Page 57 of The Believer, May 2007, Book Review of “Christine Falls” by John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black):

 

“…One English newspaper has described Banville as the heir to Nabokov, although at times one can’t help but feel the Irishman embezzled at least some of his wealth. However he came by it, there is no doubting that Banville has invested his literary capital wisely, far more successfully than many other contemporary novelists. Instead of bodying forth a reality that has already been shot, stuffed and proudly mounted (the impression we get in much of Amis, another of Zeus-Nabokov’s many mortal children), Banville’s sentences take us out into the wild and show us the living, breathing, noisome actual in its natural habitat….”