This Roman à clef was published in 1997. 'The Untouchable' is based on the life of Anthony Blunt the knighted curator of the Queen's collection, director of the Courtauld Institute of Art who admitted in 1979 that he had been a soviet spy for decades. The story revolves around the infamous Cambridge ring of spies.

Anthony Blunt becomes Victor Maskell. Guy Burgess becomes Boy Bannister a promiscuous homosexual and flamboyant drinker. Another interesting addition is Querrell , the Roman Catholic novelist who Banville describes as having a "fishy look" who spends his time at parties "leaning with his back against the wall, diabolical trickles of smoke issuing from the corners of his mouth, watching and listening": "He was genuinely curious about people - the sure mark of the second-rate novelist."
It has been suggested that Querrell is modeled on Graham Greene. Indeed Banville had a bone to pick with Graham Greene as he tried to stop Banville from being awarded the Guiness Peat Aviation 1989 literary prize for his seminal work 'The Book of Evidence'. The majority of judges had chosen Banville for the prize but Graham Greene indicated that he wanted another author to win so a compromise was made that was known to Banville. Greene died in 1991 so I'm not sure what is to be gained by this portrayal but it was obviously on his mind for quite some time. Maskell's best friend is the beautiful Nick Brevoort who transforms into a fat Tory Cabinet minister. Victor chooses Nick's sister Baby as a wife and second choice to her brother and she proves to be arch, sophisticated and vulnerable.

When we start the book he is an old man who has just been exposed and judged. Serena Vandeleur seeks him out to write his biography and this is the device that spurs Victor to tell his story. She asks 'Why did you do it?" This is really the singular concern of the book. The book is marked by duplicity. Victor Maskell the married homosexual, the royalist who is a soviet spy, the Anglo Irish gentleman, art reflecting life as a copy. In his novels Banville likes to explore identity and the man in the mirror. His books have the common themes of the unreliable narrator, the purveyor of art, the secret life or family shame exposed. There are so many masks and divided selves in this work. “I shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored 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.”

As a portrait of a life albeit a duplicate of an inauthentic life I found it delved deep but the many selves jarred a little. If you like John Le Carre this may be an interesting departure for you. As always the characterisation and plot take a back seat. The stunning sentences, the verbose style and the underwater currents of meaning and metaphor flow at once.

Meh, started this cuz I wanted to read something that didn't remind me of my current life situation at ALL. And then ironically the book turns out to be about a Russia scandal.... LOL

Wouldn't recommend. Couldn't tell the characters apart, couldn't really follow the plot, the writing was "good" but not really my style and I got really tired of it halfway through. Laughably bad sex scenes.

Confession: I've never read John Banville, and I know little if anything about Anthony Blunt and the Cambridge spies. Starting from that blank canvas I came away from this novel highly entertained, a little confused and very hungry for more Banville. The writing is superb. Banville paints his hero as a self-pitying apologist, sardonic, sarcastic, and a little pathetic. I've been looking for fiction set in WWII England and to that extent this novel doesn't exactly fit the bill. Mostly I think because Banville assumes his readership is familiar with the saga of the Cambridge spies, and because he turns the trope of the MI5 upperclass nob on its head. In fact the character Victor is so astonishingly and beautifully specific that I completely forgot my expectations surrounding the Blitz, hardships, stiff upper lips, bloodsweatandtears.

Victor is that rare combination of mathematician, art restorer and connoisseur, double agent and homosexual. Recently discovered and disgraced by Margaret Thatcher, he is rehashing his history to a biographer. What we learn is that Victor's allegiance to Russia is about as authentic as the Poussin masterpiece that is his prized possession. He is more stoic than communist, more insecure than he lets on, and, looking back on his life and career, more than a little flummoxed about what it all meant. And by all I mean betrayal, secrecy, covetousness, greed--basically all the deadly sins. A man with voracious appetites gets chewed up and unceremoniously disgorged up by the people and government he is meant to hold dear. Why?

"I have never been a gambler," he confesses, "but I can understand how it must feel when at the end of its counter-clockwise run the little wooden ball, making a rattle that is distractingly reminiscent of the nursery, jumps tantalisingly in and out of the slots of the roulette wheel, first the red and then the black and then the red again, with everything hanging on it its whim, money, the wife's pearl necklace, the children's education, the deed to the chateau in the hills, not to mention that little pied-a-terre behind the tabac on the sea front that no one is supposed to know about. The suspense, the anguish of it, the almost sexual expectancy--now? Is it going to be now? . . . And all the time that fevered, horror-stricken sense of everything being about to change, completely, unrecognisably, for ever. That is what it is to be truly, horribly, jubilantly alive, in the magnesium glare of intensest terror."

Wow.

Since this is the second book by John Banville that I have read, the first being “The Sea,” his elegant, impeccable writing style is no surprise, however, the dark, devious developments grounded in a plot based on the Cambridge spies is totally consuming. It begins when they meet as naive, idealistic students in the 1930s, intrigued with the rhetoric of Socialism; continues through the years of WWII when Britain and the Soviet Union are allies; winds through the post-war years of confrontation, espionage, and counterespionage; and culminates in the reminiscences of old men (and one singular woman) as they try to find purpose and meaning in their past. As Victor Maskell muses, “Why can’t the past ever leave off, why must it be forever pawing at us, like a wheedling child. . . .Ghosts glimmered in the shadows. Phantom laughter. The past, the past.” This novel should be read slowly for maximum effect and savored like fine wine, not chugged like a frat-party beer. Prost!

I enjoyed this book very much and I think the ending is terrific. Fascinating to read about Anthony Blunt and find how very closely his career is followed in this fictionalisation of his life.

Banville's writing is beautiful and the pace is perfect. Highly recommended.

4* The Book of Evidence
4* O mar
2* Ancient Light (The Cleave Trilogy #3)
2*Bowen and Betjeman
4* Kepler (The Revolutions Trilogy #2)
4* The Untouchable
TR Shroud (The Cleave Trilogy #2)
TR Mrs Osmond
TR Athena (The Freddie Montgomery Trilogy #3)
TR The Blue Guitar
TR Imagens de Praga
TR Doctor Copernicus (The Revolutions Trilogy #1)
TR The Newton Letter (The Revolutions Trilogy #3)

What forces a person to betray one’s country? Where do all the spies come from? What makes them ticking?

Now, such words – spy, agent, espionage, etc. – have always given me trouble. They conjure in my mind images of low taverns and cobbled laneways at night with skulking figures in doublet and hose and the flash of poniards. I could never think of myself as a part of that dashing, subfusc world.

Some true espionage stories are much stranger than fiction, especially when the tale is told by such master as John Banville.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

To achieve our own ideals we are ready to betray any ideals of others.

Unfortunately I didn’t finish it. I ran out of interest in it

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Няма съмнение, че чисто стилово романът си заслужава, ясно е и че с преводач като Иглика Василева текстът на български ще отразява достойно оригинала. Но самото действие за мен е твърде затлачено и нищослучващо, за да остави добър спомен – трудно е да си представя книга, която да се води шпионски роман (с всички клишета, които се подразбират), но да е толкова далеч от всичко, свързвано с този жанр. Главният герой на Банвил става шпионин от скука, а потъвайки в спомените си, той всячески се опитва да принизи и омаловажи действията си в полза на Съветския съюз, докарвайки вода от девет кладенеца, за да обясни идеологически това, което по-лесно би било обяснено чисто емоционално. Виктор Маскел може да бъде герой на който се сетите снобски роман, изпълнен с вечеринки, високопарни разговори за изкуство и политика, с изкуствени пози, комплименти, заучени вербални дуели и разочароващ секс, който да следва цялата тази досада.

Colibri Books​
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This is the fourth Banville novel I've read this month. It shows the attentiveness to history evident in COPERNICUS and KEPLER, and its narrator Victor Mask ell shares characteristics with that of THE SEA. THE UNTOUCHABLE fictionalizes the British spy ring in which Anthony Blunt, the art historian and Royal appointee was the "fourth man," unmasked for years after the defection of Donald McLean ("the dour Scot") and Guy Burgess ('Boy") with the aid of Kim Philby (Nick, the MP; Querell, the Le Carre-like novelist?).

Narrated by Maskell, the style is an effective combination of aesthetic observation and British slang, fitting the movement between the public lavatories and the art institute in which he resided. The doubling of selves in Maskell, Irish Protestant risen in English society, Russian spy and British intelligence officer, rough trading homosexual and emissary for HRH, actor and agent, develops one of Banville's main obsessions: can we know anyone else, or even ourselves. The most aware of his intimates, his wife Vivienne ("Baby"), observes sharply and, one way or another, has gathered all the details. In a slight twist from Joyce's Daedelus, it is Maskell finally, who does not know that his children are his own.

Literary in a number of ways (in a book populated with homosexuals, the hetero Querell takes his name from a Genet novel), we are given flashes of Fitzgerald, James, interestingly enough both expats, and so on.

I am beginning to think Banville a rather saucy chap, sticking his ink-stained thumb in the eyes of just about everyone in his trade and in those of the status-obsessed or effete.

Absolutely excellent read, one of the best pieces of literature I’ve read in some time. Individualism, time, sexuality, art, war, relationship dynamics, all rolled into one narrative, with a very Gatsby-an energy throughout. Evoked feelings I haven’t experienced since reading Dostoyevsky for the first time. Couldn’t recommend more.

I didn't know anything about the real-life events behind this - I'm a little curious but not at all concerned how much of it was fact and how much fiction - I was content simply to enjoy it as a stand-alone work, and enjoy it I did.
All the elements were promising - a world-weary English(ish)man for a main character, a WWII backdrop, a healthy dollop of debauched high society, and a bit of a spy mystery driving the narrative - but it would all have been for nothing without the right delivery, and boy does Banville deliver.
OK, so his prose, characters and settings don't quite have Mr Graham Greene's unique touch of aching genius, nor does his dialogue quite have Mr Joseph Conrad's spark, but I place The Untouchable almost in that same league - at a minimum these things are all mahogany-solid throughout, and quite often the prose quavered on the brink of being beautiful. For a 400-page spy novel, that was a very welcome surprise.
I'm told The Sea is a bit meh, but on the strength of what I've just read, I'll be returning to Mr Banville in the not-too-distant future...

Favourite quote:

Is there anything more dispiriting than an empty, hand-warmed, sticky gin glass?