The Blue Guitar

Written by John Banville

Narrated by Gerry O'Brien

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Blue Guitar by John Banville, read by Gerry O'Brien.

Adultery is always put in terms of thieving. But we were happy together, simply happy.

Oliver Orme is a painter who has abandoned his art. His days are now haunted by loss: loss of desire; of artistic vision; of the people he has loved. And only now does he realize that those around him understand him more than he does himself.

Set in a re-imagined Ireland, The Blue Guitar reveals a life haunted by the desire to possess and always aware of the frailty of the human heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin UK Audio
• Release date: Sep 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9780241975343

John Banville

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He is the author of many highly acclaimed and prize-winning novels including The Sea, which won the 2005 Booker Prize. He has been awarded the Franz Kafka Prize and a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. He lives in Dublin.

Reviews for The Blue Guitar

[bodachliath · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At first glance this book's starting point is not promising - a mid-life crisis novel told by an unsympathetic, unreliable and self-pitying narrator, but Banville is too good a writer to be limited by cliche. The narrator is Oliver Orme, a painter who has stopped painting and a petty thief, looking back at a series of events triggered by an affair with his friend's wife. Banville shows a painterly eye for detail, he is an expert at capturing moods and emotions, and there is plenty of dry humour. It is not always an easy read - Banville's classical education is often evident and some of the vocabulary is arcane* (though always deployed with precision). Perhaps not the best place to start with Banville, but a stimulating and enjoyable read.* I made a list of the words I looked up (in a few cases these were vaguely familiar but I wanted a precise definition): asportation, autochthon, bibelot, bleb, borborygmic, claustral, consistory, cullion, finical, foulard, glair, haruspicate, hypnogeny, imbricated, instauration, jorum, losel, oxter, phthisic, seriatim, soughing, volute

[novelcommentary · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I could sketch out a group portrait of the four of us, linked hand in hand in a round-dance. Or maybe I’ll bow out and let Freddie Hyland complete the quartet, while I stand off to one side, in my Pierrot costume, making melancholy strummings on a blue guitar."This first person reflective account details the narrator's, Oliver Orme's affair with his good friend's wife Polly. The event then causes ripples through the four friends as described in the sentence above. Orme merely narrates the circumstances and does so with marvelously detailed sentences. Here the writing is the star, the plot merely an device to display it.

[rmckeown_9 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Banville recently turned 70, but there is no sign of his slowing down the writing of the marvelous novels which made him famous. John claims influence from James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Franz Kafka among others. He captured the Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea – my introduction to this erudite and clever writer. I never fail to learn several new words from his novels, The Blue Guitar included. A sixteenth novel has recently been published. He is quickly becoming my favorite writer for a whole host of reasons.Typically, his novels delve into the psyche of his characters, which results in a rich and thoroughly enjoyable reading experience. Here Banville describes Gloria, wife of Oliver Orme Orway, the narrator, “Gloria was her usual glorious self, a big bright beauty shedding radiance all around her. And, my God, but my wife was magnificent that day, as indeed she always is. At thirty-five she has attained the full splendor or maturity. I think of her in terms of various metals, gold, of course, because of her hair, and silver for her skin, but there is something in her too of the opulence of brass and bronze: she has a wonderful shine to her, a stately glow. In fact, she is a Tiepolo rather than a Manet type, one of the Venetian master’s Cleopatra, say, or his Beatrice of Burgundy” (10). A quick search reveals the work of this master painter from 18th century Venice.Oliver is a painter, but he has lost his muse, and despite pestering from his agent, he cannot bring himself to resume his chosen occupation. He frequently refers to painters he admires and often speaks in metaphors about painting and artists. Clearly, he has a passion for visual arts. Banville writes, “I was rummaging among scores of old canvases stacked against the wall in a corner. I hadn’t looked at them in a long time – couldn’t bear to – and they were dusty and draped with cobwebs. I was after that still life I had been working on when I was overtaken by what I liked to call my conceptual catastrophe – how much nakedness they cover, the big words – and my resolve failed and I couldn’t go on painting, trying to paint” (62).Banville always drives me to my dictionary to discover a whole slew of new – and sometimes archaic – vocabulary. For example, in Blue Guitar, he uses “bibelot,” “coevals,” “hieratic,” “epicene,” “jourums,” “louche,” “cullion,” “plosive,” “knout,” “risibly,” “winceyette,” “moly,” “quaff,” “losel,” and several others I could not find. Interesting words all -- and lots of fun looking them up!John Banville also has written a number of detective/suspense novels under the pen name, Benjamin Black. According to an interview in Publisher’s Weekly, Banville's stated ambition is to give his prose "the kind of denseness and thickness that poetry has.” Do not miss reading this marvelous writer, considered by many as THE master of English prose, before he wins the Nobel Prize in Literature, so you can say, “I read him when…” The Blue Guitar would make a great place to begin. 5 Stars.--Jim, 12/17/15

[jbarr5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The blue guitar by John BanvilleOliver Ponn steals things and it's not about the item just that he can get away with it.His other passion was painting. Starts out with him being a kid of 8 or 9 and stealing a toy from a display at Christmas time.Also all about his parents and the woman he cheats with while married to another.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).

[st5croixsue · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was a good one to listen to since it was the inner dialog of a man looking back on his life: marriage, friendship, affairs and art. All with the wisdom of age - looking back and seeing what was lost and gained. The man is an artist, but that seemed to play a minor role to his passionate relationships.

[shetreadssoftly · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Blue Guitar by John Banville is a recommended novel about petty thief, former painter, and aging lothario Oliver Otway Orme.

Olly is having a mid-life crisis. In The Blue Guitar he is sharing his thoughts and observations with us. As a narrator Olly is equal parts pretentious and self-effacing. As a man he is nearly fifty, short, stout, and married. He was a painter of some renown at one time but no longer paints, having given it up for existential reasons. He is also a thief. He lets us know right away that this is so and tells us: "The objects, the artefacts, that I purloin - there is a nice word, prim and pursed - are of scant value for the most part. Oftentimes their owners don’t even miss them." Olly has never been caught.

Now Olly is stealing Polly, the wife of his friend Marcus. He comments, "Believe me, when it comes to first times, stealing and love have a lot in common." When their affair is discovered, Olly runs away to his family home to hide, although the fact that he chose to go there was really never a secret since it is the first place both Polly and his wife look. Olly truly is a man filled with regret who wants to be rescued from himself.

Olly is an unlikeable and unreliable narrator, but Banville does such an excellent job describing scenes, creating this farcical character Oliver Otway Orme (O.O.O.) that you will follow all of Olly's narcissistic prose and catch the humor embedded in the descriptions and situations. The novel is set in the Victorian Era and the language of the book reflects this.

Banville is an excellent, accomplished writer, which is what saves The Blue Guitar. His vocabulary, descriptions, and observations are insightful and intelligent. The plot is very simple, though, so the majority of the book is Olly's ruminating. The plot in the first part is especially slowed paced.


Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Knopf Doubleday for review purposes.

[ozzer_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

THE BLUE GUITAR is not for everyone. Banville puts little effort into developing an engaging plot or evoking an interesting setting; with the exception of his narrator, the characters lack depth or complexity. Instead Banville’s focus is on his narrator. Oliver Otway Orme is a painter who is blocked by what he perceives as his inability to represent the reality that exists below the surface of things. Along with a limited intellect, Oliver is too egocentric and narcissistic to cope with this difficult philosophical question and thus is paralyzed. The people and things in his environment are bland and cannot offer him much understanding other than trivial diversions. Banville plays with the metaphor of art as a form of theft by making Orme a kleptomaniac. "Painting, like stealing, was an endless effort at possession, and endlessly I failed." Unfortunately, Orme’s inadequacies do not permit Banville to explore this interesting idea or his central philosophical question of meaning below the surface in the novel. Nevertheless, he partially redeems the novel by a masterful use of exquisite language.