ELEGY FOR APRIL: BENJAMIN BLACK

Benjamin Black is the pen name for Booker Prize Winning author John Bannville, whom I have read before.  I heard that he wrote mysteries but didn't think much about it till I came across a couple of recommendations on line.  I really like his writing in this text, so interesting and imaginative, especially the descriptions of people, feelings, and places.  It puts the pot boiler, once a year, best selling writers to shame.  And you realize you read them mostly for plots, not for the writing and insight into the complications of human character, as well as I new way of seeing the world, especially the simple things like a moon, as he says, 'hoisted' in the sky, a lovely verb.  For another example, the major character, Quirke, a reforming alcoholic, in despair, finally downs his first whiskey describing it as such: "The bar man brought the whiskey, and Quirke drank off half of it in one swallow.  The feeling of it spreading through his chest made him think of a small, many branched tree bursting slowly into hot, bright flames."  If anyone remembers the first time they had a shot of whiskey, this description is perfect.  And the book continues in this way, with one interesting analogy or metaphor after another.

The story revolves around Quirke, a coroner, his daughter Phoebe, though he allowed her to think she was his step brother's daughter until she discovered the truth...Quirke was her father.  The impetus of the story stems from the disappearance of Phoebe's friend, April Latimer, daughter of a grand family, though seemingly the black sheep.  In the quest to find out what happened, we meet Phoebe's friends, Quirke finds love(sort of), with one of them, and we come across the competent Inspector Hackett, an old friend of Quirke, and a potpourri of Phoebe's friends, all interesting in their own way.  Qurike is at the center, trying to escape from himself, or so he says, with drink, at first, hopefully later with Isabella, his daughter's friend.  Phoebe learns the hard way how little she knows about her friends, that we can not really know anyone, not even ourselves, much to her dismay and though she's less innocent at the end, she seems destined to always be disappointed.  This is worth reading for the language and writing alone if not the story, though it pulled me along quite nicely.  I am going to find the next one.