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The Untouchable

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The Untouchable

By: John Banville
Narrated by: Bill Wallis
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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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The prose is truly beautiful, with stunning observational writing that vividly ignites the imagination. It felt almost cinematic, as I could clearly envision the characters’ poses, gestures, and full range of expressions. The narration was impeccable; Bill Wallis embodied the characters so completely that it is hard to imagine anyone else doing it justice.

Possibly the best book I’ve ever ‘read’ and impeccable narration.

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Good story based on things that happened. Interesting trying to fit the characters to real people. But it’s the prose that makes it.

Beautifully written and read

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Simply the best book i have listened to in 5yrs. John Banville’s prose flows with beauty, energy, comedy and is visually perfect. It’s like a wonderful sensitive screenplay. And it is enhanced by the thoughtful nuance and narration by Bill Wallis. This is an absolute gem of a novel.

fantastic novel, beautifully read

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Bill Wallis deserves every praise and thanks for his narration of The Untouchable.

His Victor Maskill is simply far more interesting than the Victor Maskill I encountered when reading the book alone; Wallis conveys beautifully the humour, snobbery and tragedy in this most engaging of characters.

If you are a fan of Banville, then I would recommend this without hesitation.

Excellent match of narrator and text

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The narrator had a great feel for the moral ambiguity of the main characters. Their cynical approach to betrayal of a system of which they were the main beneficiaries.

The tremendous description of how the upper classes lived and enjoyed the war in their bubble.

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Flawless writing and exceptional performance. Such a beautiful description and interpretation of this languid, spoilt, entitled and thoroughly unpleasant character.

What a breathtakingly perfect piece of work this is!

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A fictionalised Anthony Blunt is fabulously drawn by Banville’s dark poetic pen.
Beautiful prose, searing insight, I was heartbroken to finish, so I started all over again, easily. Perfect narration also.

Spying

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The book seemed familiar to me, as if I’d read it before, although I know I haven’t. Gentlemen spies, Cold War, Oxbridge - the mannered shabby existence of people who don’t really have to worry about impoverishment because they are so well connected to power.

It was written in 2009, which doesn’t seem that long ago, and yet it seemed like writing of another time that is now gone.

Soothing writing about an alien world

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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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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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