The Untouchable

By: John Banville

Narrated by: Bill Wallis

Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

fiction/literature doesn't get better that this

A fictionalized retelling of the Cambrige-Oxford British elites, Anthony Blunt, Guy Burrgess, Donald MacLean and Kim Philby, who worked for years together as spies for Communist Russia. Told in the first person, stream-of-consciousness Joycian style by Victor Maskell who is Anthony Blunt. In the novel Maskel/Blunt reminisces for a his biographer after Margaret Thatcher has "outed" and disgraced him in Parliament.

I'm a Banville fan, but I think this novel may stand the test of time as his best. Hard to read more pedestrian prose after putting this gem down.

The reader who 'performs' the audible version could not be better; obviously an actor who understands everything about the book, story and Banville's sense of humor. Will definitely "read" it again.

A way with words

When I read or hear a Banville novel I am continually astonished at his way with words: rich, polished, one cascading after another like some great avalanche. Where, I wonder, does he find the time to concoct these great, rich, literary stews? I like to imagine the two of us sitting at a table in the back of some scruffy little bar, sharing a bottle of gin and talking long into the night. The closest I'd get to heaven.

Absolutely smashing peek into the mind of a spy

This novel purports to be the memoirs of Victor Maskell, a thinly disguised version of Anthony Blunt, on of the infamous Cambridge spies: well-educated upper class Beira who spied for the Russians from the 30’s to the 50’s. Not much derring-do or cloak and dagger. More a psychological and social inquiry. And the narrator could not have done a better job

I'm old enough to recognize all the players.

If you do not know the background of the Cambridge 5 and do not recognize the characters from real life this may not make much sense.Blunt,Burgess Mclean etc, I LOVED the story and the narration.Warning quite a lot of homoerotica.

Brilliant writer writes the most boring spy story

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.

Banville is a serious Literary Dude, and this is a serious Literary Dude's novel. The Untouchable is written as a memoir by one Victor Maskell, who is based on real-life Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt; although this is a novel, it's only loosely fictionalized history. Maskell, as he tells his story, was, like Blunt, formerly the keeper of the British royal family's art collection, and has recently been exposed as a Soviet spy since before World War II. Maskell is also a homosexual, which plays a large part of his narrative - he describes his sexual encounters with the same precise elegant prose as he talks about watersheds in history and his role as a Soviet double-agent.


"Everybody nowadays disparages the 1950s, saying what a dreary decade it was. And they are right, if you think of McCarthyism and Korea, the Hungarian rebellion, all that serious historical stuff. I expect, however, that it is not public but private affairs that people are complaining of. Quite simply, I think they did not get enough of sex. All that fumbling with corsetry and woolen undergarments and all those grim couplings in the back seats of motorcars. The complaints and tears and resentful silences, while the wireless crooned callously of everlasting love. Feh! What dinginess! What soul-sapping desperation! The best that could be hoped for was a shabby deal marked by the exchange of a cheap ring followed by a life of furtive relievings on one side and of ill-paid prostitution on the other.

Whereas, oh my friends, to be queer was the very bliss! The Fifties were the last grace age of queerdom. All the talk now is of freedom and pride. Pride! But these young hotheads in their pink bellbottoms, clamoring for the right to do it in the street if they feel like it, do not seem to appreciate, or at least seem to wish to deny, the aphrodisiac properties of secrecy and fear.


Maskell is wry, cynical, sometimes humorous, and a bit depressive, looking back on a career that's been generally distinguished while always overshadowed by these twin secrets: he has lived his entire life in two closets, as a homosexual and a double-agent. He has few regrets, and he seems as much amused as he is upset by his public disgrace, the shock of his friends, the shame of his family.

As brilliantly narrated as Maskell's story is, the problem is that it isn't much of a story. It's an old man reminiscing about being a young Marxist and a gay blade back when either one could get you hard prison time. There are no dramatic "spy" moments — even during World War II, he's just passing on not-very-important information to the Russians, until eventually he gets tired of the whole thing and rather anticlimactically (as much as a book that's had no suspense to begin with can have an anticlimax) drops out of the spy game. Then, years later, he's thrown under the bus by some of his former associates. (Figuratively, not literally; if anyone were actually thrown under a bus in this book, it would have been more exciting.)

Most excellently written? Yes. Banville wins literary prizes — go John Banville. Did I care about Victor Maskell and his whiny, cynical, misogynistic moping after decades of being a Soviet spy? Noooo. If you have a real interest in this era, particularly with a realistically (if not particularly sympathetically) depicted gay character, then you probably won't regret reading this, but don't make the mistake of thinking that because it's about spies it's thrilling.

I would like to say that Bill Wallis's narration is perfect. For capturing Maskell's dreary, bored-with-it-all sense of ennui-laced indignation, and lending the necessary distinguished British touch to Banville's prose, Wallis is perfect. However, he frequently lowers his voice to a near-mumble, practically muttering asides under his breath, so be aware that this book isn't a good one to listen to while driving, since you'll be straining your ears to make out what he's saying unless you crank the volume way up.

First person voice of a strange traitor

First person voice of a strange traitor. Gots many of the stereotypes of the British spy. From the thirties a British academic becomes a communist and decides to spy for Russia while also working as a British spy. He reminisces through his past both friendships and treacheries.

A Work of Art

One of the most beguiling books of delicious prose, I have ever read.Not a thriller...more like one's first taste of honey.

Just couldn't listen.

This may be a good read based on all the good reviews. But I quickly got that glazed over look as ascribed to one of the characters earlier in the book. The story and pace just couldn't hold my attention for long.

Terrible narration

The narrator accent & the way he lowers his voice & talks fast like as if
he’s talking to himself made it impossible for me to listen to this book. Waste of a credit!