The average user rating for this Book is 5.8 out of 10 (based on 14 Votes).
Michael A gave it a10: Don't let the fact that it won the Booker prize color your opinions or anything. This sort of asshattery is exactly why user reviews for media other than movies and videogames is utterly and absolutely worthless to anyone who has read anything in the last five years that isn't Harry Potter.
Jeff A gave it a0: Worst book i have ever read
Brian F gave it a5: A short story with at least a hundred pages of florid, occasionally maudlin padding. The substance of the book, memory mainly, is sometimes insightful and interesting. Don't know how it's Booker material.
Dan B. gave it a3: Pretty much I'd agree with Janet P, below, except that I didn't find the prose particularly compelling, despite many fine and poetic phrases. Frankly I couldn't read the whole thing... after 75 pages or so I started skpping around, which I don't recall ever doing before.
Anna F gave it a4: I loved the Untouchable and thought I could rely on Banville for a demanding but rewarding read- for precision and originality- but what has happened to him in recent years? His prose flows beautifully but he didn't seem to be saying anything -even to himself- that wasn't already overfamiliar. The characters never came off the page. I wasn't convinced that the parallel between the childhood memories and his experience of loss was anything more than a literary device. I didn't feel he was focusing on what he was saying - only on how he was saying it- and he overdid that too!
Chris K gave it an8: Nabokov's influence is quite apparent throughout this novel, but Banville creates a style of his own.
Warrick W. gave it a9: Slow and meditative, this beautiful novel hovers between the sea and the land, between the present and the past, between memory and imagination. Don't look for a plot, let it wash over you.
Janet P gave it a5: Too few surprises and due to the absense of a compelling story we are reliant on the lyricism and prose.
Claudia R gave it a5: beautiful but I wondered how he who hates himself could have really loved. odd the torture of insects, the medieval loathing of the body, and yet the arch superiority ( as with his daughter...)
[Anonymous] gave it a3: Some passages are brilliant, but the novel lacks for an actual plot and what Banville attempts to use as a storyline is too scattered to be compelling.
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