Puzzling

Banville’s Detective Inspector St. John Strafford and pathologist Quirke are back—the duo met in previous books originally penned under the name Benjamin Black—to investigate the disappearance of a woman on the coast of Ireland in the 1950s. It is a slippery case that will prove a challenge for the colleagues, whose lives are further entwined by the fact that Quirke’s daughter is Strafford’s lover (and pregnant). Banville has described the attempt to attain perfection in his work: “All works of art are failures, but beautiful things can happen along the way.” Compulsively readable due to his memorable, recurring characters, Banville’s books are assuredly close to perfection.

As in Kracht’s similarly autobiographical debut novel Faserland, we follow a narrator named Christian—this time on a road trip with his difficult, self-medicated mother. Now in her 80s, her mind addled from childhood trauma, she has recently returned home to Switzerland following a stay in an asylum. Christian’s discomfort with his mother extends, as well, to his father’s and grandfather’s association with Nazism. He plans, secretly, to dump his mother at a commune. They take off—with a bag of her cash (and her colostomy bag)—for what becomes a surprisingly tender reckoning. This novel should, deservedly, expand Kracht’s American readership.