The Untouchable by john banville

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

The most useful thing any one reading this book can do is to abandon anything they know about the Cambridge spies, Anthony Blunt, any idea of this as fictionalised truth or being based on true events or people. This is a novel, Bainville is not using fiction to write history or biography and certainly not a Roman a clef. He is writing a novel about treachery, betrayal, honest, truth, love - life the universe and everything - it is a story, to get bogged down in source material is like reading War and Peace and worrying about the accuracy of Tolstoy's Napoleon or Tsar Alexander I or even worse searching out the models for his characters and fussing about how accurate representation. If you want to read about the Cambridge spies read of the numerous journalistic efforts they have inspired. Banville's are so much more then any real life supposed model.

Banville is a superb but challenging writer I have struggled with some of his novels. This one was, I hate to say easy going because that would be untruthful or at least limiting. It is wonderfully readable and that is why limiting it to real life models is such a betrayal of the books rich intelligence. This book may help understand the Cambridge spies - they will not provide anything to the enjoyment or understanding of this novel. It is brilliant, sharp, clever and utterly wonderful.

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callmerussu

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Like many of Banville's narrators, Victor Maskell, the eponymous "untouchable", is an art historian. The details surrounding Maskell's life roughly correspond to a conflation of Anthony Blunt (1907-83), who was exposed in 1979 as a former Soviet spy, and the Belfast-born poet, Louis MacNeice (1907-63). The form of the novel is a fictionalised memoir, written out by Maskell in the last year of his life, detailing his rise from Cambridge undergrad in the early '30s to member of the Royal Household as Surveyor of the King's Pictures and leading figure in British art history (Indeed, I have one of Blunt’s books, Baroque and Rococo Architecture and Decoration, gracing my shelves, one of the few remaining from my grad school days.)

This is Banville's longest novel, and in a way, the most focused (in terms of plot), deriving as it does from historical figures and incidents. But the roman à clef mode simples serves as an armature upon which Banville constructs diverse meditations on art, friendship, loyalty, authenticity, patriotism, academia, family and so many of the other topics which defined and defied the tumultuous twentieth century.

And as always, Banville prose is luminous and delightful, poetically effervescent: sticking one's nose in a Banville book the bubbles practically tickle it. Though I was slightly shocked by how much he appropriated from Blunt's life, the book is not of course about the "facts"—be they fictional "facts" or factual "facts"—it's about how they are presented and developed. The facts surrounding a life do not make a character, particularly a literary character. Nor does it put the type of ruminations into the head of a narrator as Banville does. That takes a master craftsman, an artist. A poet.

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enix18

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

[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.

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sky73

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

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.

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Faceless_Friend

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

“The Untouchable” is in the form of a journal written in the first person by the main character, Victor Maskell, who, as a member of the British foreign intelligence service, was a spy for the Soviet Union from the 1930’s through the 1950’s. It is a fictional account of the infamous “Cambridge Spy Ring” which operated in Great Britain during the same period and included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Guy Maclean.

Maskell takes up writing his journal at age 72. We learn in the first few pages that he has been unmasked as a Russian agent and that the news of his unmasking has recently been made public. Maskell’s journal is a narration of the espionage and other activities of him and his group, all of whom were recent graduates of Cambridge University and had Marxist-Leninist sympathies. It is also a character study of Maskell himself. The novel is not a thriller. The only real mystery is the identity of the person who betrayed Maskell and revealed him to be a Russian agent.

Banville’s writing is insightful, clear, and flawless. His characterization of Maskell and his colleagues is complex and convincing. I give “The Untouchable” four stars.

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anagold

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

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!

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jiji7878

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 25,2025

Дълбоко равнодушна ме остави другарят роялист Маскел. Взех си романа на Джон Банвил малко след като излезе на български, не поради трепет към тематиката, а заради превода на Иглика Василева. Доста неприятно се изненадах (не знам повече от себе си или от книгата), когато не успях да съзра онзи „литературен връх“, към който подмамва задната корица. За мен върхът си остана силно забулен в мъгли, до степен, в която напълно го пропуснах. Не съм човек, който ще тръгне да морализаторства, но непреднамерените сексуални похождения, които дебнеха от всяка ст��аница някъде след средата, ме изнервиха доста. Сториха ми се изключително самоцелни – ни го развиха тоя персонаж, ни разкриха нещо повече за характера му. Подобен проблем имах и с „Непосилната лекота на битието“. И там непосилно лековатият секс нямаше мяра и смисъл (казвам това с пълното съзнание, че вероятно съм един абсолютно заблуден лаик и нищо не разбирам от качествена литература).

Честият лайтмотив със споменаването на картината „Смъртта на Сенека“ на Пусен също ми се видя банално повтарян, но остана неразбран от мен. Може би всички имаме едновременно възвишена и низка природа? Сред мрака винаги проискрява светлината? Сянката и персоната на всеки са двете страни на една монета (е казал още Юнг не знам кога си)? За капак на всичко напълно се обърках измежду пристрастията на персонажите, кой беше двоен, троен, четворен агент и към кой отбор се числеше в крайна сметка. А, и всеки срещнат някак си беше хомосексуалист и протагонистът, също от тази страна на барикадата, непогрешимо ги надушваше всички (тук пък рискувам някой в хомофобия да ме заподозре – опасности надвисват отвсякъде). Над средностатистически вероятно ми се стори просто. Без повече излишности, за момента казвам на Банвил едно „довиждане“, хладно като майски следобед в Дъблин.

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