Synopsis
In his first novel since the Booker Prize--winning The Sea, John Banville gives us a dazzling new book that chronicles both a human family and a rather unholy gathering of immortals.
On a languid midsummer's day, old Adam Godley, a renowned theoretical mathematician, is dying. His family gathers at his bedside: his son, young Adam, struggling to maintain his marriage to a radiantly beautiful actress; his nineteen-year-old daughter, Petra, filled with voices and visions as she waits for the inevitable; their stepmother, Ursula, whose relations with the Godley children are strained at best; Petra's "young man"--perhaps more interested in the father than the daughter--who has arrived for an untimely visit.
And around the Godley family hover the mischievous gods: among them, Zeus, who has his eye on young Adam's wife, and Hermes, our narrator: "We too are petty and vindictive," he tells us, "just like you, when we are put to it." As old Adam's days on earth start...
The Washington Post - Troy Jollimore
[Banville's] latest novel…is haunting, beautiful and perhaps even stranger than those that preceded it…Ultimately, The Infinities is a kind of mystery novel, one that respects its mysteries too much to try to resolve them. The real subject of this unforgettable, beautifully written book is nothing less than the enigma of mortal existence. And who better than a cast of lusty, bemused, mischievous and quite possibly imaginary immortals to cast a new light on that?