L'intoccabile

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 st Leggi tutto

After reading something written so well, it’s a disappointment having only my own less eloquent words available to praise it. Maybe it’s better to let Banville’s passages sell themselves. I’ll get to those soon, but first a bit of context. The book, I learned only today, is a Roman a clef -- more or Leggi tutto

ALL HIGH TALK AND LOW FROLICS: Part I ("My Other Secret Life") I first encountered the Judge, professionally, in Court. Early in my career, I appeared in the Family Court 400 times over two years. 50 or so appearances would have been before him. He was a precise and impatient judge. He had little tolera Leggi tutto

This is my second try with John Banville. Once again, he impresses me with his ability to write nearly perfect prose and characters who are as flesh and blood and flawed as any who ever breathed, while completely boring me . That's strike two, Mr. Banville, and two is all most authors get from me. Ban Leggi tutto

What forces a person to betray his country? Where do all the spies come from? What makes them ticking? 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 fir Leggi tutto

"Metamorphosis is a painful process" for Victor, an art expert and ambitious man who turns to the life of a spy. In the end, his ambitions ruin him and his friends betray him. His journey of exploration begins late: when he has been ousted in public, deserted, and he tries to make sense of his life

As readers we have all experienced or come across books that either make a siren call to us, which we can’t ignore, or speak to us in a way that makes us drown within its pages, or even sing to us, a beautiful melody that soothes our spirit and enthralls us in a way nothing else does. This book had Leggi tutto

This is a great novel based on a blending of the lives of several real-life British men, “The Cambridge Five,” who were spies for the Soviets in the 1930’s through the 1950’s. Our main character, given the name Victor Maskell, is a gay man who found out he was gay only after being married and having Leggi tutto

En los años 30, un pequeño grupo de estudiantes de Cambridge, convencidos socialistas, establecieron una célula que pasaba información a la Unión Soviética. Pertenecientes a la élite intelectual y social, llegaron a ocupar cargos cercanos a las esferas del poder y no fueron descubiertos hasta bien e Leggi tutto

3.5/5 Estrellas. Ejercicio literario impresionante. Largo y en determinados momentos tedioso monólogo, que hace que engancharse a la lectura requiera una considerable dosis de motivación. El libro se plantea como las memorias de uno de los 5 topos que la Unión Soviética reclutó entre los Universitario Leggi tutto