The Untouchable: A Novel - ISBN:0679767479

The Untouchable: A Novel

Date: 23 May 2011, 07:57

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Loosely based on the life of British art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, and with capsule portraits of characters based on Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, John Banville's "The Untouchable" is a witty and literate, if sometimes overwritten, novel, that never fails to entertain. The question of how a man like Blunt, or, in his present incarnation, Victor Maskell, could betray his country is a sticky one, but here the answer seems to be, quite casually. Maskell never appears to be very comfortable in the role of socialist, except when he's put on the defensive by his mocking friends, but he is amused by the idea of spying, which dovetails nicely with his personal philosophy of stoicism, as in Seneca, the Roman philosopher who ended his own life after being implicated in a conspiracy against the emperor, Nero. The obvious foreshadowing here is driven home by Maskell's obsession with a picture by Poussin depicting Seneca's suicide, which turns out to be possibly as fake as Maskell himself. Irish by birth, a father and husband, soldier and scholar, Maskell is also a closet homosexual, as well as a distant relation of the Queen. He is a mass of contradictions, who, having been betrayed as a spy and diagnosed as dying from cancer, has begun to wonder what was real and what illusory about his paradoxical life. In the end, he must face up to the ultimate betrayal. In "The Untouchable," Banville offers a perceptive glimpse into the world of those among us who are obliged to lead a double life, sometimes by choice, as in the case of spies, and sometimes not, as in the case of homosexuals. In the final analysis, spy and queer are not that far apart: the glamor and tawdriness, the mystery and banality, and always the backward look over one's shoulder. Victor Maskell may not be the most likeable of protagonists, but he is one of the most complex.

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