Ghosts

A beautiful, beguiling book full of resonances that continue to sound long after youve turned the final page. Its imagining is magical, its execution dazzlingly skilful. Sunday Tribune Ghosts opens with a shipwreck, leaving a party of sightseers temporarily marooned on an island. The stranded castaways make their way towards the big isolated house which is home to the reclusive Professor Silas Kreutznaer and his laconic assistant, Licht, but it is also home to another, unnamed presence . . . Onto this seemingly haunted island, where a strange singing hangs in the air, John Banville drops an intriguing cast of characters including a murderer and weaves a tale where the details are clear but the conclusion polymorphous shifting appearances, transformations and thwarted assumptions make this world of uneasy calm utterly enthralling.