Birchwood - by John Banville (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Once the big house on an Irish estate, Birchwood has turned into a dilapidated family manor filled with memories and despair. One disaster succeeds another, until young Gabriel Godkin runs away to join a traveling circus and look for his long-lost twin sister. Soon he discovers that famine and unrest stalk the countryside, and Ireland is ruined too.

Told with lyrical prose, John Banville's Birchwood is the elegiac story of the aristocratic decline of an eccentric family riddled with dark secrets.

"John Banville is one of the greatest masters of the English language." --The Scotsman

Review Quotes

"One periodically rereads a [Banville] sentence just to marvel at its beauty, originality and elegance." --USA TODAY

"John Banville deserves his Booker Prize." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[Banville's] books are like baroque cathedrals, filled with elaborate passages." --Paris Review

"A grand writer with a seductive style." --Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

"Banville is a master at capturing the most fleeting memory or excruciating twinge of self-awareness with riveting accuracy." --People

"A brilliant stylist." --Christian Science Monitor

"Represents a watershed in contemporary Irish writing." --Colm Tóibín

"John Banville is the heir to Nabokov." --Sunday Telegraph

"One of the best novelists in English." --Edmund White, Guardian

"He cannot write an unpolished phrase, so we read him slowly, relishing the stream of pleasures he affords." --The Independent (UK)

"The heir to Proust." --Daily Beast

"A great storyteller." --Observer

"Banville's ventriloquism is word-perfect." --Vulture