Books for Breakfast
A podcast focussing on fiction and poetry hosted by poets and writers Peter Sirr and Enda Wyley. Also features the Toaster Challenge where guest writers are given the time it takes to make toast to talk about a book that has resonated with them.
Books for Breakfast
74: John Banville and Doris Kareva
Was 1950s Dublin really a place of murder and intrigue? On today’s show we travel to the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation in Dublin’s Fenian Street to talk to novelist John Banville about his latest novel, The Drowned, the fourth in a series featuring Detective Inspector St John Strafford and the pathologist Quirke familiar to many from the Benjamin Black novels. And we talk to Estonian poet Doris Kareva who visited the Centre recently about her own poetry, translation, and Estonia. Brew up a big pot of coffee and join us for a lively show!
This episode is supported by a Project Award from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Intro/outro music: Colm Mac Con Iomaire, ‘Thou Shalt Not Carry’ from The Hare’s Corner, 2008, with thanks to Colm for permission to use it. Logo designed by Freya Sirr.
Reviews of The Drowned
'Cold, compelling and seamlessly plotted, The Drowned also offers a fine portrait of that familiar and never likeable figure in Banville's fictions: the supercilious villain who has lost his moral compass.' ― Financial Times
'A beautifully written and intriguing slowburn of a book, in which the various quandaries in the main characters' private lives are as absorbing as the central mystery'. ― Guardian
'Brilliant . . . You need not have read the earlier novels to follow this one, but it will be a better read if you do . . . while various loose ends are left tantalisingly in the air, making it clear that a sequel will follow. It can't come too soon for this devoted fan. '― Irish Examiner
'Richly atmospheric . . . It's a Dublin where you can smell the pubs, feel the drizzle, and taste the Bewley's coffee. [...]At the centre of it all is the strained relationship between Quirke and Strafford, a couple at odds who are right up there with Banville's greatest achievements.' ― Irish Independent
'Tight-lipped humour thrums through the latest in the Booker winner's Strafford and Quirke crime series . . . The Drowned stands alone, too, suspenseful on its own terms . . . while it's ultimately evil, not good, that gives The Drowned its crackling denouement, the novel takes care to part on a more cheerful note - even if the logic of the series demands that Quirke can hardly be content for too long.' ― Observer
The Drowned delivers an ultimately satisfying and immersive mystery in beautifully wrought prose. ― Irish Independent Books in Brief
Bravo! ― The Times
Doris Kareva is one of Estonia’s leading poets. She was born in Tallinn in 1958, daughter of the composer Hillar Kareva, and published her first poems at the age of 14. In 1977 she entered the University of Tartu as an already acknowledged young poet. Due to her dissident connections she was expelled but graduated as a distance student in Romance and Germanic philology. She has worked for the cultural weekly Sirp (Sickle) and as the Secretary-General of the Estonian National Commission for UNESCO from 1992 to 2008, and is currently an editor for the literary journal Looming (Creation).
