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The Untouchable

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About this listen

Victor Maskell has been betrayed. After the announcement in the Commons, the hasty revelation of his double life of wartime espionage, his photograph is all over the papers. His disgrace is public, his position as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated… Maskell writes his own testament, in an act not unlike the restoration of one of his beloved pictures, in order for the process of verification and attribution to begin.

©1997 John Banville (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Espionage Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction Imperialism
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I usually enjoy Banville books but I’ve struggled with this one. It’s well narrated, well written but I just can’t engage with any of the characters or the plot. I realise it’s woven around fact and Blunt, but it’s dull.

Dull

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A wry, tender, devastatingly honest and witty account of an extraordinary life. Beautifully read. Brilliant.

Remarkable

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Well written story, superb style but rather detached: in the end I wasn’t to bothered at what happened to these people - more of a report than a novel.
Bill Fraser was VERY good with subtle shifts distinguishing the many characters: believable accents and never a caricature.

Well told story

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Firstly, the narrator Bill Wallace carries the tone of the era of espionage and Russian spies in the 30's to 80's. I just presumed he was Irish as his Irish accent underlying an RP British accent is the best by a non Irish person that I've heard and I'm Irish! John Banville keeps you interested in the character of Victor (representing Anthony Blunt) even though he is dislikeable...a true skill. I love stories about espionage in these times and this gives you a real insight into the rationale of how and why they became involved, despite being upper class snobs who would never have given up their privileged lives to live in Mother Russia. One of the best books I've 'read'.

Narrator is superb

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Bill Wallis's performance is perfect. He manages just the right hint of Irishness in the voice of an Anglo-Irishman of the Anglican ascendency origins educated at Marlborough and Cambridge, with that gentle increase in accent when he's recounting events that occurred in his native island. (This delighted me, it's just so natural for us Scots, too!)
I think I could have got too irritated with the unreliable narration of this deeply unpleasant protagonist if I'd just read the book; Bill Wallis made him human.
The prose, of course, is elegant and witty, the characters as exotic as Waugh's Flyte family, to postwar eyes. Or maybe not, thinking of our present government (no implication they're spying for Putin!).
Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

A nest of gentlefolk who spy

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