SOURCE: "In Violent Times," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXVII, No. 19, December 6, 1990, pp. 22-5.

Banville is an acclaimed Irish novelist, short story writer, and critic whose works include Long Lankin (1970), Mefisto (1986), and Ghosts (1993). In the following review, Banville offers a negative appraisal of Lies of Silence, asserting that the novel's thinly developed characters "are made to mouth extended disquisitions on the Northern Ireland troubles."

Lies of Silence is, by my reckoning, Brian Moore's seventeenth novel. In the past he has produced some marvelous books—my own favorites are his first, the heartbreaking The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, and the very frightening Cold Heaven (1983)—and for this reason if for no other one would wish to find warm words for his latest. However, Lies of Silence (… on the short list for this year's Booker Prize) is thin stuff, an anecdote spun out to novel-length and...