Group Read, March 2021: The Book of Evidence

Our group read for March is John Banville’s The Book of Evidence. Please join in the read and post any comments on this thread.

Just picked my copy up from the library. Looking forward to it!

I have my copy but will probably not get to it until the middle of the month.

Started last night, got sucked in immediately!

I'm hoping to join you all, but I don't have a good track record of getting to these group reads during the month . . .

I've never read anything by John Banville, though, so I am going to try.

I started The Book of Evidence last night and I'm about half way through. It's my first book by John Banville and so far I'm not overly satisfied, and I think it's mostly because of the main character, Freddie.

Normally I don't have to like a main character to appreciate a book, but Freddie just gets on my nerves. He is insanely self-absorbed and despite his many privileges he is mostly feeling sorry for himself as he stumbles through life and ruins the lives of pretty much every woman he gets in touch with.

I'm 50 pages in and also find the narrator extremely annoying although he is growing on me! He does whine an awful lot. I enjoy the ranting-old-geezer monologues of Beckett and Bernhard but this Freddie is too young for his self-absorption to be that entertaining.

I finished the novel today and I will need some time to absorb it. It wasn't a great read - the writing was ok but nothing special and it didn't really make me think about the meaning of life or anything - but it definitely didn't leave me unmoved either.

A creepy and unpleasant book. I am about 3/4 through and the relentless amoral narcissism of the narrator is really wearing on me. This book is definitely more clever and well executed than I expected at first. But the narrator’s world is such a self-created hell.

I am also just about through the book and I am finding Freddie quite tiresome. It's beautifully written but the subject matter wears thin very quickly.

ETA: I have finished my read of the book and although I didn't love the book, I didn't hate it either. Although Freddie was quite distasteful, the author's writing held my attention.