This Booker Prize-winning short novel was a whirling exercise in arcane vocabulary, beautifully written but with the occasional semantic stumbling block I stubbed myself upon so many times that I actually started keeping a list of words to look up. Here’s a sample of some of the gems (if you look at it that way) Banville used in this work:

* flocculent
* gleet
* bosky
* costiveness
* etiolated
* moue
* strangury

At a certain point I got kind of tired of the energy it required to keep up.

For all the lovely slowness and the clarity of setting of this book, Banville’s actual attempts at plot feel forced and awkward. The denouement and attempted “twists” at the ending fall flat for me. The beginning of the book moved me; the middle carried me through, but the end lost me.

*** 1/2 (of 5)