SOURCE: "Shadow Plays," in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 6, No. 248, April 16, 1993, p. 41.

In the following review, Whiteside praises Banville's Ghosts, but calls it a difficult book.

It's fair to say that anyone approaching this dense, elusive, richly allusive novel without prior knowledge of John Banville's work will be at something of a disadvantage. Readers of the darkly ironic Book of Evidence will remember Freddie Montgomery, the empty soul who stole a portrait and dashed in the brains of a hapless maidservant before racking his own in vain to find out why he had done it. Here is Freddie again, named once only, his narratorial voice unmistakable. But Ghosts is altogether more difficult of access than that other novel, and marks a return to the more metaphysical speculations of Banville's earlier works, particularly his reworkings of Goethe in The Newton Letter and Mefisto.

"It was like hiding inside a head...