But there is also joy in the natural and easy access that the novelist seems to have to the recollected stories and pungencies of childhood.

NEWYORKER: Late and Soon

He called The Sea, about a man who confronts his past in a town where he spent a childhood holiday, "a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected".

BBC: John Banville won a closely-contested prize

As the narrative moves between past and present between past tense and present tense and between recollected events and dramatised scenes the spreading bleakness is lightened by enjoyable observations of Edinburgh and a background cast of students, university bureaucrats and overly cheerful television presenters.

ECONOMIST: Exploring knowledge and self-knowledge