Banville takes masterly control of Henry James’s unlucky heroine

Fiction: Mrs Ormond, By John Banville, Viking Penguin, €20

Henry James’s nickname was originally bestowed on him by a coterie of younger novelists who recognised in James a writer who could do things that no one else could: hence, the Master. Novelists have always looked upon James’s work in much the way that mountaineers must look upon Everest. There it stands, at once alluring and forbidding, offering a fearsome challenge to anyone who ...