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Venetian Vespers

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Venetian Vespers

By: John Banville
Narrated by: Luke Thompson
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About this listen

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNOW AND THE SEA
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS 2025

Everything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . .
Winter 1899, and strange things are afoot. As the new century approaches, English hack writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans for a substantial inheritance look to be dashed.

Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri - the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo - the couple are met by a series of seemingly
otherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind?

'A marvellous and rewarding novelist . . . He is a magician, really.' THE SCOTSMAN
'Banville has a grim gift of seeing people's souls.' DON DeLILLO
'The most eminent innovator in Irish fiction of the last 50 years.' IRISH TIMES
'One of my favourite writers alive.' REBECCA F. KUANG
'Banville writes prose of such luscious elegance.' NEW YORK TIMES

©2025 John Banville (P)2025 Faber & Faber Gothic Historical Horror Mystery
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Inscruitable and too fond of sexual violence. Rather boring, Too bad, since the plot has potential.

Too oblique

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Banville’s Venetian Vespers is a taut, beautifully constructed study of vanity, guilt, and collapse. A honeymoon to Venice becomes a descent into private ruin, where every glance, gesture, and architectural reflection carries the weight of foreboding. Long before the denouement, the narrator is trapped inside his own consciousness, circling humiliation and failure, unable to distinguish reflection from reality.

The novel’s architecture is flawless. Banville builds tension through precision, not pace. Foreshadowing works like music. Motifs recur, phrases echo, and meaning gathers quietly until the final movement resolves what’s been trembling beneath the surface all along. The prose has the precision of poetry, but none of its sentimentality. It’s Banville at his most disciplined; haunting, meticulous, and quietly shattering. The performance, by Luke Thompson, conveys all of that flawlessly. It is a spellbinding production.

Like McGahern, Banville writes about the imprisonment of the self, but where McGahern searches for grace, Banville finds hollowness. Like The Book Of Evidence, Venetian Vespers is a confession without absolution. it ranks among his best works.

A confession with no absolution

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I. picked this book because of the Author's reputation for great writing.
However, the lead character presents as a Concieted, Gullible, Fool, deuped into a marriage by his wife & her co-conspirators.
Annoying to see his arrogance and sense of entitlement lead him blindly from one daft mistake to the next.
He deserved his fate.
Puzzling that John Banville would write such a story?

A Venetian meander

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The narrator does an absolutely sterling job of bringing this intriguing tale to life. He has captured the essence of the main character and does a fine job with the other characters’ accents and personalities. It is an evocative, suspenseful tale, perfect for walking the dog on dark, foggy evenings. It captures the spirit of Venice beautifully and kept me hooked.

Superb narration of an excellent tale

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I would suggest that Banville is as deadly as Fitzherbert of the book in as much as both work their fatal charms on women as is the case with Fitzherbert, so it is with the reader for Banville. Banville is like the Dracula who, once he bites his victims, they have the thirst for blood forever more. So it is with Banville’s readers who are always left baying for the next book. Moreover, the reader finds the credibility and intelligence of other works of fiction difficult to navigate. I can’t wait for the next book.

Banville obliterates all other authors

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