Christine Falls: A Novel
Picador - Picador
Release date: 2008-01-22
Paperback
Author: Benjamin Black
American Historical Fiction, Mystery And Suspense Fiction, Fiction, Fiction - Mystery/ Detective, Mystery/Suspense, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General, Medical, Mystery & Detective - General, Historical - General
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Christine Falls: A Novel
Date undefinedWhen John Banville decided to write a straightforward mystery novel he adopted the pen name of Benjamin Black. This gave him permission to write faster, and be more interested in a plot driven story. "Christine Falls" is the first of these novels, and despite the different approach, the old Banville is, thankfully, still evident.
Banville's signature attention to the details of weather - passing clouds, changing light, the effect of mist, sleet, and cold weather - makes the book worth reading on its own. Set largely in 1950's Dublin, there is a conviviality in the indoor scenes which comes largely from the contrast to the weather outdoors. The main character, Quirke, is a pathologist who stumbles onto a plot involving the distribution of unwanted orphans to Boston. The scheme involves his close family, and he must decide whether or not to proceed, as he is warned off at all levels.
While the story is indeed plot driven, it it not at the expense of Banville's exquisite attention to descriptive detail, his evocation of place, his uncanny ability to conjure up a scene and a mood through description of smells. The ending of the story is frenetic, and somewhat improbable, but this is still a book to be savored and enjoyed.
Christine Falls: A Novel
Date undefinedWidower, moody, broody, drunken Garret Quirke is in charge of the pathology department in the basement of Dublin's Holy Family Hospital. It's the 1950's, Ireland is steeped in Catholic tradition, but when Quirke wanders downstairs from a going away party and finds his step-brother/brother-in-law Dr. Malachy Griffin (they married sisters) messing around with the cause of death of Christine Falls, he is curious.
It turns out Mal altered the cause of death, so that it didn't say she died in child birth. Quirke thinks this is more than his brother protecting the reputation of a fallen woman and though he has no authority and is warned off, he investigates anyway. He is an obstinate bulldog who will get at the truth, no matter what is done to him, no matter how it will affect his family. If they are destroyed, so be it, truth will out.
I liked Quirke and I liked this dark book where nobody really comes out a winner. Many, myself included, will compare this with the works of Black's alter ego, John Banville. Okay, Banville's his real name, everybody knows this, but Black's the real writer. Yes, yes, I know Banville's won the Man Booker Prize. But Black is the one winning the readers, because Black's a better writer. I read this book in one night, it took me a week to get through The Sea. Yes, I know it's beautifully written and only a couple hundred pages, but I just kept setting it down. I simply didn't care for the characters or the story the way I did that of Quirke and crew. But, of course, I had no choice, because this book grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go till I finished.
Christine Falls: A Novel
Date undefinedInspired by the Inspector Maigret novels of French author Georges Simenon, Irish novelist and Booker Prize winner ("The Sea") John Banville took up crime writing as he was approaching 60, adopting a new name, Benjamin Black, and a new approach to writing.
Black, he says, is more of a storyteller than Banville and a lot faster as a writer. Like Simenon, Black aims for a direct, pared-down style. Readers may find his noirish books more reminiscent of Ian Rankin and Ken Bruen than Simenon, but the characters share a certain enigmatic mystery.
Black's first two crime novels are set in 1950s Dublin. His protagonist is consultant pathologist Quirke, a determined loner, alcoholic and stubborn contrarian ("...in secret Quirke prized his loneliness as a mark of some distinction."). He lives in the apartment Banville himself had lived in the 1960s as a struggling writer. Though Quirke is not struggling, the dingy apartment suits his bleak outlook. An orphan, scarred by his years in a regimented, brutal Catholic orphanage, he had been eventually rescued and taken in by Judge Garret Griffin, still a prominent Dublin figure.
Quirke is a widower who enjoys a certain guilty relief in a continuing grief for his wife, who died 20 years before in childbirth. She was a lively, compelling woman but he had always preferred her sister, Sarah, who had married the Judge's son, Mal, now a prominent obstetrician. Quirke enjoys an indulgent-uncle relationship with their mildly rebellious daughter Phoebe, 20.
As "Christine Falls" begins, Quirke, very drunk, stumbles upon Mal in Quirke's office in the morgue, writing in a file. It's the file of a young woman, said to have died of an embolism, unusual in one so young. Quirke soon discovers she had worked in the judge's household and she died, not of an embolism, but in childbirth.
Unwed motherhood in deeply conservative, Catholic 1950s Dublin was a catastrophe, a shame from which there was no recovery. Secrecy was the only recourse. Quirke, unsure of his own motives, doggedly traces the life and death of Christine Falls, disregarding Mal's warnings, unearthing secrets that shock even him.
Assault and murder punctuate the course of his careening, often drunken pursuit of truth, which, we all know, will lead to nothing good.
Black brings a gritty, repressed, downtrodden Dublin to claustrophobic life. Quirke's fear and loathing of Mother Church is palpable. When he first confronts Mal with all he has learned it's in the hospital chapel, a place he generally avoids. "The Holy Family chapel was small, without pillars or side alcoves, so that there was no avoiding the beady eye of the little oil lamp with the ruby-red globe that burned perpetually before the tabernacle."
While the novel is character rather than plot driven, Black manages to contain plenty of suspense in a tale that exposes the underbelly of power and social constructs as well as personal conflicts. The characters, while intensely explored, retain their essential privacy. Beautifully written and evocative of a bygone Dublin, Black's debut fully satisfies. Readers will wish Quirke a long career.
