The Drowned

Banville, John

Strafford and Quirke #4 and, now fair to say, Phoebe, the latter's daughter.
'How many cinemas were there in Dublin? He thought he must have been to them all over the past year and a half, since the death of his wife. Mostly he went in the afternoons, when there was no one there but himself and a few other vague maimed solitary souls. It was a place to hide, in the rich, dusty darkness. He found it comforting, a little comforting, to sit back and rest in the flickering glow of the giant soot-and-silver images moving before him. He made little effort to keep up with the movie plots. When the opening credits rolled his mind relaxed, like a tensed muscle going slack.
Pictures in Technicolor he avoided. Monochrome was more realistic than all that garish colour. Or easier to look at, anyway. The actresses’ skin had a wonderfully stark, chalky paleness, the stuff of their frocks flared and shimmered with an electric energy, and shed blood was black. …'

Other books by Banville, John

Eclipse

The Untouchable

Prague Pictures

April in Spain

Eclipse