A paragraph from the book that speaks to the subject of a tryst. How succinctly he sets the tone of tawdry illicitness.
“Where do they see each other, where do they meet? Have they a room somewhere, a love nest? She pictures it, off a mean, cobbled street, up a dirty stairway at the end of a corridor smelling of cats. Lino on the floor, and the sagging bed shoved into a corner, two straight chairs and a stained table with and empty wine bottle and two glasses in the bottoms of which the purple lees of last week’s wine have gone dry and turned to crystal. A meagre window with a yellow net curtain and a view of back yards and crooked dustbins. Two cigarettes smouldering in a tin ashtray, one smeared with lipstick. A cistern drips, a voice in the street calls out something. In the corner, in the shadows, his pale flanks moving, her stifled cries.”
It is a testament to his wondrous prose that in a single paragraph he is able to create a world that contains all the elements of a forbidden affair. He is a genius; one of the greatest writers working in the world today.
Tags: "The Infinities", best, Irish writer, John Banville, prose