The Story Archive

The Untouchable

John Banville · 1997 CE · Novel · English · Contemporary

An elderly art historian, stripped of his knighthood after a name is read out in the Commons, opens a notebook for the young woman who wants his story and goes back to Cambridge in the thirties, to Ireland, to the war, to the friends who recruited him. He is a Poussin scholar and a homosexual in a country that criminalised it, and he treats both as further compartments of a life kept in compartments. Modelled on Anthony Blunt of the Cambridge ring, and narrated in a voice that keeps its distance from every allegiance it claims.

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Attributes

Genre
HistoricalPsychologicalThriller
Theme
BetrayalAppearance vs RealityIdentity & SelfLoyaltyGuilt & Conscience
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
The DoubleShadowAnti-Hero
Plot structure
ConfessionUnreliable NarratorFrame Narrative
Quest object (Greimas)
Identity / Selfhood
Symbol / motif
The MaskThe PortraitThe Letter
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
IronicElegiacNoir
Culture / tradition
English

Closest analogues