In this deeply moving and original book, John Banville alloys mystery,
fable, and ghost story with poignant psychological acuity to forge the
riveting story of a man wary of the future, plagued by the past, and so
uncertain in the present that he cannot discern the spectral from the
real.
When renowned actor Alexander Cleave was a boy living in a large house
with his widowed mother and various itinerant lodgers, he encountered a
strikingly vivid ghost of his father. Now that he's fifty and has
returned to his boyhood home to recover from a nervous breakdown on
stage, he is not surprised to find the place still haunted. He is
surprised, however, at the presence of two new lodgers who have covertly
settled into his old roost. And he is soon overwhelmed by how they,
coupled with an onslaught of disturbing memories, compel him to confront
the clutter that has become his life: ruined career, tenuous marriage,
and troubled relationship with an estranged daughter destined for
doom.*
*