Kepler: A novel

I discovered this author via his QUIRKE novels which were adapted for TV. I was involved in a dramatic production about Kepler many years ago and was curious to see how a novelist would handle his life. This book is not for everyone, but it is extremely well-written, and manages to fit most of Kepler's career into about 200 pages - sometimes via narrative, and sometimes through letters. It's historically accurate, but the characters have personality, and you can sense how the genius Kepler had to struggle against the ignorance and violence of his time. If you are curious about life during the post-Reformation Renaissance, this book will give you a glimpse into the life of common people and their rulers.

I liked this novel more than Banville's Doctor Copernicus, which I expected to like more because I am a doctor and because I was more familiar with Copernicus in general. But this story was better and drew me in almost immediately and did not release me until the end. I had trouble seeing Doctor Copernicus through due to the change in POV toward the end.

This is an excellent book for those who are interested in Kepler's life. The times were difficult and often sad. There is much struggle and inherent injustice.

Banville's art applied to a crucial story of the history of science and the clumsy humanity of even the most renowned scientists.

My thanks to author John Banville for bringing Kepler back to life. This book is well researched and written. I enjoyed reading it. Jack Kushner

This book clearly lays out the hard road to truth that Kepler followed. Intriguing, intellectually fascinating with the soul satisfying use of the english language which is Banville's signature. I couldn't put it down.

Though it covers difficult subject for me - astronomy - it's a fascinating novel which takes us back in history and into the mind of a brilliant and troubled character.

This earlier historical novel in the scientific series Banville wrote in the 80s sparkles with detail. Especially in the first section, you feel the damp of a castle, the gloom of a chamber, and smell the slops and suds. It's slow going at the start, "Mysterium Cosmagraphicum," as Kepler squares off against Brahe, and tries to gain favor with the Emperor. But this part, in hindsight, dazzles the most for the density of texture, in the prose and what it describes. You glimpse the tension between teaching schoolkids basic skills and Kepler's longing to plunge into elevated research--certainly I could relate to this as a teacher! Banville sketches easily the battle between living in a decaying world and pondering in an ethereal realm timeless (so Kepler thinks) truths.Part II lacks a title but shows how Kepler the husband must deal with the mundane among an increasingly perilous era when witches are burnt and Protestants are expelled, and how he must make a living thanks to the formidable tension created by his relationship with his father-in-law and his wife. The household and domestic strife both ring with recognizable scenes, despite the superficial differences in decor and diet, and show Banville's ability to capture drama in the everyday affairs that we too share, if in less fraught situations. Throughout the novel, a loved one's loss and the ebb and flow of intimacy within a family as expressed through Kepler's ruminations make for eloquent, yet unadorned prose that convinces you of its truth.Part III, "Dioptrice," focuses upon his mathematical ambitions and the possibilities and competition opened up by Galileo and his telescope. Here again, the exile from favor he endures balances well with the cosmological theories he seeks to verify slowly and painfully.For "Harmonia Mundi," part IV takes the form of not only letters to colleagues and friends relating his discoveries, but these letters, from 1605-11, form themselves an arc or an ellipse! I've never seen this before in a book. The letters start in 1605, progress chronologically to 1611, and then slowly retreat again from the verification of his contention that planets move elliptically back gradually to 1605.For part V, fittingly titled "Somnium," the later years of Kepler are movingly described as once more he must wander out of favor with the imperial contenders within an ideologically divided Central Europe.This book moves at an uncertain pace, mimicking its protagonist. At times, it drags, perhaps intentionally illustrating the frustrations frequently felt by Kepler within a society that does not understand his devotion to the stars or his introspective fits and starts of genius. You get--to my surprise--few of the details of Prague parading itself that I had expected, given how in the non-fictional "Prague Pictures," (also reviewed by me on Amazon) written two decades after "Kepler," the struggles of Kepler and Brahe are grippingly told by Banville in exactly this Czech context.The prose does not leap out as vividly in later sections as the former ones, but one quote remains in my mind. Banville provides Kepler's recollection of the loss of his virginity to a teenaged girl he meets at a pub. "Yet beyond the act itself, that frantic froglike swim to the edge of the cataract's edge, he had found something touching in her skinny flanks and her frail chest, that rank rose under its furred cap of bone." (38) The female body and the sexual act have been depicted millions of ways perhaps in literature; at this late state, Banville still can make such familiar scenes vivid again.

Banville's novel has it all - descriptions of the harsh and ugly realities of the late 1500's and also the beauty and tortures of a troubled and brilliant mathematical mind. Any reader interested in the life of the mind and the spirit of discovery should read this book.

Eine besondere Freude ist es, Banvilles Planetenbahntrilogie zu lesen und parallel dazu Blumenbergs großes philosophisches Epos zur kopernikanischen Welt, in dem neben Kopernikus naturgemäß auch Kepler, Galilei, Newton und andere zu Wort kommen. Beim Lesen der Romane kann einen Teil des Kopfes für den philosophisch-wissenschaftlichen Hintergrund freihalten, beim Lesen des philosophischen Werks kann man aus den Romanen den Lebenshintergrund ergänzen.

so good.

I have so much enjoyed the first two books of this trilogy, and after Copernicus and now Kepler, I'm moving on to Newton with great anticipation. Utterly wonderful writing.

A short novel on Kepler, who laid the basis for modern astronomy by producing an accurate model of the solar system. It draws heavily on Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers, as the author says, and while it does a reasonable job at bringing both Kepler and his period to life, I didn't find it better than the Koestler. The most evocative part of the novel for me was when it dropped into first-person narrative with letters from Kepler to some of his network of friends and collaborators - I'd liked to have known how much these were novelised and how far they were translations of real letters. Kepler was no religious conformist to any of the schools of the day: Lutheran, Calvinist, Catholic, which meant he was thrown out of a lot of places, and the novel did a good job of evoking how hard those times were for scholars. I'd have liked more on his stay with Tycho Brae, which frames the narrative in non-chronological form. A reasonable read, but I'd hoped for more.