“The Blue Guitar advances Banville’s lifelong project, pushes the world through his 'mesh of language.' It reveals new, opulent sentences. But if his story is set upon a sabotaged narrative scaffolding, the chiming beauty of all these sentences competes with another sound, an underscore of persistent wooden thunk.”
“As always, Banville traces this journey of self-discovery in the distinctive language he commands so effortlessly: precise yet evocative, clear-eyed and down-to-earth, yet shimmering with the mutability and mystery of art.”
“At every turn (and the structure and setting of the book are very tight, so there aren’t many turns), The Blue Guitar leaves us in the hands of a character who wants to think big thoughts about the mess he has made of things, but who struggles to rise to the occasion.”
“There is wordplay, the kind a more generous critic might call Nabokovian, about which the less said the better. Banville — and by extension his narrator — is a sophisticated writer, but it can make him an irritating one.”
“The book is thus composed largely of Orme’s remarkably self-centered and grandiose musings. This is offputting at times, though it works well when the characters are absorbing the fallout of their various deceptions.”
“Readers new to Banville might like to start with an earlier novel, such as The Book of Evidence, with more of a narrative drive, but longtime admirers will appreciate here something close to a Banvillean ars poetica.”
