Two Banville Moments

That may have something to say of the nature of the work:

from The Infinities
John Banville

Look at him now, unable even to know if his daughter-in-law, like Schrösteinberg's anxiously anticipant cat, is conscious or not, down there in her sealed chamber.

*****
She has had a shock, poor soul, though none here knows of it save she and I. It is said that she is a direct descendant of Charles Blount, eighth Lord Mountjoy and first Earl of Devonshire, that eccentric soldier whom Mary, Queen of Scots, great Gloriana, on her accession to the English throne after the beheading of her cousin, the upstart and treasonous Elizabeth Tudor, sent over at the dawn of the seventeenth century to pacify this most distressful country.
 In reviews I had not been led to expect what these passages entail.  I'll need to see if the conceit is unraveled as one continues through the book.

This constitutes the third of four possible reads in the realm of the Ancient Greek.  Let's see if I manage this one before attempting Alcestis.  The good part is that Banville's book, though dealing with weighty matters, seems to be a lighter confection than Malouf's magnificent and brooding meditation on the Iliad.

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