Reviews

Christine Falls by Benjamin Black, John Banville

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katemoxie's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

2.0

lauraborkpower's review against another edition

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2.0

It was a sort-of mystery with an anti-climactic ending and a sub-plot that was, frequently, more interesting than the plot itself. Black has apparently written a couple more books starring Quirk, the pathologist from this novel, and I might read them, though probably not immediately. Pleasantly, it was read by Timothy Dalton, and he's got a great reading voice. Over all, it wasn't bad, but also not great.

erikstl's review against another edition

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4.0

I happened upon this book while perusing the shelves at my local library branch. The summary on the inside flap seemed intriguing enough, so I thought I would give it a shot. I haven't read a book this quickly in a long time. It truly is a page-turner. I was initially worried, that being set in Ireland, written by an Irish writer, I would be confused by slang, locations, or other grammatical quirks. Definitely not the case.

There are 7 books (so far) in this series. This is book 1. I can't wait to dive into the rest.

trin's review against another edition

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1.0

Ridiculously boring—not to mention just plain ridiculous—mystery by a literary author ([a:John Banville|91|John Banville|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1267495693p2/91.jpg]) slumming it in genre fiction under a pseudonym. (I have never understood this—why not just genre hop under your real name? All the cool kids are doing it!) The plot is convoluted, involving unwanted pregnancies and a baby smuggling ring and nuns. Actually, what the plot is is thin and convoluted, somehow; there’s very little mystery to be solved, really, but our hero, the drab and (we’re told) physically imposing medical examiner Quirke, sure takes his time. And along the way a lot of women throw themselves at him for no reason—so much for gritty realism—and Quirke’s young female relative is sexually assaulted for no reason other than the fact that Black/Banville couldn’t come up with any other kind of climactic event to finish off this slow slog of a book. I was just glad the damn thing was over. We sell a lot of copies of this novel (and its sequel, which I now have no intention of reading) at my store, but when there are exciting and complex literary mysteries out there like [b:The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo|2429135|The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1)|Stieg Larsson|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1275608878s/2429135.jpg|1708725] to read, I really do not understand why.

jobustitch's review against another edition

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4.0

Will listen to the audiobook in the car on the way to IL.

Finally finished this and it was really lovely. The ending is kind of unsettled, but I guess that is because this is the first book in the series. This book had really great descriptions of scenes and people. Every page was really dripping with Dublin and Boston in the 1950's.

Plus having Timothy Dalton read the book was 900 shades of awesome.

ladydeity's review

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3.5

For as much as I thought this book would be a high stakes takedown of various people in positions of power, it ended up feeling very low stakes, without much of a resolution.