Untouchable (original 1997; edition 1998)

Too drunken maudlin Irish for my taste. ( )

I'm never sure if a little background is a help or a hindrance. In this case, I think it would have been more of a help to have boned up on the Cambridge Spies before reading the book. I had only the vaguest recollection of the known facts before reading Banville's 1997 book, written already well after the events and characters it treats. Nevertheless, Banville's writing is such a joy. A book to read leisurely so as to enjoy all the wry humour. One tiny but typical example: He names a Filipino maid "Imelda" even though it is clear that the main character does not know her name. It's just a little Marcos-ian joke. The book abounds with them.
But that's an aside really. Banville writes a character study of Victor Maskell, a man who was a spy, the last of the exposed. It seems to be Blunt, of course, but not quite. There is enough of plot action to keep the reader entertained, and enough introspection to make us think. Banville is expert in balancing the two to keep the reader going. Just the same, it's not a book I could read from cover to cover in one sitting. It is too dense and thoughtful for that. An hour here and there occupied me joyfully over a week.
The only downside for me is that I found the Victor Maskell character, and his lifestyle, unattractive. Perhaps that's just me. ( )

In a stream of conscious interior dialogue, Victor Maskell reveals his duplicitous nature now that he’s unmasked as a Russian double. Once a member of British intelligence and for many years art expert to the Queen, he’s now a disgrace.

The reader recognizes that Banville's novel is inspired or based on the life of real spy, Anthony Blunt, art adviser to QEII and Russian double agent. Even includes a character based on Alan Turing who also commits suicide by eating a poisoned apple.

Loyalty and identity, moral ambiguity, homosexual networks, good old Cambridge spy boys – it’s all here in the quiet masterful prose that proceeds with the inevitability of ocean waves returning and returning to the shore. Love Banville’s style of intimate and introverted portraiture. A rich and engrossing read by a controlled master of the pen. ( )

Powerful insight into the reasons -- social, intellectual, and especially aesthetic -- that thoughtful well educated men were attracted to Communism. Maskell is based on Anthony Blunt, the most interesting member of the Cambridge Five spy ring. ( )

A beautifully written thinly-disguised retelling of the story of Anthony Blunt. The principal character is Victor maskell and at the start of the novel we learn that he has just been identified in Parliament by a minister answering questions about the Cambridge spies. We gradually learn that Maskell had been knighted in recognition of his service as Master of the Queen's Art Collection (sound familiar?), but had been a long-serving Soviet spy.
Hounded by the press (and by the beguiling freelance journalist Ms Vandeleur in particular) he starts to write his own reminiscences in an attempt fully to understand how he had become caught up in the waves of history.
Hauntingly beautiful. ( )