“My world, and I an outcast in it.”

The Book of Evidence is my first Banville novel, after getting off to a slightly rough start with The Sea (I stopped after about 10 pages -- maybe I was just tired, but I wasn't enjoying the language, somewhat ironically). At first, I read this book like an odd mixture of Camus, Nabokov, and Thomas Bernhard. It had that Bernhardian "novel-length-monologue" type of thing he does with that aura of darkness that permeates his work. The theme appeared philosophically to be in Camus' wheelhouse, and the language and character writing seemed to be pure Nabokov. As I read more, Banville's distinct authorial voice began to come through. To continue some random comparisons to other writers though, I found myself thinking of John Updike and Don DeLillo as I read. I feel like this is the kind of novel Updike could've/would've written -- a novel-length confessional of a murder committed by an unreliable narrator -- and maybe he would've written the story as compelling, but he would've failed to write Freddie Montgomery himself with the absence of too much "theatricality" and -- I don't know -- awareness of his dramatic irony that Updike's more colorful characters sometimes lack. I also thought of DeLillo, not because he would ever be interested in writing a story like this, but because of the gorgeous stylistic flair to Banville's writing. Many of Banville's sentences were breathtaking, making me think of DeLillo who is a similarly strong stylist. I wouldn't yet go so far as to compare Banville favorably to DeLillo, whom I hold in very high regard. But here's just one example of Banville's writing: “In the hot, hazy dusk the streets seemed wider, flattened, somehow and the cars scudded along, sleek as seals in the sodium glare.” 

Banville has keen powers of observation. Divinely so, I think. He has a knack for putting an image into words that bring it to life, as contrived as this may sound as praise. It's like he has a photographic memory of an infinite amount of highly specific feelings. Here's another: “I could feel my horrible smile, like something sticky that had dripped onto my face.” During some passages, it's like he's pulling from a bank of experiences deep within the human subconscious. There's something “hyper real” about how Banville brings Freddie’s murder episode to life. It's both thrilling and literary. He makes this episode -- one that the vast majority of all people will never experience anything like -- believable and real.

And that's really just scratching the surface of the novel. The story itself has an interesting thematic core. Banville seems interested in some themes like compulsivity, reliability of narrator, and moral detachment. Freddie's flippant attitude toward his crime and all of its associated events raise questions about his humanity. His hyper-intelligence contrasts interestingly with the brutality of his crime, and how he interacts with and retrospectively comments upon the bevy of characters in the book highlights the tension between his learned facade and his criminal nature. The reader is forced to confront a highly unusual situation (in the best written segment of the novel, by the way) in which Freddie murders a woman in cold blood -- actually leaving her to die after bludgeoning her rather than finishing her off -- and can't really explain why he did it. It sort of "just happens" -- this horrible act. Banville may be using this situation as a symbol for life in the grand scheme. While very few of us are murderers, all of us make idiotic mistakes, decisions that have no explanation. In this condensed form, Banville shows us that life simply flows; our actions merely come out of us. This absence of free will may be something Banville wished for us to consider.