I always have one major issue when I write about one of John Banville’s (or his alter ego, Benjamin Black’s) novels. And that issue? Finding a way not to overquote Banville. It’s hard to resist repeating his vivid and evocative prose. I want to share it as I do a good meal.
His latest novel, Venetian Vespers, is a stunning noir set in Venice as the 1800s draw to a close. The bulk of the story unwinds – unravels is more accurate – over a 24-hour period, that feels, certainly for our narrator, like a slow-burning fever dream.
Evelyn Dolman, an English writer of “middling reputation,” believes he’s finally got it made. He’s marrying an American, Laura Rensselaer, heiress to an oil fortune. Her crusty father has agreed to hire Evelyn to write his biography – and Easy Street looks just a block or two away!
But weeks before the wedding, the old coot is killed in a riding accident. The will turns out not to favor Laura, instead, the family fortune goes to gloomy, spinsterish older sister, Thomasina (“… at once pinched and mean-spirited and as largely imperious as a parade ground sergeant-major”), who promptly kills the book deal. The newlyweds head to Venice anyway for a low-key honeymoon. And there, Evelyn realizes how little he knows about Laura. While she had shown him a good time in the boudoir once before the marriage, now she has zero interest in what comes naturally to most honeymooners, leaving Evelyn befuddled … he’s not a particularly introspective man. But he has pretensions of aristocracy and a desire for respect, despite a poor self-image:
“So there you have me, as I was then, a stiff-necked, self-regarding booby, prinked and pomaded, in bowler hat, bow tie, mustard cheeks, and spats, on the outside manly and self-satisfied while the inner midget seethed with unquenchable ressentiment and spleen. I imagine the majority of humankind suffers in the same predicament, but most get away with the pretense of being other than they are.”
The very first night in Venice, upon arriving at their accommodations, a sprawling, classic Venetian set of endless rooms, Palazzo Dioscuri, stretches out like a piece of unpalatable taffy. On the way to the palazzo, Evelyn is unnerved by the route. “Here the only illumination was from a single rush-light set in a metal brazier high up on the wall halfway along. It seemed to me I had been transported into a more ancient, darker time, and I had a tingling sensation between my shoulder blades, as if in expectation of an assassin’s stiletto.” By the time they head out to dinner, Evelyn has begun to wig out – exacerbated by the fact that Laura seems to know her way around effortlessly and speaks fluent Italian.
The noir trappings of the story are sliding into gear, if only Evelyn knew.
When he and Laura return to their quarters, Evelyn hopes that finally, after six months, Laura will have sex with him – like any couple. But: “She was as a lofty wall of smoothly polished marble, with not a hand-hold anywhere to be found.” A frustrated, uncomprehending Evelyn decides to go back out in the night, maybe take a stroll.
He ends up in a restaurant and starts drinking. Heavily. Soon, a young man, dripping with false bonhomie, approaches, calling out his name and claiming to have been a schoolmate, albeit from a younger class. Evelyn has no idea who he is. His name is Freddie, Freddie FitzHerbert, and soon enough, his gorgeous and mysterious sister, Francesca – “Cesca” – joins the party of two, and soon Evelyn is completely obsessed with her.
Very drunk, Evelyn eventually needs the two siblings help finding his way back to the palazzo. Once inside, pumped up by his intoxication, he drunkenly rapes Laura. When he wakes up, she has vanished and so has our perception of Evelyn as a hapless mediocrity who hoped to elevate his social standing with a fortunate marriage. We now see a venality lying beneath his self-doubt and blandness.
Before long, his new “friends” Freddie and Cesca begin to spin lies about themselves and, pleading a lack of funds and having to move from their own domicile, bulldoze their way into the palazzo with Evelyn and the still missing Laura. Evelyn is okay with it. Cesca will be close at hand, after all.
Evelyn begins to entertain suspicions about these sudden interlopers. He knows he’s probably being played, and thinks, “What if I had been deliberately singled out, and was even now being led down some dim and dangerous side-road? I would go where that road led me, however treacherous the way, and whatever perils might await. There was for me, no going back, not any longer.”
By now, about halfway through the story, the reader is enveloped in the same doom-laden, claustrophobic atmosphere affecting Evelyn. Venice is filled with mysterious personages, from an uncommunicative policeman looking into Laura’s disappearance to a saucy “maid” who maybe isn’t a maid and the Count who seems to oversee the palazzo itself. The two women, Laura and Cesca, might be each other’s doppelganger – their sway over Evelyn is all encompassing. And Rosa, the ostensible maid, proves to be yet another enigma, seducing Evelyn as though for sport.
Time moves through the novel like an alternative reality – its rhythmic motion seems skewed. And Evelyn scarcely knows which end is up.
“Venice, I feared, would be the ruin of me. I feared ruination, yes, but part of me secretly exulted in the prospect. For I believe that by now what I secretly but most fervently longed for was nothing less than total moral surrender. How far I had come, how deeply I had fallen, in so short a time.”
Banville writes this extraordinary period piece in the style of the late 1800s, with formal prose and no hurry to complete a sentence or paragraph; it reminds of The French Lieutenant’s Woman in its florid language.
Venetian Vespers is a striking achievement by a master still at the top of his game.
Peter Handel has been writing about crime fiction since the early 1990s. His reviews, interviews, and profiles have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Portland Oregonian, Pages Magazine, Mystery Reader’s Journal, The Rap Sheet and CrimeReads. Join his Substack here.
