About

Welcome to Project Dog-eared. As avid readers we realised that we go through a multitude of emotions and thoughts at different stages of reading any book. But, once we have finished the book, our impression of it was often based on one predominant emotion or memory of the book rather than our whole reading experience. We wondered if this could be improved upon , and came up with the idea of Project Dog-eared.

Here, we intend to choose a book - any book - some times agreed, but mostly our own individual choices and document our thoughts and emotions as we read along. We then intend to collate it all together at the end, possibly into a review.

In other words, this is just the good old scribble at the corner of the book, but more organised and shared live on the net. We must point out the reading is not collaborative but only a collective assortment - that is - unlike book clubs you don’t discuss the books as you read along. However some of you might want to follow what others are reading and comment on others’ posts and interact. So if you feel this is something that you would be interested in, give us a shout. We will log you on here. Then all you have to do is pick up a book of your choice and start reading and posting.

Sunday 14 November 2010

John Banville - The Lemur

The Lemur (a book that can be breezed through in a couple of hours as I discovered yesterday) is a book by John Banville's alter ego Benjamin Black. Banville does not seem to mind blurbs that read 'John Banville writing as Benjamin Black.' In fact it seems like a hint to the reader, John Banville Lite production.

My earlier encounter with the Black version was Christine Falls (oh Quirke!) Both books must be called literary thrillers. There are no agonizing sentences (like in Banville) but some descriptions are so beautiful - a shadow seems like a blotch of watered ink (I can't find the page on the book so that I may quote the exact sentence. One good reason in favour of an ebook.)

John Glass, a former journalist, is recruited by the billionaire Bill Mulholand (also Glass's father-in-law) to write his biography. Glass hires a researcher whom he nicknames the Lemur to gather the 'truth' about his subject. Things start to go wrong when the Lemur is murdered.

Black twists every conventional clue on its head and ultimately whodunnit becomes far less important than the many whys that are subtly pointed to. The Black books are psychological thrillers in the sense that the primary murder takes a backseat to the protagonist's psychological journey through the process of uncovering the murderer.

Still, for thrill, I'd rather read watered ink shadows than ridiculous jumping off helicopters over Rome.
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