It is obvious that John Banville enjoys writing and editing stories, but above all at the expense of the characters he tells with a sharp irony. And he does so, in the recently published Las singularidades (Alfaguara), a novel in which he apparently finished his literary career (at least the one he signed as John Banville) because the author himself assured it. he thinks his “serious work” is closed (that doesn’t include the detective novels he signed under the pseudonym Benjamin Black).
Singularities, says Banville (and it repeats itself on the back cover of the novel, as if it were an advertising slogan), “as if all my books were united in one”, perhaps because he collected himself in a certain way. somehow summarizes the themes and characters in his most important novels.
The story begins with the release of a man who returns to his birth home with a different identity. A flashback to a past where the author “incarnated” into the family of a physicist who revolutionized the world with a hypothesis about time (Brahma theory) in that old house where other people lived. That’s the real hero of the job, time. For the attentive reader will ask whether this character (Freddie Montgomery/Feliz Mordaunt) is returning, or is it the time that returns to reconstruct history, or rather to show us another possibility of history: “If Adam Godley’s theory of Brahma is correct, he “The poor creature Mordaunt killed didn’t die somewhere in the endless tangle of possibilities, and he’s an innocent man. The idea turns his head, and it’s not his first caress. At another point in the work, he will again use this theory to dismantle the concept of identity: “There is no certainty. What we believe today will be refuted tomorrow or improved. Scientists think they are dealing with facts and despise artists and anything that cannot be proven. I don’t care: Next week there will be other scientists who will disprove the facts they are proud of. Nietzsche was right: there are no facts, only interpretations. So the past and the present reunites with a reunion of characters recreating past and unfinished stories.
In Las singularidades, Banville has fun mixing science, philosophy, humor, and complex human relationships (especially those of women, because the female characters in this novel are basically devoted to suffering). And a certain science fiction with dystopian paints, barely outlined in cars that require “salt water” to circulate in a society whose theory is utterly disturbed by the paradigm shift established by Godley, whose theory gives life to everything: “A great spirit of the world passes through things, so that both Both the mountains and the mahogany tables have a beating heart and memories to evoke.”
Banville is having a lot of fun (and entertaining the reader) by making fun of himself in this game. The narrator of the story is William Jaybey (nothing but a parody of the author’s own), who probably sees himself as a god, given his clues, Hermes/Mercury: “I like to go fast. Helmet lowered, talar wings folded, and chlamydia strong pillars of icy white clinging to the body, causing sparks to fly ». This divine character (a bit of a hooligan god, right) allows him to question the reader, make fun of him, withhold information from him, or delay.
John Banville shows us once again that every story can be told as long as it falls into the hands of a great storyteller, and in that case it would be a great story. With an unrivaled narrative technique, Banville excels not only in the novel, but in each chapter, especially in chapters dedicated to presenting people (firsts) that are stories in their own right. The next achievement is the interrelation of this narrative multiplicity with a completely circular main narrative that serves as a common line.
The result is delicious fun, a novel that reads with ease and freshness without being a light novel, quite the opposite. If this is indeed the last “serious work” of John Banville, we must admit that he bids farewell in style, as expected.