oh man i'm sorry. this was not for me. the prose is beautiful and wow can he write but i could not have cared any less about this story or these people. spy books are truly not for me. but his writing made it so i couldn't just skim this. i need to find content by him that is more up my alley because he's such a fantastic writer, but everything i've read by him so far has been hard for me to get into. ( )

Soothing writing. The book seemed familiar to me, as if I’d read it before, although I know I haven’t. Gentlemen spies, Cold War, Oxbridge - the mannered shabby existence of people who don’t really have to worry about impoverishment because they are so well connected to power.

It was written in 2009, which doesn’t seem that long ago, and yet it seemed like writing of another time that is now gone. ( )

First person voice of a strange traitor. Gots many of the stereotypes of the British spy. From the thirties a British academic becomes a communist and decides to spy for Russia while also working as a British spy. He reminisces through his past both friendships and treacheries. ( )

I heard that Banville was one of "the" Irish novelists and I was at a book sale and picked this one up for $2. I have to say, the man writes really well and is an expert with the somewhat amusing metaphor or simile. It's not really a spy novel with intrigue, tradecraft, and a thrilling plot. It's about an art historian who hands over useless info to the Russians. (An amusing -- but not by design -- section is about his recruitment; he's actually taken to the Kremlin and talked to by some important government functionary. Here is where Banvillle shows how little he knows about espionage.)

What it's really about is the character Maskell writing his memoir after he's been outed as an agent (he's 72 at the time). Here you need some suspension of disbelief as he recounts long conversations and details that no one would remember 40 years later; here's one I picked at random:

"Our footsteps plashed on the pavement, and as we walked from the light of one lamp to another our shadows stood up hastily to meet us and then fell down on their backs behind us."

It's atmospheric and perhaps symbolic, but unless you were writing this just after it happened, it's not something you'd recall 40 years on. In other words, if you're going for the detail, you don't use a first person narrator.

Although it seems he is dying of cancer (not a spoiler), there is nothing about how he is feeling. He's congenial with the people he feels nothing but contempt for. He's so pompously unpleasant a narrator that one feels absolutely no sympathy for him. In fact, there's no truly sympathetic character in the novel, and only one we could feel pity for: his ex-wife.

There are a number of characters based on real people. One of those is Querell, who is actually Graham Greene, and Maskell calls him a second-rate writer. I was interested in why Banville thought so, and I did a bit of research. In 1989, Banville was up for the Booker Prize and Greene was on the committee that made the decision. Greene was against awarding the prize to Banville, but was overruled and Banville got it.

And eight years later, Greene gets trashed by Banville in his book. Banville seems obsessed with prizes and has lamented recently about how it is now impossible for a white straight male novelist to win in this "woke" culture. ( )

I had to read most of this to realize how good it was. He is, of course, a great writer, but I was bored until about the 50% mark. In the second half of the book, its structure struck me. Reminiscent of the best Le Carré and also Graham Greene; where the deception of the characters is reflected at all levels of the story's architecture. ( )