Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Writing, Less than Believable Plot
Review: "Shroud" is one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read and, unlike some authors, Banville doesn't sacrifice plot or character for the sake of style."Shroud" is the story of Axel Vander, "master of the lie." For many years Axel has posed as someone he is not but, at long last, his past is catching up with him in the form of the emotionally scarred and damaged Cass Cleve, who Vander arranges to meet in Turin, Italy, home of the famous "Shroud of Turin." It seems fitting to me that Cass and Axel meet in Turin since the shroud is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated on mankind. I didn't care for either Cass or Axel. Both are quite unlikable, however, that wasn't the problem for me. I found some of the happenings in this book too much of a stretch; too unbelievable. The relationship that develops between Cass and Axel is just one such point. I can see Cass desiring that relationship, but I can't, for the life of me, see Axel letting it happen. It was simply "out of character" for him. That said, "Shroud" is a beautiful book that will certainly appeal to lovers of literary and very serious fiction far more than to those who like a strongly plotted book. The reader should also be warned that this is a very melancholic and tragic book. I liked this aspect of "Shroud" but I feel that many readers will feel depressed at the book's end. If you can tolerate reading about characters you can't like, if you don't need a strong plotline and if you are really willing to suspend your disbelief, then I recommend "Shroud" highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Review of 'Shroud'
Review: 'The name, my name, is Axel Vander, on that much I insist.' In one line, Banville skilfully weaves an intricate plot in 'Shroud'. A novel about concealed identities and tragic lives, 'Shroud' begins with the arrival of a mysterious letter. Vander meets the writer of the letter - a young woman called Cass Cleave - and embarks on a relationship with her. Blood, violence, sex, alcohol and death are wrapped in warped distortions of time and space, as well as dream, memory and reality. Part surreal, part gothic, 'Shroud' is beautifully written and skilfully crafted. It is very rich in detail, even to the point of being both excessive and obsessive. However, it requires some patience to plough through hundreds of pages of interior monologue through the eyes of a weary and dishonest academic. The pace is a bit too slow at some parts of the book. There are slight twists towards the end in spite of one or two somewhat predictable outcomes. While I do not really like the book (due to personal preferences and my mismatches with the characters, plot etc.), 'Shroud' is good writing and I strongly recommend it as what I might call modern-gothic literature (if such a phrase might be used). In my opinion, it could have been more poetic if the Shroud in the novel could function as a force to drive the narrative rather than to just exist somewhat as a metaphor and as a not-so-meaningful object in the plot. This book is recommended for all who enjoy serious fiction. Adults would probably enjoy it much more than young readers.
Rating:
Summary: Tough to Rate works of JOHN BANVILLE'S
Review: 3.9 First, I want to point out that I dislike a book that requires a lot of reading efforts, but gets very little story at the end. SHROUD is such a book. And nevertheless, SHROUD is quite an IMPRESSIVE book to read. It takes me more than three weeks of hard working (I mean slow reading time) to finish it. The last book took me this much efforts was Salman Rushdie¡¯s ¡°THE SANTONIC VERSES¡± -a book after a strenuous start, I had to put it down for more than six months, and only returned to it recently from Chapter 2. SHROUD is John Banville¡¯s second book I have read after 'GHOST', and like many readers before me, any book from Banville is a treat for regardless the story and content, readers are given the chance to sample possibly the finest written literature from one of the world¡¯s most stylistically elaborate writers in writing today. This book is about deception, deceit, false identity, fraud and cruelty. In my opinion, One reads SHROUD for the quality of writing instead of story (same may also apply to other books of Banville¡¯s), for John Banville writes metafiction, which in form, concerned with the nature of perception, the conflict between imagination and reality... of verbosity and elements may serve to hinder a story¡¯s natural-flow. You don¡¯t suppose get a straight story as you may get from reading books written by different authors. Reading SHROUD, you read page after page monologues, thoughts-process and long-wind sentences. And such trying exertion (verbosity) is fully expected from a philosophical novelist like Banville, while his writing flirts with both postmodernism and magic-realism. SHROUD is saved from becoming abstruse by its sheer virtuosity of narrative and elegance of style, and in retrospect, understand the thinking process and motives (through maze and picking fragments) helped in building the pensive storylines - an outstanding sustainable quality, I assume (from reading 2 books of his), must be assembled in all of John Banville¡¯s books. Books from John Banville are meant to allure and dazzle readers through long and dense sentences-rich with lyrics and self indulgence -one tends to pay less heed to the story. Coming to rating this book from 1 to 5 - a most daunting job for anyone who is dare to evaluate Banville¡¯s impressiveness and panache. I adopt a Point of Average System I specifically designed for Banville: Quality of Writing: 5;
Story and Content: 3;
Character Development: 4;
Suspense and Tension Building: 3.5;
Depth of Story: 4. All in all, an average score of (5+3+4+3.5+4)/5 = 3.9 does seam to be a reasonable score to settle for this book.
For all its merits and imperfections, language aficionados will find this book ¡®a labor of love¡¯ -as compare in my case of much exertion on the ¡®LABOR¡¯ but left ¡®NO LOVE¡± to spare in the end. No doubt I will return to John Banville again for ¡°BOOK OF EVIDENCE¡± and/or ¡°The UNTOUCHABLE¡±, regardless whatever being said, John Banville is such an exceptional prose writer and he is certainly in a class of his own. While he is often being criticized for wearing his heart on his sleeves, but alternatively, one can always go for James Joyce on account of substance and greatness, but it will be an ultimate challenge for anyone who wishes to take on such a formidable task. As for me, I feel much safer to stay on with Banville for my past experience in reading ¡°A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man¡±(many consider it the lightest piece among Joyce¡¯s works) was already proven way beyond my grasp.
Rating:
Summary: " Shroud" by John Banville
Review: A wonderfully written book with an interesting plot and an even more interesting narrative-threads woven contiguously of events in the first person and third person.. The main character, Axel Vander is not Axel Vander. He has unabashedly usurped the identity of another and has lived the lie for over fifty years. He is a master of the untruth ejaculated willingly and is a pathological liar who is an avowed recidivist. He is smug in his pride that he has shrugged off the past when a student's letter arrests his attention to the fact that somebody knows....
His mental anguish, his delirious imagination, his splenetic thoughts are all masterfully recorded by the author. The book is about deceit, sorrow, treachery and sheer selfishness. The writing veers between the indulgent and the catatonic-reading bliss !!!
Saved from being recondite only by the strength of its narrative and the verbal elegance of Banville. Difficult language, prose-it must be said . A long time since I've reached for the dictionary while reading a work of fiction-some words stench the free flow of ideas and thoughts and that is by far the only flaw with the book. Overall, an 8 on 10. Really quite good !
Rating:
Summary: "All my life I have lied."
Review: Axel Vander admits in the opening pages of SHROUD that he is a liar, that he has lied his entire life. Looking back on his career as a professor and his youth in war-torn Europe it is clear (or is it?) that one lie has led to another. He has even lied to the extent that he begins to believe his own lies. As a result, the reader doesn't know whether to believe anything he says. Is his narration reality or simply a product of his egotistical imagination? You be the judge. SHROUD begins with the elder Axel after receiving a letter from a woman in Antwerp, Belgium who claims to know his secrets. Axel is uptight and restless as the prospect of the truth being uncovered makes him very unsettled. He immediately books a flight from California to Turin, Italy to meet this mysterious woman. What follows is an ambiguous journey of these two individuals as they delve into the past and reveal their own convictions. The prose of John Banville is a marvel and is admirable. It is easy to become hooked after only reading several pages. However, after the first half of the book my interest waned as the narration became more strange and mystifying. I quickly lost interest in the plight of Axel Vander. He certainly is an unlikable character and the mysterious woman was clearly suffering from some form of mental disease. The story of these two individuals didn't do anything for me. In short, SHROUD started out fantastic but soon fizzled into obscurity. 3/5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Superman
Review: Axel Vander, the narrator of John Banville's "Shroud," is the latest and, according to Banville, will be the last of his "self-hating, murderous" central characters, the kind that careen drunkenly through polite society. Vander is an anti-hero with nothing going for him. He is a liar, a thief, a charlatan, an academic in-fighter, an exploiter of women. He is even a critic. "Professor Vander," mocks his Italian host, "holds that every text conceals a shameful secret, the hidden understains left behind by the author in his necessarily bad faith, and which it is the critic's task to nose out. Is that not so, Axel?" (222-23) The reviewer who seeks to parse "Shroud," to expose the secret of its architecture, thus risks sounding painfully, ironically silly. Here goes anyway. Set in Turin, where Nietzsche became mad, and the Ligurian coast, where Shelley drowned, "Shroud" is a character study of Vander, a Jewish refugee who assumes the identity of a dead partisan in pre-War Belgium, rises to fame on the faculty of an American university, and at the end of his life confronts, and is confronted by, a dreamy young woman who threatens to unmask him. Told mostly in first-person from Vander's point of view and in third-person from his accuser's, "Shroud" is a meditation on death, truth, identity and self, good and evil, social covenants, and spirit, in which Nietsche's Zoroaster, Christ's resurrection, commedia dell'arte, and a rejection of rationalism are all somehow conflated. (Am I sounding silly yet?) As a character, Vander lacks the comedic, self-deprecating charm of, say, Freddie Montgomery, the anti-hero of Banville's "The Book of Evidence," so there is little lightness in his voyage of discovery ending in death. (On the other hand, I suppose, neither is there much lightness in "Moby Dick" or "Crime and Punishment," to which "Shroud" self-consciously refers.) Vander is not the sort of character Graham Greene would invite to dinner. However, his voice is always full and multi-layered, in a nineteenth-century prose style, and the novel's minor characters - an Italian academic and his family, a former lover dying of cancer, hotel employees, and caffè patrons - are quirky and memorable. Words, even words that no one else has ever heard of or used, seem to spill out of Banville's brain effortlessly, and like Faulkner or Proust he has a master's ability to connect the dots in long rolling rhythms. I recommend this book. Robert E. Olsen
Rating:
Summary: Great journey...lush prose and keen characterisations
Review: If you approach this book with a mind open to the gentle unlayering of character as opposed to a rigidly structured adventure yarn (which to me at times feels like it may track as such) you should find it a rewarding read.
Though prosaic to the point of ethereality (is that a word ?) at times, it does not overindulge although sometimes it does threaten to lift off the page and drift away - Banville always however keeps the reader reigned in to the weft of the story with a lyrical virtousity that leaves you in awe and delight in equal measure.
This book is like others I have read by John Banville in that it is a book of ideas and an opportunity to feel yourself stepping into a world in a way that is so visceral that it leaves other books feeling a bit underdone - like the author isn't trying hard enough - or maybe trying too hard ;)
Rating:
Summary: Banville continues darkly ...
Review: In Eclipse, Banville's previous novel, we met the actor Alex Cleave, coming to terms with might conventionally be termed a mid-life crisis. Informing his woes was his fraught relationship with his deranged daughter Cass, who remained offscreen but permeated the story. Now Banville moves Cass to the center stage, where she has crossed paths with the mendacious Axel Vander, patterned loosely after Paul de Man and Louis Althusser (note the anagram of Alex -- these are different sides of the same essential personality), and the story moves into a darker key. Banville is difficult in the best possible way, demanding attention and involvement from his readers. But the rewards are great and his prose glitters and his characters resonate long after the book is set down. Axel is his darkest monster yet, beside whom Freddie Montgomery (The Book of Evidence) is a boy scout. But he's afforded something resembling redemption -- albeit Banville-style, and this work will echo in your mind for a long time. The only downside is it's another 3 or 4 long years until his next -- he promises something light but don't count on it!
Rating:
Summary: Style over substance.
Review: John Banville has a gift when it comes to writing prose. His words, his phrases, even entire scenes are lush, poetic, and even operatic in their beauty. He also draws his characters with great skill, illuminating their inner desires while still surprising you with some of their actions.
However. The story is boring. It's awfully hard to follow an unlikeable old man on a journey to Turin, (by the way this allusion to the "shroud" of lifes little deceits seems a bit heavy-handed to me,) when you don't particularly care if he gets caught, if he maintains his false identity or if he gets hit by a car. The beauty of the individual scenes that Banville describes just weren't enough to keep me interested in the story as a whole. And that's a shame, because marry style like this to an equally captivating plot and you would have yourself a book for the ages.
Rating:
Summary: Banville epitomizes the literary fiction
Review: Shroud, like other novels by John Banville, is beautifully written against a vividly limned background. The main character, Axel Vander, is conceited, obnoxious, and goes out of his way to offend the readers. He identifies himself as a masterly liar who lies about almost everything, even when there is no need and even when the plain truth will be so much more effective in maintaining the pretence. I will not be surprised at his unreliable narration, shameless boasting and impudent lies as he spatters out the tale of his life. The shocking secret is that Axel Vander is not the real Axel Vander but has ineluctably appropriated the identity of an actor. He has impudently maintained the deception for over half a century since the time of danger during World War II. He must have thought he had shaken off his far past and wiped out all vestige of his old identity until the letter of Cass Cleave confronts him with irrefutable proof of his imposture. Banville devotes almost the whole novel chronicling Axel Vander's life, his delirious reflections, his reminiscence of his wife, the disturbing details of his impregnable alibi - all the minute heart-pricking details that permits Cass Cleave to privy the impostor's secret. Banville has written a beautifully crafted thriller, with meticulous prose, that prepares readers for the dreadful moment - the meeting of Axel Vander and his nemesis from whom he is so overwrought to buy silence for fear of being exposed. The prose is incredulously lyrical, rich, and refined - so much more compressed and yet detailed any prose in most contemporary fiction. Banville is one of the few living author who can maintain the flow of a novel with a taut sense while flourishing different themes as well as exploring and exposing, delineating the intricacies of human emotions. The book leaves us in awe of the marvelous silence with which human tolerate lies. Once again Banville has epitomized literary fiction with a twisting intrigue, which is unfortunately exiguous in the market now. 2004 (12) © MY
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