagination works." This novel features many of the same characters and relates to events of the previous novel.
Nora Connolly O'Brien was an Irish politician, activist and writer. She was a member of Seanad Éireann from 1957 to 1969.
Athena is a 1995 novel by John Banville, the third in a series that started with The Book of Evidence and continued with Ghosts. These three form the "Frames" trilogy.
Jack McCaffrey is a Gaelic footballer who plays for Clontarf.
Mark O'Connell is an Irish author and journalist. His debut book, To Be A Machine was published in 2017, followed by Further Notes From an Apocalypse in 2020. He has written for publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, and The Guardian. He is also the author of the Kindle Single Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever .., as well as an academic study of the novels of John Banville.
John Byrne was an Irish property developer and businessperson known for building large offices in central Dublin with his company the Carlisle Trust.