The infinities. A novel

The new Banville´s novel, The Infinities, is his first since he finally won the Booker prize, for The Sea in 2005, and it serves as a kind of catalogue of his favourite themes and props. Its action takes place over a single day in a big, gloomy house in the middle of Ireland. The house, called Arden, is owned by the Godley family. The Godley patriarch and his son are both called Adam; "old Adam" is in a coma and, according to his physician, Dr Fortune, dying. (Banville doesn´t stint on heavily symbolic nomenclature.) Ursula, old Adam´s second wife, has been driven to drink and vagueness by her husband´s remoteness and eye for the girls, and the Godley children are scarcely in better shape. Young Adam is a hulking but ineffectual man married to a startlingly attractive actress, Helen. His younger sister, Petra, is a twitching neurotic who´s being courted half-heartedly by a self-serving journalist. Accompanied by two semi-servants, these inveterate non-communicators move awkwardly through the expectant hush that´s descended on the house.