I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A man released from prison seeks to obtain his own brand of personal justice.

This was my first book by John Banville. While it was clearly well-written, I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for something of such intelligence at that moment. Thank you for letting me check it out!

One reads Banville for his use of words and the way he puts them together. And he certainly succeeds in this book. This is less a narrative than a depiction of two men at a crumbling old family home. The first, Felix Mordaunt (not his real name but the one he chose for his new life) is newly released from prison after serving his sentence for murder. He borrows a car from a friend and travels to the place he grew up even though he knows it has been sold a couple of times and is now inhabited by the descendants of Adam Godley Sr - his widow, his son and daughter-in-law. Felix installs himself in the household and uses it as a halfway house to get used to being out of prison. He steals valuable items that he thinks no one will miss.
The other man is Professor Jaybey who has been convinced to undertake a biography of the senior Godley by his son Adam Jr. Both men are enchanted by Adam Jr's wife, Helen, who is beautiful but unhappy in the crumbling household.
The story itself moves from one point of view to another - Felix to Professor Jaybey to Helen to Adam Sr and Jr - and never seems to go anywhere. The men are all selfish and somewhat lacking in confidence. the women are either mad or playthings for the men. I can't say I liked any of the characters or even felt any compassion for them.
I have enjoyed the other two books by Banville that I read, The Sea and Snow. this one I read for the writing, not the story Thank you Netgalley for the ARC and the opinions expressed are mine for which I was not compensated

This is the first book I have read by John Banville. I'm not one to shy away from unusual books and the publisher's description of the plot intrigued me. The writing itself is impressive but.....Banville seems to be writing to entertain-Banville. The plot seemed to move not at all. I felt like I was stuck on a literary treadmill and reading was as much a chore as walking on my actual treadmill.

I am nevertheless grateful to Doubleday and Netgalley for an ARC.

Just couldn't get into this one even though I recognized the quality of the writing. Maybe I'll try some of his other work since this my first experience with Banville.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!

John Banville's mastery of prose and characterization is in rich display in THE SINGULARITIES--but ultimately the novel fails to reach the compelling pitch-point which is the hallmark of Banville's earlier work. An intriguing premise...but one which loses its captivating qualities under a narrative which somehow lacks steam.

My thanks to Knopf and to Netgalley for the opportunity of an early read.

Started out promising and went ... nowhere?

The story resolves around a mathematician's legacy, beginning with a murderer's return to his childhood home, where he is joined by an author hired to write said mathematicians biography. There are secrets, there are unreliable and unlikeable characters, the language is an art form.

However, there is no depth to it. Things are happening without any explanation, without any connection to one another (with a few exceptions); the same can be applied to characters, who seem to lack any will. Considering all of this, the novel gets boring and extremely long. I physically cringed at some parts because they were so unnecessary. And I could go on and on about the way women are written as tools for the men - the male gaze is constantly and needlessly present.

Overall, not a good read despite the beautiful language.

Unfortunately this one wasn't a good fit for me. I know Banville is an excellent writer with an incredible command of the English language. And yet this story was full of unlikeable characters, 2 dimensional women, really long run-on sentences that became indecipherable. It might easily be that I missed something and that this novel is smart on some level that is beyond my understanding. Alas, it did not meet the mark for me.

with gratitude to netgalley and Knopf for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm sure I'm missing something here. Pompous, presumptuous, self-congratulatory, and too clever by half. The characters are completely self-absorbed. The writing is verbose and overwrought. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to appreciate it. I'll pass on this one.

Definitely witty but a bit 'waffley'

Freddie Montegomery has ended up in one of the singularities of Adam Godley's alternate worlds.
Take an obscure confusing premise (theorem), conflate it and continue to obfuscate it by saying that only the greatest of minds will understand it and who would dare say it's rubbish or get into the nitty gritty of it?

Some interesting characters buried beneath the waffle however it does go a bit heavy on the older man (men) with the younger girl trope so I had eye rolling moments. I know that older men need or wish for younger women to hold their 'hands' etcetera but I really find little interest in reading about it.

I’ve been a long-time Banville reader and enjoyed this entry in his work. He holds a particular talent for mystery and atmosphere, and once more delivers with The Singularities. Well worth reading.

John Banville's latest novel is a cryptic blend of scifi, metafiction and aristocratic manners, all told in beautifully euphonic lilting style, full of alliterative phrases and elegantly refined iambic clauses. The plot revolves around a mathematician, Adam Godley, the discoverer of the Brahma theory, which posits that each new insight into the nature of reality results in an equal and opposite darkening of reality. It is a kind of pernicious quantum mechanics in which observing the cat alive also slowly skins the cat. All mental activity in the world erodes the reality of the world. But the novel is not really about the eldritch theorem but rather about the legacy of the mathematician. The novel begins years after his death, with the release of a convicted murderer and colleague, Felix Mordaunt (from Banville's 1989 The Book of Evidence), who comes to stay at the family estate now occupied by Adam Godley's son. At the same time, the son commissions a professor of deconstructionism, Dr. Jaybey, to complete a biography of his father. Following the chaotic metaphysics of its own Adam Godley, the plot never resolves itself but rather spirals into narratological entropy. Instead of discovering the truth life of Adam Godley, Dr. Jaybey is increasingly bamboozled by the lies and forgeries of his biographical subject, the innuendoes of adultery, incest, sabotage and plagiarism. Everyone is playing some kind of double bluff, and it seems that everything is unreliable narration.

However, I found much of the plot implausible and its depiction of the women in this novel tiresome. Early on the novel, Felix Mordaunt arrives at the home of Adam Godley. He meets the wife, Helen, and says that he used to live in the house. Although she is skeptical and does not recognize the name, she invites him into the house. She suspects he might be a criminal but nonetheless her husband insists that he stay for lunch, and inexplicably, stay on as a driver. In a similar kind of whimsy, Professor Jaybey agrees to visit the house; he quits his classes, abandoning his endowed professorial chair, just for the chance to work in the rural manor and complete his biography. Many of the characters and their decisions are implausibly capricious and their motivations are never convincingly explained. But it's the depiction of women that I found problematic, almost fetishizing and voyeuristic. The house is populated by bafflingly enigmatic women—the widow suffering from dementia, the chain-smoking wife of the son, the distant but ethereal sister, a gossiping neighbor who wants to hear all the sex stories from prison, women who all remind the men of former lovers. If they are reticent, they are rarely demure: they impulsively have affairs; they insist on being beaten; they betray their husbands; they ask to be killed. The women are mysterious, flirtatious, impossibly quixotic, more sphinxes than authentic women.

Banville, at 76, can definitely still write a great book. He has written a dark, complex, icy protagonist; an ex-con, a killer, released from prison after 20 years, returning to his childhood home, wreaking havoc on its new occupants. And Banville interweaves the stories of those occupants as well. One reads a Banville novel for the prose, the style, and the diction, if nothing else. And Banville does not disappoint. But he has a captivating drama here, too. This is not pop fiction and, frankly, thank goodness. Banville, when not writing his crime mysteries, requires a little more patience which he rewards with prose a reader can savor. I found it to be a lovely read and definitely recommended for any reader of fiction with literary value.

ARC from NG.