Word: godley
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...plot’s premise is fairly simple: Adam Godley, world-renowned Irish mathematician, is dying and his family has assembled at his country home to watch him go. It is no coincidence that Banville uses the name of Shakespeare’s magical forest for Godley’s estate—Arden— and the plot itself is soon complicated by the presence of the supernatural: Hermes, the Greek messenger of the gods, watches and narrates as the awfully-named Godleys eat, drink and live their mortal lives. Other gods also enjoy the human spectacle and occasionally...
...myth run through the book—Helena is to play Amphytryon’s wife in an upcoming play and carries a ring with the character’s initial. This parallel story line adds texture to the book’s simple premise. As the Godley family flits and bickers, the gods too flirt with drama. “Oh, Dad,” Hermes frequently exclaims at Zeus’s escapades...
...women of the book come across one-sided. Petra, Adam’s melancholy daughter, spends much of the book defined by her stone-like name; her mother rarely acts unless to pour herself a drink. This may be a reflection of the confined place of women within the Godley household. Women, it seems, didn’t have much place in Adam’s math-filled mind. “One I drove to drown herself, the other I drove to drink,” Adam recalls of his wives. But even as such, Banville?...