Who else writes like John Banville?

October 16, 2006 7:31 AM

Which other authors write as sensually as John Banville?
posted by Black Spring to Writing & Language (8 answers total)

Michael Ondaatje, Anne Michaels, maybe Arundihati Roy?
posted by Marquis at 7:51 AM on October 16, 2006

It's difficult to tell what you mean by "sensual." For prose that's at least as highly crafted and an author who's similarly in love with his vocabulary, how about Nabokov?
posted by RogerB at 7:53 AM on October 16, 2006

Diane Akerman's pretty purple, 'specially in A Natural History of the Senses (non fiction). And Vikram Chandra is a stealthy sensualist.
posted by DenOfSizer at 8:05 AM on October 16, 2006

Response by poster: I read Banville's The Sea and Eclipse and was impressed by his ability to evoke tangible / palpable smells, images, tastes and physical textures through prose.
posted by Black Spring at 8:13 AM on October 16, 2006

Marilynne Robinson, Mary Gaitskill.
posted by escabeche at 9:02 AM on October 16, 2006

Jeanette Winterson.
posted by lorimer at 9:22 AM on October 16, 2006

Graham Swift (Waterland)
posted by TrashyRambo at 5:39 PM on October 16, 2006

Have you tried A.S. Byatt? Not just Possession, although that novel is great--I'm rereading the Potter family quartet and am once again struck by her precise cataloguing of interior and exterior landscapes.
posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 7:26 PM on October 16, 2006