The Los Angeles Times
Thinking back to his boyhood, Axel mocks: "What self? What sticky imago did I imagine was within me, do I imagine is within me, even still, aching to burst forth and spread its gorgeous, eyed wings?" Oh, to be done with such stuff forever! But we never are, and down to the last page of this dazzling novel, neither is the stained and shrouded Axel Vander. — Jack Miles
The New York Times
Shroud is the latest of several Banville novels that take the form of urgent confessional monologues by men who have done great wrongs and lived a lie. Vander isn't the first of these men to be based on a historical figure. The Untouchable drew on the life story of the art critic and Soviet agent Anthony Blunt -- like de Man, a respected scholar who turned out to have served totalitarianism. As that novel opens, its narrator has just been unmasked as a spy; similarly, at the beginning of ''Shroud,'' Vander is convinced that a young Irish researcher, Catherine (Cass) Cleave, is about to expose him. — Bruce Bawer
Publishers Weekly
Alex Vander is a fraud, big-time. An elderly professor of literature and a scholarly writer with an international reputation, he has neither the education nor the petit bourgeois family in Antwerp that he has claimed. As the splenetic narrator of this searching novel by Banville (Eclipse), he admits early on that he has lied about everything in his life, including his identity, which he stole from a friend of his youth whose mysterious death will resonate as the narrator reflects on his past. Having fled Belgium during WWII, he established himself in Arcady, Calif., with his long-suffering wife, whose recent death has unleashed new waves of guilt in the curmudgeonly old man. Guilt and fear have long since turned Vander into a monster of rudeness, violent temper, ugly excess, alcoholism and self-destructiveness. His web of falsehoods has become an anguishing burden, and his sense of displacement ("I am myself and also someone else") threatens to unhinge him altogether. Then comes a letter from a young woman, Cass Cleave, who claims to know all the secrets of his past. Determined to destroy her, an infuriated Vander meets Cass in Turin and discovers she is slightly mad. Even so, he begins to hope that Cass, his nemesis, could be the instrument of his redemption. Banville's lyrical prose, taut with intelligence, explores the issues of identity and morality with which the novel reverberates. At the end, Vander understands that some people in his life had noble motives for keeping secrets, and their sacrifices make the enormity of his deception even more shameful. This bravura performance will stand as one of Banville's best works. (Mar. 10) Forecast: As literary editor of the Irish Times, Banville is better known in Europe than in the U.S. Discriminating readers are the market for his 13th novel, which should figure among the literary prizes for 2003. Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Axel Vander is an elderly scholar, a survivor of the Holocaust, and a compulsive liar who stole his deceased childhood friend's identity to escape the Nazis. Living in California, the widowed Vander is contacted by a young woman named Cass Cleave, who forces him to meet her in Italy because she has discovered his true identity and threatens to expose him. The psychologically disturbed Cass, who appeared in Banville's Eclipse, literally "cleaves" to Axel, stimulating their peculiar love affair. In his 13th novel, Banville deftly wraps the reader in his dense and velvety prose, providing a satisfying reading experience despite a significantly inferior plot (it's just not that interesting). By shifting between the lovers' thoughts and flashbacks, Banville forges an enigmatic work about memory, one that is deeply rooted in deviant/manic thoughts and esoteric symbolism. Ultimately, this is an off-kilter romance, brutally astute in its raw imagery and epiphanic ending. Recommended for larger library collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/02.]-Colleen Lougen, Mount Saint Mary Coll. Lib., Newburgh, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Good writing overcomes an intermittently stately pace in this increasingly absorbing 13th outing (The Untouchable, 1997, etc.) from the literary editor of the Irish Times. The story serves as a partial prequel to Banville's most recent, Eclipse (2001), whose climactic actions included the suicide of its protagonist's emotionally unstable adult daughter Catherine ("Cass") Cleave. Here, Cass is a historical researcher who confronts protagonist Axel Vander, a Belgian-born literary theorist who was a WWII refugee and is now comfortably ensconced in a prestigious college in Arcady, California. The opening section reveals Cass's interest in Vander's buried past, as it moves toward their meeting in Turin, home of the revered Holy Shroud, and (very improbable) love affair. Its long middle section contains Vander's "confession" (of sorts): of his escape from the Nazi threat, experiences in wartime London, and move to America (financed by money stolen from one of several women he has exploited); callow treatment of his loving wife Magda(lena); and appropriation of the identity of a former friend who was a Nazi sympathizer and collaborator, and perhaps, paradoxically, also a Resistance leader. Finally, Banville gives us the old man's despairing acknowledgement of his unforeseen love for the troubled young woman whose "knowledge of my duplicity ran deeper than more [sic] detail, it reached far down into my very essence": who is the "Cassandra" to his manipulative "Svidrigailov" (the preening villain of Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment) and, in a stunning last line, his bereft and heartbroken Lear. Ironic metaphors (notably, references to the commedia del' arte figures of Harlequin and Columbine) andtelling allusions to the mordant philosophy of Nietzsche further deepen the texture of a rich portrayal of painstakingly earned self-understanding. Tough going in spots, but an impressive addition to Banville's varied and eloquent body of work.
