Oliver Otway Orme is a painter of some renown, and a petty thief who has never been caught...until now. Fearing the consequences, Olly flees and sets about trying to uncover the answer to how and why things have turned out as they did.
“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.”
