Eclipse

A lyrical and haunting new work of fiction by one of Ireland's greatest writers...Alexander Cleave has never been able to rid himself of the feeling that he is in "a perpetual state of being watched"-even when alone. So he became an actor, and successfully performed his way through life until suddenly, at the peak of his career, he staggered off stage, never to return.Self-banished to his childhood home and cut off from his wife, Cleave begins to unravel the past and disinter his own identity. But his attempt to sift the accumulated clutter of half a century of existence is undermined by the house itself, brimming with lives, both ghostly and undeniably human. Memory constantly displaces Cleave's attention to the small, delicate details of the present. So too does his anxiety about the future, and the thought of his beloved but troubled daughter, Cass, tugging away at him like an undertow.This humane and beautifully written story tells the tragic tale of a man, intelligent, preposterous and vulnerable, who in attempting to bring the performance to a close, finds himself travelling inevitably towards a devastating denouement.

“This unsparing, compassionate, humane book demonstrates again that Banville is in a class of his own.”

Spectator
A contemporary fable of piercing sadness and melancholy beauty. . . This poetic novel deals with archetypal themes as well as painful truths about parental inadequacy and the limitations of love. Sunday Telegraph
In Eclipse Banville has created another important, challenging fiction. The book is ornately written, heartless in an honest fashion, profoundly interrogative of ideas of identity and, above all, spectacularly beautiful. It is, in a way that so many contemporary novels are not, a work of art. Observer

John Banville was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. His first book, Long Lankin, was published in 1970. His other books are Nightspawn, Birchwood, Doctor Copernicus (which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976), Kepler (which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1981), The Newton Letter (which was filmed for Channel 4), Mefisto, The Book of Evidence (shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize and winner of the 1998 Guinness Peat Aviation Award), Ghosts, Athena, The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud. He has received a literary award from the Lannan Foundation. The Sea won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2005. John Banville lives in Dublin.

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