By Christopher Nolan Interstellar: The Complete Screenplay with Selected Storyboards (Opus Screenplay Series) [Paperback] Paperback – May 6, 2014

I stumbled onto this novel by accident one day surfing around the Amazon site and I am so happy I picked this book up. It's an amazing story told by a man with an equally amazing story. I only hope we don't have to wait another 12 years for Nolan's next novel. The Banyon Tree pulls you in immediately and keeps you reading until the last page with prose that will take your breath away. Nolan's characters, especially Minnie, the 80-something protagonist are so real. They are normal people but Nolan tells his tale in such a way that they become extraordinary. Minnie has three children, and waits patiently for 40 years for the youngest, the one who left one day at age 18 to return to the family's Irish farm. She keeps the farm for him, living simply, thinking every day he will come back. She, and we, don't know his fate until almost the end of the book. This is a story of family, of love, of truth, of denial. There is something magical in Nolan's storytelling, something that hints at the stories untold that circle around the story we are reading. I highly, highly recommend this book. It's a treasure.

Oh my gosh I heard this was a good book so I kept trying to get to the part where I would really love and enjoy it. After 27 chapters I still wasn’t convinced and finally decided to put it down.

Not to sound hard, but a novel should stand on its own merits despite the afflictions ot the author. There is a wonderful story hidden in the purple prose. These characters could have been so incredibly moving if only Christopher Nolan had not been in love with words--and often the wrong ones. When he gets more deeply into the story, his style becomes more lilting and descriptive--the rest of the time, the language gets in the way of the story and real communication. At times, I moaned aloud at the ridiculous overuse of words just to use words, and yet, I did love Minnie and her love for her land. I would have liked to have heard more from her--the earthy, honest woman--and less from the author.

item received in excellent condition. This author is a bit difficult to understand (for me) or maybe I wasn't ready to read this book. I am happy with purchase and delivery of item. Thank you.

Love Mr. Nolan's unique writing and the setting in Ireland. I wish he had lived longer and written more.

Can't remember ever disliking a book as much. Sorry, author.Very difficult to read and follow. Better luck with your next book.

Although Nolan's prose has often been compared to that of other, more famous writers-James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W. B. Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, for example-his style is more accessible, making his story more readable, more emotionally powerful, and more personally involving than anything I've read by these other great writers. Minnie O'Brien lives, loves, ages, aches, and ultimately haunts. She's an extraordinary character presented in an extraordinary way by an equally extraordinary author.The basic story line is simple: Minnie O'Brien, an Irish countrywoman with a love for the land and her family, watches her three children grow up and leave the farm. As she ages into her eighties, she tries to keep the farm going, waiting for her youngest son, from whom she has never heard a word since his departure at age 17, to return to claim the land. But to describe the book in these terms is like describing Ulysses as a story about a man walking around Dublin. Nolan brings her to life by following the first rule of fiction: "Don't tell about something; recreate it." He does this, in part, by using vivid, emotionally charged words in new ways, sometimes using adjectives and nouns as verbs, conveying not only the emotional sense but also an action: In describing Minnie's actions at the death of her husband, we find that her cries were "cartwheeling around the room," before "she sacked her voice of screams" and dried her eyes, going downstairs to "perform the miraculous loaves and fishes reenactment," for the neighborhood wake. Minnie's connection to the land, her love for Peter, her devotion to her children, her commitment to what is good, and her ability to keep dreaming of the future, even as she is dying, are all part of the banyan tree of her life, one which will continue to bloom long after one finishes this book.