Banville as Black

Interesting piece in today's Metro about John Banville's new novel. The Silver Swan is a break from his usual literary output. It's a thriller, based on something that happened in his local Dublin neighbourhood. Writing as Benjamin Black, Banville has set the novel in the 1950s, exposing the dark side of Ireland, where church and state ruled with a grimness rivalling regimes behind the Iron Curtain. Says Banville,

"Up until the mid-1950s, Ireland was absolutely lost in permafrost. We were ruled by an iron ideology and there were some utterly dreadful people in charge."

Adopting a different style seems to have helped Banville get back on track with the style which won him the Booker in 2005 for The Sea.

"...I wrote the Black books, which are all about character and plot, to give myself a bit of a kick. "

It seems to have worked - he's 6000 words into a new Banville novel, although he says that, for a writer, all that matters is writing the perfect line:

"Each time I sit down to write, I think of Bart Simpson inscribing on the blackboard "I must write a better sentence." And I'd sacrifice anything to get a sentence right."