Mrs. Osmond (Banville)

Mrs. Osmond 
John Banville, 2017
Knopf Doubleday
384 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780451493422


Summary
From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea, a dazzling and audacious new novel that extends the story of Isabel Archer, the heroine of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, into unexpected territory.

Isabel Archer is a young American woman, swept off to Europe in the late nineteenth century by an aunt who hopes to round out the impetuous but naïve girl's experience of the world.

When Isabel comes into a large, unexpected inheritance, she is finagled into a marriage with the charming, penniless, and — as Isabel finds out too late — cruel and deceitful Gilbert Osmond, whose connection to a certain Madame Merle is suspiciously intimate.

On a trip to England to visit her cousin Ralph Touchett on his deathbed, Isabel is offered a chance to free herself from the marriage, but nonetheless chooses to return to Italy.

Banville follows James's story line to this point, but Mrs. Osmond is thoroughly Banville's own: the narrative inventiveness; the lyrical precision and surprise of his language; the layers of emotional and psychological intensity; the subtle, dark humor. And when Isabel arrives in Italy — along with someone else! — the novel takes off in directions that James himself would be thrilled to follow. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Aka—Benjamin Black
• Birth—December, 1945
• Where—Wexford, Ireland, UK
• Education—St. Peter's College, Wexford
• Awards—Booker Prize (more below)
• Currently—lives in Dublin, Ireland

John Banville is an Irish novelist and journalist. His novel The Book of Evidence (1989) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He sometimes writes under the pseudonym Benjamin Black.

Banville is known for his precise and cold prose style, Nabokovian inventiveness, and for the dark humour of his generally arch narrators. His stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has".

Background
Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland. His father worked in a garage and died when Banville was in his early thirties; his mother was a housewife. He is the youngest of three siblings; his older brother Vincent is also a novelist and has written under the name Vincent Lawrence as well as his own. His sister Vonnie Banville-Evans has written both a children's novel and a reminiscence of growing up in Wexford.

Banville was educated at a Christian Brothers school and at St Peter's College in Wexford. Despite having intended to be a painter and an architect he did not attend university. Banville has described this as "A great mistake. I should have gone. I regret not taking that four years of getting drunk and falling in love. But I wanted to get away from my family. I wanted to be free."

After school he worked as a clerk at Aer Lingus which allowed him to travel at deeply-discounted rates. He took advantage of this to travel in Greece and Italy. He lived in the United States during 1968 and 1969. On his return to Ireland he became a sub-editor at the Irish Press, rising eventually to the position of chief sub-editor. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970.

Early career
After the Irish Press collapsed in 1995, he became a sub-editor at the Irish Times. He was appointed literary editor in 1998. The Irish Times, too, suffered severe financial problems, and Banville was offered the choice of taking a redundancy package or working as a features department sub-editor. He left.

Banville has been a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books since 1990. In 1984, he was elected to the Irish arts association Aosdana, but resigned in 2001 so that some other artist might be allowed to receive the annuity. He described himself in an interview with Argentine paper La Nacíon, as a West Brit. Banville also writes hardboiled crime fiction under the pen name Benjamin Black, beginning with Christine Falls (2006).

Banville has two adult sons with his wife, the American textile artist Janet Dunham. They met during his visit to San Francisco in 1968 where she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. Dunham described him during the writing process as being like "a murderer who's just come back from a particularly bloody killing". Banville has two daughters from his relationship with Patricia Quinn, former head of the Arts Council of Ireland.

Banville has a strong interest in animal rights, and is often featured in Irish media speaking out against vivisection in Irish university research.

His writing
Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of the English language, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. David Mehegan of the Boston Globe calls Banville "one of the great stylists writing in English today"; Don DeLillo called his work "dangerous and clear-running prose;" Val Nolan in the Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious" [10]; The Observer described his 1989 work, The Book of Evidence, as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Banville himself has admitted that he is "trying to blend poetry and fiction into some new form." He is also known for his dark humour, and sharp wit.

Banville has written two trilogies; "The Revolutions Trilogy", consisting of Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, The Newton Letter and a second unnamed trilogy consisting of The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena.

Banville is highly scathing of all of his work, stating of his books "I hate them all ... I loathe them. They're all a standing embarrassment. Instead of dwelling on the past Banville is continually looking forward; "You have to crank yourself up every morning and think about all the awful stuff you did yesterday, and how how you can compensate for that by doing better today". He writes only about a hundred words a day for his literary novels, versus several thousand words a day for his Benjamin Black crime fiction. He appreciates his work as Black as a craft while as Banville he is an artist, though he does consider crime-writing, in his own words, as being "cheap fiction."

Banville is highly influenced by Heinrich von Kleist, having written adaptations of three of his plays (including Amphitrion) and having again used Amphitrion as a basis for his novel The Infinities. One of Banvilles earlier influences was James Joyce—"After I'd read the Dubliners, and was struck at the way Joyce wrote about real life, I immediately started writing bad imitations of the Dubliners."

Awards
Booker Prize, James Tail Black Memorial Prize, Irish Book Awards, Guiness Peat Aviation Award, Guardian Ficiton Award, Franz Kafka Prize, Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. (From Wikipedia.)

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Book Reviews
I recommend Mrs. Osmond more for curiosity’s sake than for the sake of a satisfying read—though it can certainly be that as well. But the novel will please mostly Henry James fans eager to learn of Isabel Archer’s fate. It will also please those fans who appreciate James’s—and now Banville’s—superb mastery of the English language. MORE …
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


A fine act of literary ventriloquism and imagination.... [T]he narrative might best be described as a series of encounters between her and various characters from the original.... Cleverly, Banville has each of these meetings both propel his narrative forward and, looking backwards, add layers of intricacy to James’s work; each of Banville’s characters satisfyingly convincing in their new guises. As such, I suspect it’s those readers already familiar with The Portrait of a Lady who will enjoy Mrs Osmond the most.
Lucy Sholes - Independent (UK)


At times [Mrs. Osmond] has the glacial pace of the original, endless psychological dithering punctuated by brilliant flashes of melodrama … even over-the-top, language.… [T]here are also quite a few surprises, a tribute to Banville’s ingenuity…. [Isabel] uses her wealth and the power of inheritance to effect a neat revenge. Mrs Osmond is both a remarkable novel in its own right and a superb pastiche. But I found irritating the very mannerisms that try my patience in James.
Edmund White - Guardian (UK)


(Starred review.) [A] delightful tour de force.… Banville incorporates a wonderful sense of irony; the result is a novel that succeeds both as an unofficial sequel and as a bold, thoroughly satisfying standalone.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Banville's brilliant 17th novel uncannily evokes James's limpid prose, deft plotting, and finely limned characterization to offer a credible sequel to one of the greatest novels ever written. Banville's genius is unquestionable. —John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Fans of Henry will find the writing persuasively Jamesian…. A sequel that honors James and his singular heroine while showing Banville to be both an uncanny mimic and, as always, a captivating writer.
Kirkus Reviews

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Discussion Questions
1.. Have you read The Portrait of a Lady? How does this sequel compare to your interpretation of James’s ambiguous ending?

2. Banville chose as his epigraph an excerpt from James’s novel: "Deep in her soul—deeper than any appetite for renunciation—was the sense that life would be her business for a long time to come." What does this sentence mean? Why did Banville choose this particular passage?

3. Our first glimpse of Isabel’s character comes through her maid, Staines, on page 4, who feels vexed by "what she considered her mistress’s willful credulousness, deplorable gullibility and incurably soft heart." Does this strike you as an accurate assessment? How does Isabel change over the course of the novel?

4. At several points, Isabel considers her fortune to be a burden. Why? How might her life be different if she hadn’t come into this inheritance?

5. Certain scenes have comedic undertones. How does Banville use humor to advance the story?

6. Why does Isabel attempt to make her relationship with Staines more egalitarian?

7. The behavior of several characters seems to be influenced by their location—in Rome vs. Florence, for instance. Why does it matter where conversations and confrontations take place?

8. On page 252, Isabel’s aunt tells her, "Advice is another term for mischief-making, and anyone who asks for it deserves the consequences. One cannot be told how to live, my girl—and one shouldn’t wish to be." How does this advice against advice prove useful to Isabel?

9. A vein of feminism runs throughout the story. How does it compare to your understanding of the time period, and to The Portrait of a Lady?

10. Why does Serena Merle accept Isabel’s proposition?

11. We don’t learn the whereabouts of the satchel of cash until relatively late in the novel. Why does Banville withhold this information?

12. How does Isabel’s final disposition of the money demonstrate how she has grown?

13. As the novel progresses, Isabel finds herself able to hold her own against both Gilbert Osmond and Serena Merle. What is the source of this newfound strength?

14. Discuss Isabel’s final encounter with Countess Gemini and Pansy. Why does Pansy act so cool toward Isabel? How did you respond to the Countess’s insinuations about Pansy?

15. The idea of freedom is a major theme of the novel. At what point does Isabel become free? How does she achieve freedom?

16. In the final scene, Isabel takes Myles Devenish to Paddington Station. Why? His response disappoints Isabel: "Our task, it seems to me, is to look beyond the individual case, and aim to make a world that will not any longer allow of the wretchedness you witnessed in that poor man’s plight" (page 369). Why does this change her attitude toward him?

17. Banville ends the novel as enigmatically, as James did with The Portrait of a Lady: "He had meant his words, shy and tentative as they had been, to convey an explorative note, a note of invitation, even, which he hoped Isabel would meet, and answer; but Isabel said nothing, nothing at all" (page 369). How do you interpret this?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)

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