Freddie Montgomery gets to recount the events that led him to kill a maid who caught him stealing a painting. He didn't kill her because he had to, he says - he killed her because he could. One person narratives like this one have always been my favorite. Especially a story explaining the reasons for a deprave act, they possess the thickness and dense feeling of poetry - something Banville set out to infuse in this one, and did so successfully.
Montgomery is one who feels he's constantly performing a charade, always behind a mask, forced to clip his wings and act within social boundaries. How palpable the relief is when he is captured, because now he doesn't have to pretend to be anyone or anything; what expectation is there of a murderer, no? I like one-person narratives for this particular effect in writing, to demonstrate the faults in recollection from memory, to make a case for the exoneration of the evil soul and blame a little the circumstances and stimuli. There is no case made for mitigation here even, and the remorse kicks in a tad towards the end (Read, the very last sentence). But follow the events through the words of Freddie, and live through him, and the words Banville puts together compel you to sympathise with this cold hearted man.
The way I see it, his mother's complete rejection spurred him to actions that he knew would inflict hurt upon her. Yes, he was desperate for money and it was just selfishness that brought him to his mother's door. But he was returning to his mother, the one person with whom he needn't perform, pretend. It so happens that we take people we love the most for granted. We just assume their love, after some time. It's a costly assumption, but a necessary one for someone like Freddie. He came back hoping nothing had changed, that years of his abandoning his mother and leaving her to fend for herself, that denying her the chance to meet her grandchild and live in the comfort of her son's care wouldn't have caused any resentment. He assumed her love, and forgiveness. And that was his fault. I think all the events that followed were just him childishly acting out to hurt his mother for not paying him enough attention.
It's quite evident his mother was his only emotional firm ground, for he didn't expect love from anyone, not even his own wife. He admittedly married someone he didn't love, someone who couldn't offer him any love. When he finds out that his mother had left him no inheritance, it pained him deeply. He didn't realise his acts had had that effect on his mother that she, in her last will and testament, so pronouncedly severed all ties with her only son. He didn't know he was making irreversible damage to their relationship. What did he see in that painting of the plain woman? His mother of the past.
A neatly narrated novella written in a gripping, heady style, it's a book with dark humour, sentiment, sinisterness, mockery, grandeur, but most of all, a telling indictment and simultaneous acquittal of Freddie Montgomery.
