[rating = A-]
One of my: Best Books of the Year (for 2017)
What a series of tricks Mr. Banville has pulled off! He is just a showman that loves to showoff, though he does it so offhandedly it appears subtly accidental. I just love Banville; even if he uses large (sorry, perhaps "archaic" is more accurate) words and his plots are not always focused (except this one was a better novel for plotters!!), he still has a magical way with language. I have noticed that what he enjoys most is describing light. Anyways, this novel follows Victor Maskell (notice the Russian-esque first name and the "Mask" in the latter) on his search through memory and time to find out who actually exposed his secrets. His being a double agent and his homosexuality. And we may pause here briefly to say that Banville does a great job of discussing and showing gay men (unlike that other Booker Prize winner, cough-Hollinghurst-cough). Continuing: Maskell narrates this tale of love and art and espionage lustrously, easily slipping from present to past tense, though at times a bit confusingly. The fellow characters are all on point and to say their lines on queue, so it is all very well done indeed. This story is about the need to hide oneself and occasionally getting lost in that (forgive me) closet where one cannot always see so clearly in the dark. A beautiful and masterful exposition on the changing of society and how we are never as lost as we sometimes claim to be.

The Untouchable is a book that earned top ratings from many of my GR friends, but it irked me and left me untouched. It is a book that will appeal to readers of spy thrillers. Banville’s prose is polished, controlled, and penetrating. His use of vocabulary is opulent and rather intimidating. It is a pity that this story of a disgraced double agent held no personal interest for me.

The novel opened with 72-year-old Sir Victor Maskell writing his memoir, which he called ‘my last testament.’ He was giving a retrospective account of his life as a Soviet spy to a young woman who was writing his biography. In his reminiscence, we become privy to the motivations, impulses, and ambitions of this Irish Protestant Cambridge man who was a renowned art historian appointed as the Keeper of the King’s Pictures.

Along with his fellow Cambridge contemporaries, Maskell worked for British intelligence but was also recruited by Moscow to spy for Russia in the years leading up to World War II. Maskell was a complex character and the impetus for becoming a Russian spy equally complex. On the one hand, Maskell believed in an ideal linked to his one untainted love – Art. He was opposed to the bourgeois interpretation of art as luxury. He wanted art to be appreciated by the populace and rooted in ordinary life. On the other hand, he was moved by a reckless impulse for mind-numbing activity as a cure for boredom. A colorful group of friends he admired such as Nick Brevoort and Boy Bannister in the Intelligence Service, their late night parties and drinking, rendered his double existence a natural way of life.

This story was set in the 1940s through 1970s when homosexuality was a crime. A happily closeted homosexual, Maskell suffered from satyriasis and was always on the prowl, hanging around public lavatories. He was more in love with his brother-in-law than his wife. Raffish and disreputable (‘dangerously louche’) in his private life, Maskell was hard to like. By his own admission, he cared more about things than people. In recalling his past, he was made to confront his own shortcomings and regrets. The ending was sad but not unexpected.

Take my rating of this book with more than a pinch of salt. Banville deserves a more sympathetic reader.

In the end, I found the book chilling in its portrayal of a man without authentic emotional ties. He is alienated from his children. Apparent friends have betrayed him. He doesn't even seem particularly tied to the politics that have supposedly driven him into his life as a double-agent.

Victor Maskell is a 70+ man whose damning life secrets have just been exposed in the press. Maskell tries to come to grip with how he arrived at this juncture by flashing back to those key life events.
But, even after 80 pages, I could not find anything to hold on to. It feels like the ramblings of an old man who is losing his marbles (which is purposeful, I think). He jumps forward and backward in time, decades at a time and completely loses the thread he was following. It was still unclear what he had done, why it was so criminal and what the press knew.
As many other reviewers have said, Banville's writing is lovely and hearkens back to a time of true literary prose. But I was weighed down by the chore of having to look up so many unknown words and time/event references without the reward of understanding what Maskell was up to.
For now, I have decided that Banville is not for me.

Há muito eu tinha curiosidade sobre o duplo espião britânico, Anthony Blunt. Conheci-o como historiador da arte especializado na pintura européia do século XVIII; diretor de um dos mais sérios centros de pesquisa da arte, Courtauld Institute of Art. Mas antes mesmo de eu me formar em história da arte, o escândalo no qual ele foi figura central -- agente duplo do serviço secreto britânico MI5 para a Inglaterra e agente para a União Soviética dos anos 30 ao início dos anos 50, membro do chamado Cinco de Cambridge [Cambridge Five] ainda era debatido e questionado. Nada poderia ter surpreendido mais o mundo dos museus e da pesquisa acadêmica do que a descoberta de que o pacato mundo das bibliotecas e dos porões de museus poderiam ter servido de disfarce para tal profissão. A partir de 1979 Anthony Blunt passou a ter uma nuvem de mistério a sua volta. Como? Porque? Não que a vida particular de qualquer historiador de arte seja de interesse público mas espionagem era algo completamente fora da norma. E vez por outra, na atividade comum de perda de tempo à volta de uma mesa de bar, nós, estudantes de pós-graduação tentávamos imaginar como uma pessoa de tamanho porte acadêmico, tão chegada à Rainha da Inglaterra, poderia ter se imiscuído na espionagem e contra-espionagem?

John Banville responde a todas essas questões e a muitas outras nesse romance biográfico baseado na vida de Anthony Blunt, retratado sob o pseudônimo de Victor Maskell. Fazem parte do enredo também Guy Burgess e Donald Maclean, (todos com pseudônimos) do grupo 'Espiões de Cambridge'. Banville preenche lacunas e satisfaz nossas dúvidas. Este é o estudo profundo de uma personalidade. Talvez um dos personagens mais tridimensionais da literatura atual. É vívido. Parece real. A história é sedutora e Banville nunca deixa de entreter e acima de tudo de mostrar a pessoa complexa e coerente do homem e do espião, dentro dos parâmetros sociais e de época.

Mas, parafraseando Tom Jobim, “A Inglaterra não é para principiantes”. Para uma compreensão mais apurada do texto, um bom conhecimento das nuances da sociedade inglesa certamente ajudará na leitura; uma boa dose da história do enlace das classes altas inglesas com a política nazista, também. Por fim, um conhecimento superficial, mas coerente do estoicismo e da posição ética de Sêneca podem ajudar a entender a percepção que Banville tem de Blunt. Será interessante lembrar também os preconceitos da sociedade, numa época anterior à Segunda Guerra Mundial – homossexualismo, conflito de classes, a questão irlandesa -- tudo isso adicionará uma pitada de interesse. E o mundo da década de 30 estava enamorado do socialismo, ato que justificou ditaduras de direita e de esquerda do período: Itália (Mussolini), Espanha (Franco),Portugal ( Salazar), Nicarágua (Somoza), Brasil (Vargas), Grécia (Metaxas), Cuba (Batista), Rússia (Stalin), sem mencionar a Alemanha de Hitler. Fica evidente através do texto que Anthony Blunt não se sentia parte nem da sociedade inglesa, nem de nenhuma outra. Era um verdadeiro estranho no ninho: irlandês, pobre mas com nome de família – primo distante da rainha -- homossexual, com acesso ilimitado à corte – não é de surpreender, portanto, seu solipsismo, sua visão única do mundo como uma projeção de suas próprias fantasias. A tendência seria desgostar dessa personalidade dúbia, inconseqüente, com uma atitude tão blasé em relação à vida, como Anthony Blunt é retratado. Mas, pelo contrário, talvez porque a narrativa seja na primeira pessoa, talvez porque estamos rodeados dos detalhes que fazem o personagem crível, ficamos com a justa dimensão de um homem de grande conhecimento. John Banville não o retrata menor do que era.

No entanto, há sempre, e aí está parte do charme deste romance de suspense, a dúvida: será que Victor Maskell está nos dizendo tudo o que sabe? Há algum motivo para acreditarmos na realidade que ele nos descreve? Espião, agente duplamente inconfiável, Victor Maskell [será que o nome vem de Mask, máscara?] é o anti-herói por excelência, figura trágica, cuja vida é passada em pequenos compartimentos e se equilibra, desde os primeiros dias da juventude entre mostrar e viver o que não é: da vida de espionagem à vida sexual.

Como um mestre John Banville também brinca com o leitor ao desenvolver como tema o amor que Maskell tem por um quadro de Poussin: A Morte de Sêneca [fictício]. E dúvidas quanto à sua autenticação só intensificam o eco das perguntas que fazemos sobre a narrativa, é verdadeira ou falsa? O pintor francês do século XVII Nicolas Poussin foi de fato objeto de estudo de Anthony Blunt como historiador da arte. Mas, a presença de um quadro inexistente, cuja autenticação depende de Maskell é um paralelo magistral ao jogo de espelhos que a vida do espião reflete. Victor Maskell assim como Anthony Blunt, têm o fim que merecem: são traídos. Um pouco de justiça poética arrematando uma vida de fantasias.

Más allá de tratar temas como el espionaje, Segunda Guerra Mundial, guerra fría, homosexualidad, arte, lealtades y traiciones, más allá de todo eso, que de por sí ya es mucho, este libro esquematiza una introspección psicológica profunda de la vida de Víctor Maskell, mediante una prosa exquisita y una precisión que ya nos tiene acostumbrado Banville.

La forma en que aborda Banville las descripciones nada redundantes de estos temas, permite que navegues por los años 30 durante la tensión bélica, desarrollando en este contexto las tramas y situaciones con un contrapeso anti climático, en el que como lector te sientes incómodo y agradecido por ello. Asimismo, la discontinuidad y saltos en el tiempo permite que presencies los cambios en los ideales de Maskell.

Las reflexiones presentadas en el libro son memorables, cuestionando absolutamente todo lo ya conocido y aceptado. Este libro trata sobre la vida en sí misma y nos hace dar cuenta que las cosas en las que creíamos cuando éramos jóvenes, se desvanece conforme pasa el tiempo, agotando incluso nuestras ansias de venganza.

banville’s prose is really beautiful and artistic, but my overall opinion on the book is biased because i took wayyyy too long to finish it which is probably mostly my bad… but it definitely dragged on and felt too pretentiously slow in many parts.

One of the best books I have read in quite some time, ‘The Untouchables’ demonstrates why Banville is a top modern novelist. The plot differs from your standard best-selling spy book in that it seems inconsequential. There is no great tension on what secrets he will uncover or whether he will be caught or shot. There are no car chases and guns are more rumor than reality. Even though the time period includes the London bombing by the Nazis, the fall out is not what you’d expect. In this case, the bombing serves as the narrator’s entry into homosexuality, two men attacking each other while the building shakes. The end of time aura creates a type of liberation where the characters lean forward into the wind of life as though they must rush to their destination if they are ever to make it. People do not drink alcohol, they guzzle it. They behave as though social standards have been put on hold, and because they act that way, they have been.

It is the interior life of this narrator that makes the story enthralling. Banville’s understanding of human emotion and all its fits and starts was immersive. Just one example:

How eerie they are, those silences that fall between intimates, making them strangers to each other, and themselves. At such moments anything might happen. I might have stood up, slowly, without a word, as the sleepwalker stands up, and gone out of that room, out of that life, never to return, and it seemed as if it would have been all right, that no one would have noticed, or cared. But I did not get up, I did not leave, and we sat for a long while, curiously at rest with ourselves and each other, cocooned inside that membrane of silence . . .

I recorded this passage because it shows the detail and aliveness that the author brings, even to silence. The potential, the intrigue, the tension of this spy novel hangs on these type of passages. He is a master of description. It was both inspiring and disheartening to read his prose because every page contained a passage where I couldn’t help but be awed by his tremendous attention to detail and creativity with which he described the setting, the characters, and their thoughts. As much as I write, I can’t imagine achieving at this level, but as a reader, it was a gift to experience.

Who knew that semen tastes like sawdust and fish? According to the narrator, it does. Or at least one of the many individuals whom he conquers has such a flavor.

It took a while for the magic of this to work on me. Initially I thought Banville’s prose had the quality of bracken on a forest floor – the light picks out some beautiful tones and textures but there was a pervading sense of brittle lifelessness. I felt he wrote like someone who never leaves his study - or perhaps never leaves his head. But, then, all of a sudden, just before world war two arrives, it jumped into life and I very much doubt if I’ll read a more beautifully written novel this year.

It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The narrator is just about as world weary and cynical as any voice in literature I’ve come across. The mood is very much autumnal. Banville has created a fictitious Anthony Blunt, one of the Cambridge spies, and told his story in the form of a memoir – what used to be called a roman-a-clef but now seems to be known as biographical fiction. I guess the first question one asks is why bother giving Blunt a fictitious name? It gives Banville licence to make things up – which means you end up more curious about Blunt than feeling secure he’s been explained to you. This was a little about annoying, as if I now have to read another book about him! At the same time Banville’s character is one of the most memorable and thought provoking I’ve encountered for ages. He's given us a brilliantly complex portrait of a man who defines many characteristics and contradictions of the age in which he lived.

The most fascinating thing about Banville’s Blunt is that there’s nothing passionate about his politics. He doesn’t at any point come across as a man driven by ideology. It’s more like being a spy for the communists is a thrilling dangerous game for him. And that the subterfuge fulfils a deep need of his nature. Blunt was also homosexual and the two “occupations” have many parallels – the need of a bogus convincing façade, the necessity of whispering, of being vigilant to your surroundings, of gravitating towards dark secret places, of carrying around the tension of imminent catastrophic betrayal at every moment. At the heart of this novel is a painting Blunt buys and loves as a young man. It’s believed to be a Poussin but has never been authenticated. The authenticity or not of this painting becomes more and more related to the authenticity of Blunt himself as the novel progresses – is there any connection between his inner and outer life? Does he even have an inner life? At times it seems not. He takes no interest in his children (I don’t think Anthony Blunt had a wife or children in real life); he is driven by lust not love; he is a snob; he notices surfaces, especially weather, but seems to have little empathy for people. His only true passion is for art, and particularly Poussin, who he writes about and becomes an expert on. So you have the sense that the only thing holding Blunt together is the hope that his painting is authentic. It’s an exciting moment in the novel when we find out if it’s authentic or not.

I liked the first part of this book more than the latter half. There is an odd sense of oh-do-let’s-be-done-with-this in the back half of this book, although there are still some great passages in the latter half.

What I enjoyed most in this book was the richness of Banville’s language. The other main point for me was the inversion of the typical espionage story. One rarely gets the traitor as protagonist, and in this case such an unpalatable character. It was refreshing, in a way.

An auspicious introduction for me, to this very intelligent author. In this very well crafted novel the author takes us through a fictional account of the life of a Cambridge spy during the time around World War II. The protagonist leads a double life in almost every sense of the meaning, and finds thrills in his deception, the same way he finds comfort in art, which is his another of his loves. His identity is built on lies, and those lies are both his security, and potentially his undoing. Now for a book about espionage, fraught with the potential of danger, and taking place during a bloody war, there really is not a lot of action. However, this book does not need gratuitous action scenes to compel the reader to keep flipping pages; the story itself, filled with suspense and wit, is more than sufficient to keep one compelled and eagerly reading on.

A beautifully handled, sarcastic, changeable, moving 1st person voice, in the character of Victor Maskell, Russian/British double agent and art historian. John Banville is brilliant in his creation of this prickly character, whom I love in spite of, and maybe because of, his prickliness and undecorated honesty. Brilliant, too, the way Maskell's homosexuality meshes with, resonates with, his spying -- both illicit activities in England in the 1920s and 30s (and into the "modern" era. . . ). The story sags in the middle, and could have used some serious editing, yet the opening and closing thirds are echt Banville, glorious, absorbing.