The remarkably prolific Irish writer, John Banville, gives his take on Jews in Ireland soon after the end of WW II. Rosa Jacobs is a doctoral student in Dublin and a firebrand supporting long-shot progressive causes like a woman’s right to abortion. Not going to happen in Ireland in that century. Until, that is, Rosa is found asphyxiated in her own car in a locked garage. A hose from the exhaust to the front window suggests suicide.
Rosa’s older sister is dubious that her sister was suicidal. The coroner suspects foul play. One of Rosa’s friends was a recently arrived German “industrialist” with a hidden past. By the time the German’s ties to Israel’s secret attempts to construct a nuclear weapon emerge, the credulity of the novel exceed its author’s tenuous hold on either plot or characters.
Banville has won a Booker prize and in some years has published as many as five books. I presume some of his other books are better.
