Product Description

One long, languid midsummer’s day, the Godleys gather at the family home of Arden to attend their father’s bedside. Adam, the elder child, and Petra, only nineteen, find that relations with their mother, Ursula, and their dying father, old Adam, are as strained as ever. Adam’s relationship with his wife, Helen, seems too on the brink of collapse and Petra, fragile and deeply troubled, finds deepest relief in her own pain.

The gods, those mischievous spirits, watch silently, flitting through this dark ménage. Unable to resist intervening in the mortals’ lives, they spy, tease and seduce, all the while looking upon the antics of their playthings with a mixture of mild bafflement and occasional envy.

Old Adam – husband, father and esteemed mathematician – has made his name grappling with the concept of the infinite. His own time on earth seems to be running out, and his mind runs to disquieting memories. Little does he realize, as he lies mute but alert in the Sky room, that the gods are capable of interposing themselves in the action, and even changing time itself when it pleases them.

Overflowing with a bawdy humour, and a deep and refreshing clarity of insight, The Infinities is at once a gloriously earthy romp and a delicately poised, infinitely wise look at the terrible and wonderful plight of being human. In electrifying prose, Banville captures the aching intensity, the magic and enchantment, of a single midsummer’s day in Arden.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1813 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
'Full of dark humour and written with a deft eye for detail.' --GQ

'A superb novel about maths and myths...a Beethoven string quartet of a novel. It deals with huge ideas - plenty of them - and in doing so, breaks new ground in its own medium...a masterpiece of a book' --Daily Telegraph

'While at the heart of the book lies death, shrouded in some exquisitely cast sentences and myriad cultural references, this novel also has levity, even comedy. There's a cast of supporting characters worthy of a modern-day Shakespeare...Banville, already esteemed for the brilliance of his language, proves in this novel to have mastery, too, of these many colliding universes.' --Independent on Sunday

'Dark, funny and delightful.'
--Times

'A playful reision of his family territort, its tone one of sportive, bawdy metaphysics during a single midsummer day... maths as metaphor, a poetic vision of boundless possibilty.' --Literary Review

'Banville's very different new novel is a more engaging and affective work (than 'The Sea')... a family saga which doubles as an investigation into ideas about space and time...Readers of John Banville's fiction are always the beneficiaries of his style.He writes musical ,agile prose.In this book he has liberated his gift from its customary Gothic context and applied it to a tale of love and memory in the summer sun(and rain).It makes a good fit.' --Daily Express

`I have read two outstanding books this summer. This is one of them. It seems to me very odd indeed that this book is not, according to the Booker judges, one of the 12 best books of the year. It may be one of the 12 best books of the decade, or even of several decades. . . . This is unequivocally a work of brilliance.'
--Justin Cartwright, Spectator

`John Banville's beautifully crafted new novel is a mischievous creation . . . Banville remains a gleeful trickster, but one with such a breathtaking turn of phrase that it's a pleasure to be so befuddled . . . this darkly comic and fearsomely clever creation is a heady delight' --Metro, Book of the Week ****

`A moving deathbed drama . . . superlative literary fiction'
--Marie Claire

`The arch intelligence and precise delicacy of his sentences, the occasionally arcane diction, the unsentimental authorial eye . . . a marriage of classical and Shakesperian comedy'
--Irish Times

'Intriguing . . . superb writing' --Sunday Times

'Often a funny book - and one written in such saturatedly beautiful, luminous prose that every page delights, startles and uplifts.'
--Times

'A superb novel about maths and myths . . . a Beethoven string quartet of a novel. It deals with huge ideas - plenty of them - and in doing so, breaks new ground in its own medium . . . like Beethoven, the material he uses is daring . . . The learning is impressive without oppressing the reader . . . [a] self-aware, mind expanding novel . . . gorgeous words and searching questions . . . a masterpiece of a book
--Independent on Sunday

'A beautiful, immersive read. Banville's latest novel is as smart and satisfying as ever. Lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious . . . Savour this' --Sunday Business Post

'His painterly style of prose is here with all its usual power . . . uncannily accurate . . . Banville and The Infinities are in a league of their own, an Olympian one, even.' --Irish Mail on Sunday

'Lyrical' --Esquire

'Deliciously dotty . . . the book radiates happiness . . . such is the exuberance of the writing that the novel does not feel like a hotch-potch . . a good deal of [Banville's] pleasure communicates itself to the reader . . . the human comedy is illuminated from a charming and unusual perspective ' --Sunday Telegraph

'Beautiful'
--Evening Standard

'Banville is a celebrant, an observer, an artist, the self-appointed god of an imaginary universe'
--Herald

'Luminous . . . intensely realised but also distanced through mischievous planes of refraction. The atmosphere is strong but elusive . . . always bathed in a great calm light.' --Observer

'On to this elegiac Anglo-Irish scene, evocative of Elizabeth Bowen and William Trevor, Banville mischievously doodles his conceit . . . the presence of the gods ensures a more lively tone of mercurial ebullience. Yet the real pleasure of The Infinities lies in the gods appreciation for "the enduring intensity of mere things" - a Hellenistic relish for life and its details, both cosmic and homely. Banville's breathtaking gift for simile is also to the fore . . . [an] often brilliant novel' --Financial Times

'John Banville's latest novel is good fun, to say the least' --Times Literary Supplement

'His painterly style of prose is here with all its usual power . . . compared to other contemporary Irish fiction, Banville and The Infinities are in a league of their own, an Olympian one, even.' --Irish Mail on Sunday

'A delicious fiction . . . A beautiful, immersive read, Banville's latest novel is as smart and satisfying as ever. Lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious . . . Savour this.'
--Sunday Business Post

'An ambitious work exploring the big questions . . . beautifully written and insightful . . . an impressive achievement' --Hot Press

'Poses age-old questions about time and space, and what it means to be mortal.' --Glasgow Evening Times

'From the very first pages of The Infinities a new more "fun" Banville emerges . . . Ribald and pithy, you can see Banville coming through in the voice of the gods. He is having fun playing with his characters in the same way the gods are having fun playing with the mortals . . . very entertaining . . . very accessible . . . it works.' --Gorey/New Ross/Wexford/Enniscorthy Echo

'The literary impulse is tempered by humour, urbanity and a spirited approach . . . a celestial-cum-earthly comedy, with unsettling undertones . . . the central drift of The Infinities is to celebrate the world and its infinity of riches. The interwoven texture of the novel, and its unimpeachable poise, are what gives point to its randomness of incident.' --Sunday Tribune

'A mischievous creation . . . this darkly comic and clever concoction is a delight.'
--Metro

'Scintillating' --Prospect

'Compelling . . . beguiling'
--Patrick Gale, Books Quarterly

'For the sheer beauty of the language and extravagance of the imagery Banville's tale of a decaying family in Ireland, all set in one day, is unrivalled this year.'
--Justin Cartwright, Book of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

'The writing is superbly well-wrought and frequently amusing.'
--Tablet

'The Infinities is John Banville's best book, I think. The prose is honed, as always, and every word matters, but the book breathes with humour and shines with a lovely discursive wink.'
--Colum McCann, Observer Books of the Year

Review
'The turning of an omniscient, omnipotent narrator into a god has...been fulfilled so well.'

About the Author

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of fourteen previous novels including The Sea, which won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.

Customer Reviews

The Infinities
One long, languid midsummer's day, the Godleys gather at the family home of Arden to attend their father's bedside. Adam, the elder child, and Petra, only nineteen, find that relations with their mother, Ursula, and their dying father, old Adam, are as strained as ever. Adam's relationship with his wife, Helen, seems too on the brink of collapse and Petra, fragile and deeply troubled, finds deepest relief in her own pain.

This book moves at a languid pace. There is very little action and the story takes place over one day. The novel is well written in a very descriptive and fluid style and focuses on the thoughts and memories of the principal characters. The mythological gods of Ancient Greece flit in and out of the story albeit in a very limited way. The events of the day are narrated by Hermes, and Zeus makes an appearance but for me it felt as if they were members of the audience at a theatrical performance providing the occasional interactive experience. There is also an atmosphere of a country house from the past: an old world long gone viewed nostalgically.
Overall, if you like well written descriptive novels within a family setting, I would recommend this.

This book will divide opinion
Infinities is a satirical, philosophical and very clever book. It was well worth the time to read, but I can't help thinking it's missing something. And I suspect that it will strongly divide opinion - you may read it and think it is a masterpiece, but you may well read it and be left cold.

Let me try to explain.

Firstly, the book has several passages which deal with some of the deepest human and metaphysical questions: what is it to be alive or dead? What is love? What is the nature of reality?

With a philosophy background I hugely enjoyed these bits - for example early on in the book one of the main characters asks "How can he be a self and others others since the others too are selves, to themselves?" Good stuff.

Secondly, one of the narrators is the mythical god Hermes. In my opinion Banville executes this narration perfectly, and the passages where Hermes describes humanity from the perspective of a mischievous and ever-so-slightly envious deity are just brilliant. The author brings remarkable insight into the plight of us mere mortals, and it is a delight to read.

For me, these two aspects of the book are enough to make it well worth the read. And I would imagine that some readers will fall in love with the descriptive passages in the book - giving it five stars and calling it a masterpiece.

Yet while it's a collection of impressive insights and clever literary devices, somehow the sum seems less than the parts. It didn't help that the characters failed to excite me much. This is why I couldn't give it five stars, much as I think the book probably deserves them.

I haven't read The Sea, or indeed any other of Banville's work, but I have heard similar criticisms of his previous Booker-prize winning effort. If you read The Sea and couldn't see what all the fuss was about, consider giving this book a miss. However, if you were one of the many readers who loved The Sea, or if the idea of a disconsolate deity messing about with the nature of the universe has whet your appetite, then I'd recommend you give The Infinities a try. You might just love it.

A very, very strange book
I have read almost all of John Banville's work, going back to Kepler in 1990, so I thought I knew him as a novelist, but this is a very strange new book indeed. Narrated by the god Hermes, "The Infinities" concerns a house in Ireland where the mathematician Adam Godley lies dying. So far so good - a family with tensions and dramas, much like those in The Sea, with that weird divine twist on the story-telling.

But almost nothing in this book is as it seems. This is not our own universe - it is one where hydrogen fusion powers everything, where Goethe is a footnote in history, and where Wallace, not Darwin, is the discoverer of the theory of evolution. The gods continually intervene in the action, which is sometimes frustrating: just as you begin to get into the narrative, Hermes buts in yet again, leaving me sometimes wanting to yell at him 'shut up'. Then the dying man himself begins contributing to the narrative from his coma, and then the reader is left to doubt whether the 'gods' are actually a figment of his fraying imagination. It is utterly disconcerting and doesn't make for a comfortable read.

This is a highly experimental narrative and I can imagine many readers getting halfway through and just giving up in disgust! The ending is also extremely strange... and yet all the way through the writing is of such a quality - beautiful passages of description, moments of great insight into human nature, and I can imagine vividly the characters I've just spent two days reading about. Not one for the tube though. A really, really odd book.