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  • The Untouchable

  • By: John Banville
  • Narrated by: Bill Wallis
  • Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (133 ratings)
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The Untouchable cover art

The Untouchable

By: John Banville
Narrated by: Bill Wallis
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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.

What listeners say about The Untouchable

Average customer ratings
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Lonely for Socialism

Here’s another new writer to me that, having read this really enjoyable book, I’m at a complete loss as to why he’s been lost to me. I read the earlier reviews and claims to Henry James, with some scepticism, but I was quickly disavowed of this and from the first settled into a really well written first person narrative that was sustained throughout the huge landscape of near historical London.

Anthony Blunt has always been a fascinating character - at the heart of Establishment and at the same time a betrayer who stayed true to the cause of Marxism. The clé to this romanà gets about as close as it would seem possible to get without actually transforming into a memoir - and I’d be interest to have a look at Blunt’s own work - but what fascinating source material.

The motivation - and peculiarly English - lack of a zealous driving force behind the perceived actions of treason and treachery provide the underlying motor for this portrait. The writing is rich, deep, well researched, authorative and kind. There are wonderful epithets and stand alone sketches along the way that I hugely enjoyed and will look for more Banville to fill up the months ahead.

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16 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A nest of gentlefolk who spy

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...

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent match of narrator and text

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.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

The Cambridge Set

A remarkable fiction based on true events in the fifties involving the network of British agents spying for Russia, based in London. It is beautifully, lyrically written but nevertheless I found it distasteful. The characters, masterfully drawn , are repellent in their treachery, their callous, cold-blooded, sneering attitude to others, their constant drunkenness and depravity. While it is a compelling read, it did seem overly long, perhaps because there was so little to admire about these blighted souls. That said, I would read anything else by this author.


Bill Wallis’s performance is a triumph in the art of bringing a book to life. What a happy gift!

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Spying

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.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • MR
  • 16-04-22

What a breathtakingly perfect piece of work this is!

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

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

fantastic novel, beautifully read

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.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Remarkable

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

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good book, well performed.

I haven't come across a Banville novel yet that I didn't like. It was made all the better by the great performance.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Superb narration, but a rambling collection of memories with lacklustre ending

Bill Wallis' narration brings to life this excellently written book. Written as a series of recollections from the life of a Russian spy, in a vaguely chronological order, it fails to deliver the excitement that such a life would be expected to provide. The rambling nature of the narrative and the lack of fully thrashed out explanations could leave the listener disappointed. The story did not earn the tension and drama portrayed in the final scene.

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2 people found this helpful