David Jays
Shades of Gray
Alexander Cleave is an ageing Irish actor making his film debut, improbably cast in the lead role of a major movie. But this belated plum doesn’t seem of overriding interest to him. Cleave’s consuming concern is the sumptuous memory of his first affair, a giddy, secret relationship when he was growing up in rural Ireland during the Fifties. At fifteen, he enjoyed a heady summer of love with Mrs Gray, his best friend’s mother. It lasted just five months – ‘one hundred and fifty-four days and nights, to be exact’ – but its effects were catastrophic, and have haunted him ever since.
John Banville’s novel is full of hauntings. Cleave’s daughter, Cass, killed herself some years before, and while his wife roams the house in nocturnal fury, he himself feels keenly the unfinished business with his daughter: he has ‘not so much lost as been eluded by a loved one’. Even the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'There is a difference between a doctor who writes medical treatises and a doctor who writes absurdist fiction. Do we want our heart surgeon to be an anti-realist?'
Joanna Kavenna peruses Iain Bamforth's 'Scattered Limbs: A Medical Dreambook'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/trust-me-philosopher
How did Uwe Johnson, the German writer who was friends with Hannah Arendt and Max Frisch, end up living out his days in the town of Sheerness, Kent?
https://literaryreview.co.uk/estuary-german
You only have a week left to take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/