Venetian Vesper is a quiet, atmospheric novel set in the fading beauty of Venice. John Banville tells the story of a man looking back on his life, trying to make sense of old memories, lost love, and lingering regrets. The plot is simple, but the writing is rich and thoughtful, drawing you into the character’s emotional world.

Banville’s language is beautiful and poetic, painting Venice like a dream—both romantic and slightly sad. It’s not a fast-paced read, but if you enjoy books that explore feelings and memory with depth and elegance, this one might really speak to you.

Overall, Venetian Vesper is a gentle, reflective story—perfect for readers who enjoy slow, thoughtful novels with a strong sense of place.

I started reading this wondering of it would be a crime novel like some of Banville"s recent books. The narrator, Evelyn Dolan, recounts events which he was part of at the end of the nineteenth century in Venice but instead of the anticipated description of a beautiful city he seems to loathe the place. Here begins an atmospheric tale bearing more than a resemblance to the wonderful Wilkie Collins' stories of old.
Dolman has come to Venice with his new wife Laura to stay in a grand palazzo but things start to go wrong from the first night they spend there. Banville is a master at evoking the claustrophobic atmosphere of the palazzo and the growing sense of unease which Dolman feels when he encounters its inhabitants and notices a change in his wife's attitude towards him. He wishes he had never come to Venice.

Highly recommended. Thank you very much to the publishers for the ARC

Set in a dark, disturbing Venice at the turn of the 19th century, John Banville has created a cast of unlikeable characters and a Venice with harks back to it's dangerous history. Evelyn Dolman is one of the most unlikeable 'victims' you will come across in fiction and although sees himself as intellectually superior he walks straight into an obvious scam. If there was a weakness for me it was that you could predict where this was heading in a weaker writer's hands it wouldn't work.

The Book of Names; The Book of Twins

John Banville’s latest: set (mostly) in a wintry, sinister Venice in 1899, where the narrator, a hack writer called Evelyn Dolman is taking a honeymoon sojourn with his new wife, the American heiress, Laura Rensselaer.

The narrative is fantastical, nightmarish, bizarre; the city of Venice, ‘that pestilential town lodged in the fetid crotch of the Adriatic’. Gloom and mystery abound: ‘dusk, a deserted room, a scrap of black silk on a marble table, a darkening sea beyond’.

Dolman is a cipher, a pawn, all at sea in the presence of an indifferent wife, a born victim, imagining himself much more intelligent than he is. But don’t feel sorry for him. He is mean-minded, treacherous and violent – it’s hard to sympathise with what happens to him. Though, bad as Dolman is, most of the other participants are much, much worse.

He commits dreadful violence on his wife; she disappears; two Anglo-Irish rogues move into the Palazzo, rented by the newly-weds; the police become desultorily involved.

Much fun is played with the characters’ names throughout. Dolman means slow-witted or obtuse; Evelyn, one of those ambiguous English names, both masculine and feminine, emphasising the duality of his nature, active and passive. His wife, Laura, her name the heroine of Byron’s poem, ‘Beppo’. And of course there is a Beppo, the stereotypical Italian man servant of the Palazzo. And an Irish villain called Freddie! Of course, the reader recalls Freddie Montgomery, the amoral killer of ‘The Book of Evidence’. Then there is the rascally Count Barbarigo, owner of the Palazzo dei Dioscuri – a real Venetian noble family, but long extinct. The distinction between fiction and reality, hazy and imprecise.

The Palazzo dei Dioscuri, damp, labyrinthine, haunted, heralds another theme. The Dioscuri are Castor and Pollux, twins, not the Discobolos, the discus thrower, as the ignorant Dolman thinks. Twins are everywhere in the novel: the palazzo’s name, Freddie and Cesca FitzHerbert, Laura and Cesca look like twins, Laura’s sister’s name, Thomasina, means ‘twin’.

The plot is ingenious, a twisting, dark narrative, embodying a scam, the reader may sense throughout, but is still shocked when all is revealed, or so it seems, at the novel’s close.

Set in Venice in 1899, the story is told in the first person by Evelyn Dolman who is on honeymoon there with his wife Laura. The dark and twisty plot is slowly revealed. With sublime and evocative prose, Banville conveys the cold and chilly atmosphere of Venice in winter which adds to the feeling of menace and suspense. An intriguing page-turner.
Highly recommended.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an arc in exchange for an honest review.