Capital gains: Banville remains elusive in his own narrative

Memoir: Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir, By John Banville, Hachette Books Ireland, €34

Vladimir Nabokov was evidently much on John Banville’s mind during the writing of Time Pieces, his new Dublin memoir – specifically, I would guess, Nabokov’s glittering, enigmatic autobiography, Speak, Memory (1951). “The cradle rocks above an abyss,” that famous book begins, “and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of ...