Time Pieces

This was such a beautiful book: beautifully written, beautifully illustrated with photos by Paul Joyce, and beautifully bound. To visit a city in the company of one who knows and loves it is always exciting and illuminating. But if that guide is also one of the most skillful writers in modern history, that visit becomes unforgettable. John Banville--or Benjamin Black, as he's known to fans of his mysteries--gives the reader not only the pleasure of his company but also that of some of Dublin's best known habitues past and present. For example, we lunch with Banville's friend Cicero and the Nobel poet Seamus Heaney, recovering from a stroke but "funny and entertaining as ever," and find Heaney "...touched with a tender melancholy, a kind of shadowed sweetness." Through much of the book, Cicero guides Banville to famous and infamous landmarks of the city's checkered history, and Banville connects them for the reader with his own personal and literary memories. "Time Pieces" is a portrait not only of Dublin--which Banville has treasured since his annual birthday excursions there in his childhood--but also a glimpse into the soul of the brilliant writer whose perambulations around the city reveal a "tender melancholy" of his own.