Kepler is the second volume in a loosely connected tetralogy of novels which dramatize the nature of creativity. The first volume was devoted to the astronomer Copernicus (Doctor Copernicus, 1976) and also followed a basically biographical approach. Subsequent volumes, however (The Newton Letter, 1982, and Mefisto, 1986), have challenged or made problematic that approach, and while confining themselves to the area of scientific creativity that is, with creativity which affects man’s view of his world, rather than his view of himself they have avoided being typecast as fictionalized chapters from the history of astronomy.

Banville’s tetralogy has a number of noteworthy features, among the most obvious of which is its ambition. To sustain a sense of such an elusive, and perhaps mystical, subject as creativity over an extremely wide time span (Mefisto is set in the twentieth century) is achievement enough. To convey that sense in a manner which changes from volume to volume and from age to age, as Banville does over the course of the tetralogy, has the effect of demonstrating an inevitable interdependence between unity and diversity. This central preoccupation enables Banville to sketch other, more weighty but less artistically amenable, concerns, such as the epistemological implications of existentialist philosophy.

Coincidentally, by means of the tetralogy, Banville has participated in the recent refurbishing of the historical novel, a direction which he might well have taken in any case, given the concerns of his earlier fiction. Like many contemporary historical novels, however, Kepler and its companion volumes view history through a decisively twentieth century lens, meaning that it is less concerned with the denouement of a particular historical phase or episode than with the norms and criteria of human experience released in the course of a given historical moment but achieving significance by outlasting that moment.

In a sense made familiar by the contemporary Italian novelist Italo Calvino, the thrust of Banville’s work is to create a myth of creativity. Like Calvino, though using rather less experimental narrative strategies, Banville is drawn to science for his creative archetype, using the conventions of what may be considered real (which science implies) in order to propose alternative realities.

Banville’s originality and distinctiveness may be all the better appreciated in the context of Irish writing, where his work is far removed from the prevailing tradition of pastoral depression and perilous individualism. His novel’s deftly sophisticated narrative flair, his subtly witty sense of character, even his slight tendency to overwrite make his work a breath of tonic air to students of Irish fiction as well as contribute to his reputation as one of the more stimulating and readable young novelists writing in English.