MixedThe AtlanticHis latest novel, for good or ill, exaggerates his self-awareness, to encompass not just characters and objects but also the mechanics of the whodunit ... If the new novel presents a strangely neutered state of affairs, this cannot be ascribed solely to the peculiarity of its setting ... With his impulse toward mental play that stops short of full introspection, Strafford resembles the confessional narrators of The Book of Evidence and The Untouchable ... in a twist on the traditional policier, Snow\'s major confession is not that of the murderer, but that of his victim. This late monologue, which supplies the motive for the crime, is a malignant stew of leering and self-justification—and in this sense marks an advance, albeit a highly unpleasant one, on the technique Banville has long developed ... Banville might be said to have apprenticed himself to his own earlier self ... Snow offers many reminders of Banville’s mastery of unsettling personification ... The danger of a work like Snow is that the copy might degrade the original. What is stunning suffers from being unmasked as a trick. At times, Snow feels like a room in which a harsh, overhead light has been suddenly switched on, revealing gold as gold paint, flaking. In fact, the earlier works are more than secure in themselves, but their—even highly competent—reproduction nonetheless prompts unease. From a writer of Banville’s magnificent talents, one might have hoped for more cunning ways of leaving the reader wanting more.
