|
|
Executive Times |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
2008 Book Reviews |
|||
|
|
The Lemur
by Benjamin Black |
|||
|
Rating: |
*** |
|||
|
|
(Recommended) |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Family
John
Banville’s latest offering as Benjamin Black is a short novel titled, The Lemur.
In this dark story, Black presents journalist John Glass, who’s taken a
respite from his craft to write an authorized biography of his father-in-law,
Big Bill Mulholland, a CEO and former CIA agent. Glass outsources research to
Dylan Riley, whom he nicknames the lemur. Riley uncovers something about
Mulholland’s past, and demands from Glass half the money Mulholland is paying
for the biography. Before they meet, the lemur is killed with a bullet to his
eye. Black’s writing is luminous throughout this short novel, and the noir
feeling pervades every page. Here’s an excerpt, from
the end of Chapter 2, “The Lemur,” pp. 16-18: Suddenly
Glass remembered the first time he and Louise had met, one April afternoon at
John Huston's mansion near Loughrea in the wet and stormy west of Ireland. He
had been a precocious nineteen, and had come to interview the film director
for the Irish
Times. Bill Mulholland and his daughter were there.
They had ridden over from the mansion down the valley that Mulholland had
recently purchased, and Louise wore stained jodhpurs and a green silk scarf
knotted at her throat. She was barely seventeen. Her skin was flushed pink
from the ride, - and there was a sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her
perfect nose, and Glass could hardly speak from the effort of trying not to
stare at her. Huston, the old satyr, saw at a glance what was going on in the
young man's breast, and grinned his orangutan's grin and handed him a dry
martini and said: "Here, son, have a bracer." David
Sinclair had finished his tea and now he rose, shooting his cuffs. He had to
be somewhere, he said smoothly, giving the impression that it was somewhere
much too important for
its name
to be spoken aloud in public. Glass saw how pleased with himself he
was. Director of the
Mulholland Trust at the age of—what was he?—twenty-three? Young enough, Glass
thought with satisfaction, to make a
serious mess of it. His mother, of course, would shield him from the worst of his
mistakes, but Big Bill, the founder of the Trust, was not as fond of his
grandson as Louise would wish him to be, and Big Bill was not a great
forgiver. When the young man had gone
Louise signaled for the check and turned to her husband and said: "I
wonder if you realize how clearly you betray your jealousy." Glass stared. "Who am I
jealous of?" She handed her platinum credit
card to the waiter, who went away and came back in a moment with the receipt.
She signed her fine, firm signature and he gave her the copy and departed.
Glass watched as she folded the receipt carefully four times lengthwise and
then slipped the spill she had made into her purse. That was Louise's way:
fold and file, fold and file. "I'm surprised Amex haven't done a card
specially for you," Glass said mildly. "In Kryptonite,
perhaps." She ignored this; his barbed jokes she always ignored. She
looked down at the tablecloth, fingering the weave of it. "The Trust
does valuable work, you know," she said, "more than valuable, not
least in helping to resolve that late, nasty little conflict in your native
land." He marvelled always at the way
she spoke, in molded sentences, with such preciseness, making such nice
discriminations; her three years of study in England, a postgraduate course
among the Oxford logical positivists, had honed her diction to a gleaming
keenness. "I know," he said,
trying not to sound petulant, "I know what the Trust does." She brushed his protest aside.
"You, of course, are too cynical and, yes, too jealous, to acknowledge
the importance of what we do. Frankly, I don't care. I long ago stopped
caring what you think or don't think. But I won't have you trying to infect
my son with your bitterness: Your failures are not his fault—they're no one's
fault but your own. So keep your sarcasm to yourself." She lifted her
eyes from the tablecloth and looked at him. Her gaze was as blank as the
face of her son's expensive watch, with a myriad unseen, infinitely intricate
movements going on
behind it. "Do you understand?" "I'm
going out to smoke a cigarette," he said. The
rain had stopped and the street was steaming under watery sunlight. He walked
back to the office, the chill of early spring striking at him through the
light stuff of his jacket. He was thinking of Dylan Riley, picturing him in
some Village loft hunched over his machines, the screens throwing their
nocturnal radiance onto his face and printing their images on the shiny dark
ovals of his eyes. It was to be a week before Glass would hear from him
again, and then he would learn how sharp and penetrating was the Lemur's
bite. The Lemur
provides a quick glimpse at Black’s writing skill. Given its brevity, there isn’t
the depth of character development from prior novels. The family connections
allow some abbreviating to work successfully. For readers looking for some
relaxing entertainment in the form of fine writing, The Lemur
delivers the goods. Steve
Hopkins, August 15, 2008 |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
Go to Executive Times Archives |
||||
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the Seeptember 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The Lemur.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
