It seems churlish to be churlish when I’m in the midst of a long strange trippy reread of Against the Day, but you know what? I’m a churl. Banville is getting embarrassingly high on his own supply here, wallowing in the slippery, slobbery, luxuriantly self-oblivious voice of his great creation Freddie Montgomery to the extent that the other characters, and what little he musters by way of plot, dissolve into mere effluvia. It’s way too fucking much of a very good thing. While The Book of Evidence is full-blooded and full of blood to balance the airy aloofness of its narrator, this is all fumes and aether. Banville, sez wiki, described this as the second in a triptych, and I’ve always found the middle panel of triptychs the most tempting to pass over. Which is what I suggest you do with this book.