The Blue Guitar

Praise

“Beautiful, heartbreaking.” —The Washington Post

“Banville traces [a] journey of self-discovery in the distinctive language he commands so effortlessly: precise yet evocative, clear-eyed and down-to-earth, yet shimmering with the mutability and mystery of art.” —The Boston Globe

“Eloquent . . . Oliver has some of the wry comic haplessness of a Beckett character . . . enveloping.” —The Wall Street Journal
 
“Banville’s sentences shine. The humble becomes memorable.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
“Elegant and affecting.” —The Times Literary Supplement

“[Banville] shows himself, once again, as one of contemporary literature’s finest and most expert witnesses. . . What enraptures—always—is the writing itself. He holds words up to the light as carefully as any watchmaker or poet.” —The Observer
 
“A literary event to be savored and celebrated. . . . [A] brilliant effort punctuated with words and phrases that make life just a little more enjoyable in the reading. . . . Reading John Banville is truly good for the soul.” —The Free Lance-Star (Fredericksburg)
 
“Stirring. . . Densely alliterative and purposely playful prose.” —Financial Times
 
“Banville, the Nabokov of contemporary lit, can turn even a straightforward comeuppance tale into breathtaking literary art. . . . At times, [his] prose seems drunk with the sheer joy of describing a vibrantly strange world in perfectly knit sentences.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch
 
“The best of literature, rich, lush and moving. . . . Every page is jewelled with startlingly evocative images. [Banville’s] prose is a feast for all the senses. . . . His first-person narration sweeps like a lighthouse beam from present to past and back again, illuminating the dark with a pitiless glare.” —The Independent on Sunday (London)
 
“The reader is carried along by [Ollie’s] wonderfully narcissistic voice.” —The New Yorker
 
“Ingenious and moving. . . . This engrossing and often beautiful novel is a true work of art that rewards careful reading.” —The Daily Telegraph (London)
 
“[Banville] is in love with language, eloquent, witty and a master of illuminating description.” —The Post and Courier (Charleston)
 
“Superb. . . . A remarkable work of literary art: subtle, resonant, whimsical and deeply touching by turns, the work of a great prose stylist with a masterly command of cultural history. . . . [Banville is] the most accomplished stylist writing in English in our time.” —Sydney Morning Herald
 
“Moving, entertaining, edifying and affirmative. . . . The Blue Guitar is a remarkable achievement: the work of a writer who knows not only about pain and eloquence, but about the consolations of learning how to think, to look and to listen.” —The National (UAE)
 
“Banville is such a fine architect of sentences—infusing them with wit and yearning—that the plot hardly matters. For what a brilliant navel-gazer Banville is: he creates loop-de-loops of self-absorbed prose that resonate so deeply about the human condition that they never become tiresome. Bon mots fill these pages, every one essential.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)