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The Silver Swan: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Benjamin Black
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
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Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 14955
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0805081534
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780805081534
ASIN: 0805081534
Publication Date: March 4, 2008
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Product Description
The inimitable Quirke returns in another spellbinding crime novel, in which a young woman’s dubious suicide sets off a new string of hazards and deceptions Two years have passed since the events of the bestselling Christine Falls, and much has changed for Quirke, the irascible, formerly hard-drinking Dublin pathologist. His beloved Sarah is dead, his surrogate father lies in a convent hospital paralyzed by a devastating stroke, and Phoebe, Quirke’s long-denied daughter, has grown increasingly withdrawn and isolated.
With much to regret from his last inquisitive foray, Quirke ought to know better than to let his curiosity get the best of him. Yet when an almost forgotten acquaintance comes to him about his beautiful young wife’s apparent suicide, Quirke’s “old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden” is roused again. As he begins to probe further into the shadowy circumstances of Deirdre Hunt’s death, he discovers many things that might better have remained hidden, as well as grave danger to those
he loves.
Haunting, masterfully written, and utterly mesmerizing in its nuance, The Silver Swan fully lives up to the promise of Christine Falls and firmly establishes Benjamin Black (a.k.a. John Banville) among the greatest of crime writers.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 "Things that had seemed substantial evaporated into smoke and air...open doors were suddenly slammed shut in his face." March 4, 2008
Mary Whipple (New England)
24 out of 27 found this review helpful
Booker Prize-winning author John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black, features Quirke, a pathologist at the Hospital of the Holy Family in Dublin in this change-of-pace mystery set in 1950s Dublin. Quirke often finds it necessary to go beyond a pathologist's normal duties, and in this second novel in the Quirke series (after Christine Falls), he is visited by Billy Hunt, a casual friend from college, who asks him not to autopsy the body of his wife Deirdre. Deirdre may have drowned herself, and the family wants to avoid conflict with the Catholic Church over her burial. Quirke conducts a secret autopsy, Deirdre gets her church burial, and Quirke then begins his private investigation into her death.
Through flashbacks and shifts in the point of view from Quirke to the other characters involved in Deirdre Hunt's story, her complicated life unfolds. Deirdre, partners in a beauty salon with Leslie White, a roue, has been exploring the "spiritual healing" of Dr. Hakeem Kreutz, a man of German/Indian background who teaches her about his Sufi religion while engaging in secret activities. Inevitably, Deirdre becomes more and more controlled by outsiders, less able to make decisions, less grounded in reality. The involvement of someone close to Quirke makes him even more determined to understand Deirdre's death.
Quirke is an engaging and sympathetic protagonist. Sober for six months when this novel opens, he longs to become closer to his estranged daughter Phoebe, though he recognizes that he has no right to her affection. As Quirke, Deirdre, Phoebe, and the other principal characters reveal their unique points of view, the characterization and the plot expand. Quirke's relationship with Leslie White's estranged wife is sensitively explored in intense, but often delicately rendered, scenes. The nightmarish atmosphere becomes increasingly fraught, however, sometimes developing into kinky sequences as characters give in to the lure of their "dark" sides.
Like Christine Falls, the novel depends to a great extent on coincidence and improbability for its action and resolutions, but Banville's talents, so obvious in his literary novels, are on full display. His descriptions bring Dublin to life, and his recognition of life's ethical subtleties (and the church's creation of many of those conflicts) gives some thematic punch to the novel. As the action leads to a fierce crescendo (and a somewhat ambiguous epilogue), the author also opens several new avenues for future novels. More plot-based, less thematic and less moralistic than Christine Falls, this second mystery will be followed in July 2008 by a new Benjamin Black mystery, The Lemur. n Mary Whipple
Christine Falls: A Novel
The Lemur: A Novel
 I Cannot Separate The Two March 4, 2008
Francis J. Mcinerney (Commonwealth)
16 out of 21 found this review helpful
I have read all the novels published by Mr. Banville and have now read both that he has written under the pseudonym of Benjamin Black. Try as I have I cannot read these books under his pen name without comparing them to the work that carries the name of Mr. Banville. Just for the record I believe Mr. Banville to be one of the finest writers of fiction producing books at present.
"The Silver Swan" is the second in a series of books that center on the primary character of Quirke. This subsequent effort is inferior to the first. The scope of the book is very narrow, coincidence takes the place of great plotting, and even Quirke seems to have trouble deciding who he is and the difference between right and wrong. Except perhaps for the idea they are very flexible and for personal use as opposed to moral absolutes.
These books are not poor but I don't believe they would have gained notice if the author had remained unknown. I never came across these books until they were pointed out to me, and I would not have completed the second if I were not an admirer of Mr. Banville's work. As an author he is wonderful even when his skills are not as apparent as is the case with these books.
He has a third forthcoming work as Mr. Black and that will likely decide if I continue to read these books. For people who have never read a book under the name Banville these books may well work. It would probably be wise to read reviews by people who know only the work of "Mr. Black".
"Have we a responsibility to the dead?" March 23, 2008
E. Bukowsky (NY United States)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
In "The Silver Swan," Benjamin Black brings back the dour and solitary Garret Quirke, who lives in Dublin in the 1950s and works as a pathologist in the Hospital of the Holy Family. Quirke is an alcoholic who avoids drinking except for one bottle of wine that he and his daughter, Phoebe, share at their weekly dinner. Although he is desperately trying to stay sober, he occasionally gets the urge to indulge: "Quirke longed suddenly for a drink, just the one: short, quick, disastrous. For, of course, it would not be just the one." One day, he receives a message from a former acquaintance, Billy Hunt. The body of Billy's much younger wife, Deirdre, has been found after she apparently flung herself off Sandycove Harbor into the waters of Dublin Bay. Billy tells Quirke, "I don't want her cut up," meaning that he does not want a postmortem done on Deirdre. Although Quirke tells Billy, "I'll see what I can do," after he examines the corpse, the pathologist realizes that Deirdre's death is not as straightforward as it seems. Even after the coroner rules that Deirdre drowned accidentally, Quirke decides to look into the matter further.
Black is a literary stylist who revels in long descriptive passages laced with elegant similes and metaphors. He uses an omniscient narrator to delve into each character's innermost thoughts. Even after Deirdre's death, the author utilizes flashbacks to explore the inner demons that drove this tortured woman to engage in reckless behavior. She had been a beautiful girl with reddish gold hair and brilliant blue eyes; sadly, her impoverished and angst-ridden childhood left her scarred for life. Partly to escape her unrelenting misery, she married Billy Hunt, a stolid man nearly sixteen years her senior. He was a salesman who traveled a great deal and the couple was childless; this left Deirdre with a great deal of time on her hands. She eventually met two people who would seal her fate: one was Dr. Hakeem Kreutz, who called himself a "spiritual healer"; the other was Leslie White, a shiftless rogue who exploited gullible young women. Deirdre took White on as her business partner; they opened a beauty salon called "The Silver Swan" and Deirdre renamed herself Laura Swan.
Quirke is a cynic who has seen people at their worst. As a young orphan, he was confined to a workhouse, the Carricklea Industrial School, where the Catholic priests tried to beat religious pieties into him. He also endured some terrible experiences, recounted in the first book of this series, "Christine Falls," that deepened his bitterness and pessimism. Quirke has not forgotten a series of heartbreaking events that left two young women dead, with a "cloak of silence drawn over the affair, leaving [Quirke] standing alone in his indignation." This time, Quirke is determined to exact justice for Deirdre. If she did not kill herself, who did and why? "Quirke was aware of the old itch to cut into the quick of things, to delve into the dark of what was hidden--to know."
The author is a virtuoso at evoking emotion and creating atmosphere; he portrays every room and character with painstaking detail. Readers who take pleasure in vivid word pictures will enjoy "The Silver Swan" far more than those who are fond of fast-moving dialogue and a tight narrative. The characters are meticulously delineated: Quirke has crippling regrets that have mired him in guilt and psychological torpor; Detective Inspector Hackett, an unprepossessing but extremely sharp individual, sees beneath the surface of things far more than Quirke; twenty-three year old Phoebe, Quirke's emotionally stunted daughter, has not forgiven her father for his past betrayals; Englishman Leslie White, who is "handsome, in a pale, jaded sort of way," is a rogue and a freeloader who uses Deirdre shamelessly; Kate is Leslie's long-suffering wife who puts up with her husband's peccadilloes until she cannot stand it anymore.
The novel's major flaws are its weak plot construction and unremittingly dreary tone. The melancholy story meanders quite a bit until it reaches its convoluted and not entirely realistic conclusion. It is highly unlikely that the astute Inspector Hackett would patiently allow Quirke to blunder his way through an investigation of this importance before finally stepping in. In spite of its shortcomings, "The Silver Swan" effectively depicts a stifling era when women with few resources felt unable to make informed and independent choices. In addition, Black powerfully demonstrates how tragedy inevitably follows when immoral and selfish people exploit those who are too vulnerable to protect themselves.
"The past was tied to him like a tin can with a cat's tail." April 19, 2008
Luan Gaines (Dana Point, CA USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The all-too-human Dr. Quirke returns in Benjamin Black's new novel, the circa 1950s Dublin pathologist once more drawn to a case because of obscure circumstances. When the flame-haired Deirdre Hunt's nude body is found on the rocks of the coast, "a long swath of hair coiled around her neck like a thick frond of gleaming seaweed", her bereaved husband, Billy Hunt, Quirke's former school mate, makes an odd request. He begs Quirke to intervene and stop the autopsy on his wife's corpse. Although Quirke cannot comply, giving in to his professional curiosity to find answers, he does his best to aid the grieving husband. With his usual plodding efficiency, Quirke begins an investigation, nibbling at the edges of the woman's life and her relationship with her older husband, Billy, an obscure spiritual healer, Dr. Hakeem Kreutz and her smooth-talking business partner, Leslie White, a silver-haired womanizer who thrives on the attention of females.
That one of White's hapless victims is his daughter, Phoebe, is deeply troubling to the newly sober pathologist, family upheavals still reverberating after two years of trauma and the abuse of power of his one-time mentor. Still grappling with the fact that Quirke is, indeed, her biological father, the girl's relationship with Quirke is strained and tentative. Phoebe is not ready to forgive the adults who have deceived her, particularly her putative father. Now, at twenty-three, Phoebe has closed herself off from the family, clinging to a solitary existence. Until she meets the charismatic and seductive Leslie White. Accidentally stumbling across Phoebe and Leslie White as they leave a pub, Quirke is chagrined, but unable to fathom the connection or what frightening consequences lie in wait for the naive, emotionally bruised Phoebe. Suddenly there is more at stake than the death of a classmate's wife, White a troubling link to Deirdre.
Coming finally to the heart of Deirdre's death and the potential danger for his sheltered daughter, Quirke walks a treacherous path, moving through a mystery that has yet to define the major players, all too aware that his loved one may be in serious jeopardy. Clinging to his newfound sobriety, Quirke is himself on thin ice, plunging into a situation before he has ascertained the danger. It is this anxious, tortured figure that Black (John Banville) captures so skillfully, Quirke an emotionally crippled man with the best of intentions, but few social skills to avoid damaging those he loves. The era dictates much of the characters' reticence, strict social mores clashing with the usual human aberrations and deceits. The subtly nuanced protagonist is a sympathetic figure, painfully unable to find resolution to his life problems, finely honed from the fumbling alcoholic of Christine Falls, a man face to face with the wreckage of his past. His mind clouded by the misjudgments of a lifetime, Quirke is one step behind as events spiral out of control, the sweet oblivion of the bottle calling him. No harsher a judge of himself than Phoebe, Quirke is defenseless in an indifferent world. Luan Gaines/ 2008.
 quirke is no quincy April 9, 2008
T. Scherff (Pebble Beach, CA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I picked up this book at the recommendation of a friend who had read a raving review on it. i must confess upfront that i am not usually a murder mystery reader.
with that said, this book was a huge disappointment. on a basic level it just did not make sense. Quirke, a pathologist who knows that a murder has been committed, tells no one. his testimony at the grand jury hearing is "accidental death". Why? it seems to be mysteriously related to the authors prior novel "christine falls" which also involves Quirke, but is never really explained.
as he investigates the case on his own, we learn about him in surprising dribs and drabs that are simply dropped one liners. most are unrelated to the case, and are not explained to give a full character analysis. The murder mystery involves drugs, extra marital affairs, pornography, and blackmail.
at the end, quirke, our hero, finally tells the police what he has found only to have the police tell him he is completely wrong and inform him of what really happened. there is absolutely no indication as to how they learned all of this or how our hero missed all this.
as a who dunnit it was ok, mainly because you are being mislead by our hero who has absolutely no idea what has happened.
what happened to the great detectives like sherlock holmes who can discern facts from virtually nothing? Quirke is literally incompetent. why would a reader want to follow him around in order to sole the murder?
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