This was recommended as "like Le Carré," which it is not. Yes, it's about the interiority of a spy in the highly ambiguous world of pre-Cold War and Cold War espionage. And it does explore the questions of loyalty (to whom?), deceit (whom?), the personal and professional. But it's quite different, both for the better (it's definitely not derivative) and for the worse.

Which is only to say: don't read this just because you like Le Carré, if you do.

The novel is loosely about the Cambridge spies, and the very, very unlikable first-person narrator is one of them, a composite of some of the real ones. If you know much about that historical milieu, or even the broader WWII British context, you'll recognize lots of people, despite change names (Alan Turing, for example), and wonder about some others. (I'm wondering if Querell is Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, or Le Carré, or bits and bobs of them all.)

The last ten or so percent of the novel rescued it for me, but I can't say anything else because it would be a total spoiler. I mean I can't talk about the plot or even what I take the novel to be about, ultimately.

But it was hard getting there, because the Victor is so deeply unlikeable. He's an art historian, and I have academic colleagues who are like him, so I would rather not have spent all these pages with him, even though in the end I was satisfied.

The other thing that kept me reading was Banville's beautiful prose. He knows many words.

A well told, gently paced, character based, spy novel about Irishman, Victor Maskell, an art historian and lecturer who at the start of World War II undertakes to work as a spy for Russia. Victor through his Cambridge connections works for British Army Intelligence. Victor is educated at Cambridge, England and lives in London for the majority of his life. Victor’s story is told in the first person. Victor, now 71 years old, is writing his memoir, mainly about the friends he met at University, his marriage, his homosexual activities that began when he was in his 30s, his art historian work and his spying activities.

It reads as a very British novel providing good descriptions of life in London during World War II. Victor’s character is partly based on the British Cambridge spy and art historian, Anthony Blunt.

Banville’s writing style is very graceful and readers who have enjoyed his other novels like The Sea and The Book of Evidence should find this novel a very satisfying reading experience.

Here are some lines from the novel that I particularly liked:
‘How deceptively light they are, the truly decisive steps we take in life.’
‘I shall strip away layer after layer of grime - the toffee-coloured varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling - until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.’

Историята на един шпионин
(Цялото ревю е тук: https://knijenpetar.wordpress.com/201...

Бях сигурен, че няма да ми е лесно с Джон Банвил, още повече че прочетох един доста пространен материал за личността и творчеството му, преди да започна самата книга. Всъщност прехвърлих десетина страници за настройка и след няколко дни се почувствах готов да започна с четенето. Това се случи, защото още в самото начало осъзнах, че „Недосегаемият“ („Колибри“, 2015, с превод на Иглика Василева) няма нищо общо класическия шпионски роман. От една страна това ме разведри, защото имам неприятния навик да свързвам този жанр единствено с Джеймс Бонд, и дори да не се беше случило точно така, през цялото време щях да очаквам именно неговата мисъл, неговите действия, като само името щеше да е различно. Моментът на озарение дойде, когато Виктор Маскел, разказвачът и основен персонаж, започна да изтъква интелектуалния си потенциал, свързан с изкуството и съвсем свойски взе да „обикаля“ из философските школи и да реди психологически профили на познатите си през дългата си кариера на шпионин. Подробностите взеха да изникват отвсякъде и романът започна да се превръща в почти интелектуална главоблъсканица.
(Продължава в блога: https://knijenpetar.wordpress.com/201...)

Banville tiene un gran talento con la palabra escrita: es estricto y meticuloso con cada frase. Este libro es un ejercicio juicioso al detalle del contexto inglés en el turbulento comienzo y mitad del siglo XX. A pesar de su talento, no conecté mucho con la historia: ya sea porque empecé el libro a finales de año; o por su minucioso detalle al momento, a veces sin mucha relevancia, solo contándolo porque sí. Debo resaltar el excelente trabajo del traductor para la edición de Alfaguara, quién detalla y explica en cada pie de página las referencias culturales ocultas en la narración y que, de no ser así, un lector como yo, completamente ajeno al contexto, dejaría pasar por alto.

Este libro ha sido de las historias que más me ha costado terminar y lo hice porque me cuesta dejar un libro empezado. La premisa de un doble agente que inicio sus labores en la primera guerra mundial y que muchos años después fue descubierto de verdad me llamaba la atención, si bien sabía que no iba a ser algo como James Bond, me esperaba algo diferente. La historia se me hizo aburrida y me costó muchísimo porque no conecte ni con el protagonistas ni con muchos de los personajes secundarios; tiene algunas partes que me gustaron pero eran partes intermitentes y esto me hacía perder interés; además no pude con el protagonista, no encuentro algo que rescatar, sus motivaciones para ser espía y además doble espía no las pude comprender, es un personaje como el mismo lo expresa que se interesa más por las cosas que por las personas, al que parece que las personas que le rodean le importan poco sean padres, esposa, hijos o amantes, se me hizo bastante odioso; lo que sí se puede apreciar y que me gustó es el hecho de que espía al parecer podía ser cualquiera que estuviera a tu alrededor, tu profesor de arte podría ser espía, el mundo del espionaje me parece muy interesante pero la forma en que lo presenta el autor en esta novela a pesar de que está bien escrita no logro mantener mi interés.

A book I’d like to erase from my mind to be able to experience it all over again.

As an espionage thriller it has the mood and tawdry realism of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. But (with the greatest love and admiration for early John le Carré) this is much more than a genre novel.

I’ve seen Banville compared to Vladimir Nabokov and on the evidence of The Untouchable the comparison is not overblown. In fact I’d go as far as to submit that this as good as Lolita in the way it uses a heinous crime (treason) as the vehicle for exploring societal hypocrisy and male vanity, insecurity, regret and frustrated ambition whilst simultaneously rendering the crime itself morally ambiguous and almost incidental. Like Nabokov’s Humbert, Banville’s Victor Maskell is a vain, cynical, self-pitying, predatory old failure who you cannot help but sympathise with and ultimately root for.

There are also worthy comparisons to be made with Brideshead Revisited, particularly in the way Banville balances a deeply sad human story of infatuation and lost innocence with an epic social history of England in the first half of the twentieth century.

Banville is an Irish literary writer and I suppose it is therefore obligatory that the book includes a few forays into Ireland and what it means to be Irish. The answer in the context of this novel is “not a lot” and the only parts that feel contrived and slightly half-arsed are those in which Maskell speculates that his Irish origins are somehow linked to his confused feelings towards England. You reckon?

The scenes in which Maskell visits his family are among the most moving in the book but they would have worked equally well set on the South coast of England (where Anthony Blunt, on whom Maskell is based, was actually from) as in Ireland. The Irish angle is the one part of Maskell that departs substantially from the real life of Anthony Blunt and it appears to be for no good reason other than that Banville is Irish.

But this really is nitpicking. This is a brilliant book by, for my money, an exceptionally good writer and you can't make straight-faced comparisons with the likes of Nabokov and Waugh and award anything less than five stars.

The first fifteen pages were awful--all first person narrative with a seemingly infinite supply of sentence fragments (get it? Because, like, people who aren't novelists can't write in full sentences?) Then it got really, really good for 50 pages. Then I realized that this book, ostensibly an interesting spy story, is in fact sub-standard Henry James narrated by a cynical aesthete who doesn't really believe that art can do anything for anyone. At that point I stopped caring, and read on only because every time I was going to stop something interesting would happen. Then there'd be a death in the family, or a divorce, or some mindless (sorry, I mean 'transcendent') fucking, and I'd be bored for another 80 pages.

In short, I should have started reading Le Carre instead, as many of my friends keep telling me to. Banville has his strengths, but, charming prose aside, they're not the strengths I'm particularly interested in: minute observation of concrete objects, interesting descriptive similes. But considering his theme, you'd think there'd be something gripping in here about politics or art (i.e., things in which I am particularly interested). There is not. The first person narration falls into the same trap that all first person narration falls into (it's virtually impossible to read ironically); and Banville seems to believe that his readers will automatically assume that spies must be horrific human beings who don't deserve anything other than a public execution. True, Victor Maskell is a horrific human being who deserves only a public execution, but that's because--if his narrative is to be believed--he can't think about anything other than his penis and the olfactory effects of gin, not because he was a luke-warm socialist.

Victor Maskell spies for Communist Russia. He is also an expert on Poussin and custodian of the Royal Art Collection, hobnobbing with royalty. His public establishment persona, and his two secret lives - as a spy and a homosexual are beautifully constructed by Banville in this roman a clef about Sir Antony Blunt. The novel follows his public outing, and his deal for immunity from prosecution for a full confession of his activities. All of which sounds fairly dull territory, but it is constantly enlivened by Banville's prose, the waspish humour which he gifts to his lead character and personally I find that whole era of so many intellectuals being seduced by Russia, until the scales fall from their eyes when they find out what Uncle Joe Stalin was really like, and their degrees of squirming, self-justifying backsliding utterly fascinating. Much of this novel is based on fact. Much of it is unbelievable.

Banville's rich prose exudes an eloquent yet haunting style that delves deeply into the inner musings and meditations of the Cambridge Five's fifth member. The story unfolds in gloriously slow detail, packed to the brim with florid sentences carefully crafted to reflect the protagonist rather than the writer. While Victor's reflections can at times wear thin, they all work well considering his pretentious and bombastic nature; the way he expresses himself is both disturbing and beautiful but always exquisitely stated. It was a book I found myself returning to with pleasure if only for the writing and the way it so fully supports the character Banville's created.

Ha declarado Banville que como tal puede escribir tan sólo “200 palabras diarias”. Para nada resulta extraña esta afirmación si se tiene en cuenta lo depurada que resulta su narrativa. Es una delicia dejarse seducir por una prosa llena de una riqueza al alcance tan solo de algunos autores. Un autor que enamora en la primera frase.

En El Intocable encontramos algo más que una novela de espías, en la que un ex agente doble, Victor Maskell, es descubierto y decide, en los que prevee últimos meses de su vida, escribir sus memorias. Y lo hace de una forma inteligente e interesante, rompiendo todos los mitos del espía como un personaje oscuro que maneja información de alto secreto e importancia. Nuestro protagonista, al igual que el resto de colegas espías, vendidos o no, de uno u otro lado del telón de acero, es un hombre extremadamente culto, amante de la buena ginebra, sensible y experto en arte, además de homosexual. Igualmente interesantes el resto de personajes secundarios de la novela y la inteligencia con que Banville maneja el ritmo narrativo.

Una novela que deja buen sabor e invita a volver sobre su autor.

would happily read over and over, would give more stars if i could

There's a slickness to Banville's writing that I found tiresome after a while. Most of this book simply flew by as a quick read, but it did little to scratch at my thinking beyond the surface. Yes, I know there were ironies about ideologues and a few jokes Cold War believers might get snooty about.

There were some clever lines and observations. But it didn't push me. Every Cold War trope I knew was in use, which made it less interesting, not more so, even though that was the framework of the novel. Made me wonder if I'll ever read another Banville book again. The answer is probably: not. I've reached a point where I can see plenty of reading ahead; but time, like all things is finite.

I've feeling the same way about Julian Barnes, though Flaubert's Parrot was better and more fun, it too was slick but also so bloody English by the end of it.