Writing the Book of Evidence

I recently finished an excellent novel by the Irish novelist John Banville called The Book of Evidence. This novel was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1989. Banville eventually took the Booker for his eighteenth novel The Sea, published in 2005. Banville's style is cold and calculating and he has been called "one of the great stylists writing in English today." Don DeLillo calls his work "dangerous and clear-running prose." All of this true but Banville is also one of the sharpest and darkest wits in fiction today. Despite his cold-Nabokovian style, Banville is able to craft a very compelling and charismatic protagonist in The Book of Evidence. This is especially impressive because the first person narrator of the novel is a despicable human being. A cultured but self-absorbed scientist, Freddie Montgomery, murders a servant girl while attempting to steal a painting to pay off a debt he didn't need in the first place. The majority of the novel is Montgomery's testimony to the court, giving his reasons and justifications for the murder. However, Montgomery knows already that he did it because he could, "I killed her because I could kill her, and I could kill her because for me she was not alive." The true theme that Banville explores is the great myth that high culture makes people more moral. Montgomery's detached cynicism and amorality makes Banville's stance on the issue clear. Anyway, I think The Book of Evidence is a must read.