The writing is overwrought in an addictive way, the characters are totally, adorably screwed up, and the setting (a sweltering day in Ireland…I guess that happens in these climatically changed times) is lovely. But once you've been sucked into the world of The Infinities the ground gets a bit slippery (or "oleaginous," as Banville might say). The multiple characters (Zeus, Hermes, a cute blonde girl from Dublin, etc) lay claim to omniscience, and yet, at times Banville calls "cut" on what seemed (to me) to be rather integral, compelling scenes, and we never get to know what happened next, or why it was important that we witness the start of the scene in the first place. Somehow it just seems wrong for Banville to put Hermes, of all gods, in the position of saying, "But then they went out to the back garden so I dunno what happened next."

Basically, a mathematician has divined a route to the infinite nature of being, and whole lot of cosmic mischief results, but the readers aren't really in on the joke. It's probably my own ignorance and failure to read the Wikipedia page on this book (and/or have a degree in Classics), but I'm not even sure what happened in the end. Clearly, from the cathartic description and nicely wrapped-up ending, some life-and-plot-altering occurrence went down, but I'm not sure exactly what it was.

Banville's prose is psychedelic when it works (I've never been more moved by a "mooncalf" as I was by the one in this novel)--but just seems contrived when it doesn't. I was completely hooked, and read the book all the way through, but was sad to see the word "gabble" (and its variants) appearing no less than eight times, and applied to various characters. You just don't need that many people talking like geese in a book about Greek gods and string theory.