Birchwood (18 page)

Read Birchwood Online

Authors: John Banville

Tags: #Country Life, #Fiction, #Ireland, #Country life - Ireland, #General, #History, #Europe, #Literary

BOOK: Birchwood
7.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

THE BOOK OF EVIDENCE

Freddie Montgomery is a highly cultured man, a husband and father living the life of a dissolute exile on a Mediterranean island. When a debt comes due and his wife and child are held as collateral, he returns to Ireland to secure funds and commits murder. The novel unfurls his attempt to present evidence of the events that lead to the murder he committed merely because he could. Fiction/Literature/978-0-375-72523-4

THE SEA

In this novel about love, loss, and the unpredictable power of memory, John Banville introduces us to Max Morden, a middle-aged Irishman who has gone back to the seaside town where he spent his summer holidays as a child to cope with the recent loss of his wife. It is also a return to the place where he met the Graces, the well-heeled family with whom he experienced the strange suddenness of both love and death for the first time. Fiction/Literature/978-1-4000-9702-9

THE UNTOUCHABLE

Victor Maskell, formerly of British Intelligence, has been unmasked as a Russian agent and subjected to a disgrace that is almost a kind of death. As Maskell retraces his torturous path from his recruitment at Cambridge to the airless upper regions of the establishment, we discover a figure of manifold doubleness: Irishman and Englishman; husband, father, and lover of men; betrayer and dupe.

Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-76747-3

Also available:

Athena
, 978-0-679-73685-1

Doctor Copernicus
,978-0-679-73799-5

Eclipse
, 978-0-375-72529-6

Ghosts
, 978-0-679-75512-8

Kepler
, 978-0-679-74370-5

Shroud
, 978-0-375-72530-2

VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL

Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com

Copyright
©
1973 by John Banville

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents either are the product of the author's imagination
or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file
at the Library of Congress.

eISBN: 978-0-307-49413-9

www.vintagebooks.com

v3.0

Other books

The Defiant One by Danelle Harmon
Moonlight on Monterey Bay by Sally Goldenbaum
The Lion of Justice by Jean Plaidy
Island of Mermaids by Iris Danbury
Saint Camber by Katherine Kurtz
The Wind-Witch by Susan Dexter
Village Horse Doctor by Ben K. Green