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John Banville

ISBN 10: 0754000621 / 0-7540-0062-1
ISBN 13: 9780754000624
Publisher: Chivers Audio Books
Publication Date: 1997

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Review:

"...Maskell is more than a thinly veiled Blunt..., and the book is much more than a roman ý clef....[It] is as much a social history and a comedy of manners as it is a novel of espionage, Jane Austen by way of Quentin Crisp and John le Carre....Victor Maskell is one of the great characters in recent fiction....The ultimate unreliable narrator, he is a brilliant and sophisticated man who devotes his life to lies and betrayals, only to realize much too late just whom he is betraying."

James Hynes, Washington Post Book World, 05/04/1997

Review:

"As a slice of history, 'Untouchable' is never less than masterly....[T]he portraits in 'The Untouchable' are notable for their relentlessly skewering brilliance. Phrase after phrase pins a character to the page, summons a sky, a view, a moment out of time, with a breathtaking sureness of touch. Banville's narrator has a fine eye...and paints an astounding word picture, but only the author's genius can account for the music of 'The Untouchable's' prose. Here, in top form, is as remarkable a literary voice as any to have come out of Ireland, Joyce and Beckett notwithstanding....[T]his is Banville's slyest, funniest book, less a historical investigation than a series of comic tours de force, faultless in their period detail."

Carey Harrison, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, 05/04/1997