Christine Falls: A Novel
by Benjamin Black, John Banville
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Book Summary Information
Author: Benjamin Black, John BanvilleEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-03-06
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Book Reviews of Christine Falls: A Novel
Book Review: Pure literature
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this novel as a mistery book but, o surprise!, it was more than that. All the blueprint can be reduced to a story about babies which are traded upon an international web of strong christian believers, priests and nuns. And a guy (the forensic Dr. Quirke) who try to unveil the case starting from a very unexpected coincidence: a corpse of a young lady (Christine Falls) with a twisted autopsy report. This is the beginning. From then on Dr. Quirke will begin to discover what is hidden in the other side of the coin. This is going to be slow, I mean, too slow for an avid average thriller reader but, on the other side, is going to be as slow as you need to enjoy a literary work. This unbalance is due to the classification of the novel as a mistery book that makes us expect something between M. Connelly and S. King which is (I think) the wrong case. Even though the novel was written with that purpose, John Banville (Benjamin Black) is a writer closer to Faulkner than to Hammett (I'm exaggerating just for the sake of the reader expectations) despite of the author's "effort" for being closer to the latter.
The last fifty pages or so are something for being remembered. There is a dialogue between Quirke and Rose Crawford near the end of the novel that is going to resound in the reader mind for years and it will get him to re-read in order to taste it once again.
The last lines when the mistery is solved are just the cherry of the cake, one that is an entire piece of literature, only pure literature.
Summary of Christine Falls: A Novel
In the debut crime novel from the Booker-winning author, a Dublin pathologist follows the corpse of a mysterious woman into the heart of
a conspiracy among the city?s high Catholic society
a conspiracy among the city?s high Catholic society
It?s not the dead that seem strange to Quirke. It?s the living. One night, after a few drinks at an office party, Quirke shuffles down into the morgue where he works and finds his brother-in-law, Malachy, altering a file he has no business even reading. Odd enough in itself to find Malachy there, but the next morning, when the haze has lifted, it looks an awful lot like his brother-in-law, the esteemed doctor, was in fact tampering with a corpse?and concealing the cause of death.
It turns out the body belonged to a young woman named Christine Falls. And as Quirke reluctantly presses on toward the true facts behind her death, he comes up against some insidious?and very well-guarded?secrets of Dublin?s high Catholic society, among them members of his own family.
Set in Dublin and Boston in the 1950s, the first novel in the Quirke series brings all the vividness and psychological insight of Booker Prize winner John Banville?s fiction to a thrilling, atmospheric crime story. Quirke is a fascinating and subtly drawn hero, Christine Falls is a classic tale of suspense, and Benjamin Black?s debut marks him as a true master of the form.
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