John Banville: Exploring Fictions

Melancholia, memory, and selfhood in John Banville's Ancient Light

“…4 4 Four of the most relevant Banville critics thoroughly investigate the motif of self in the writer's enterprise, and each contributes a monograph. Hand suggests how ‘an investigation of the self’ (Hand, 2002, 21) has become Banville's unflagging fascination, as the writer concentrates on ‘the nature of individual identity and how it is created and sustains itself in the world and in connection with others’ (pp. 116–117).…”