From Publishers Weekly
The narrator of this lyrical novel by the author of The Book of Evidence banishes himself to a deserted island inhabited by two other castaways. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
A bedraggled medley of castaways from a day outing wash ashore a remote island. Led by Felix, the unctuous, mutable "lord of the streets," they include many of the same Faustian types--the innocent girl, the moribund gentleman--who inhabit Banville's previous fiction, The Book of Evidence ( LJ 3/1/90) and Mephisto (Godine, 1989). They have, perhaps, walked "straight out of the deepest longings" of the forsaken trio already sentenced to live on that island: an art expert with dubious credentials, Professor Kreutnaer; his disgruntled, lovelorn assistant Licht; and the familiar ex-convict who is also our first-person narrator. Banville is not so much interested in the plight of the castaways, whom he arranges in a tableau vivant and then abandons, as he is in the criminal descent and groping atonement of his hapless narrator. Here Banville's quirky, Beckettian stream-of-consciousness takes off: pathetic, noble, hilarious, this narrator is an utterly original "little god." The novel, though in some ways incomplete, is an exuberant, virtuosic display.- Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In this moody, restless novel, filled with dreams, longings, and imaginings, it's hard to tell who is real, who is a ghost, and who is a figure from a painting. The action, though there is little of it, begins when the shipwrecked occupants of a pleasure boat make their way to a big beach house for comfort, food, and rest. An odd group stumbles through the sand toward the house--the beautiful Flora; the three ungainly children, Hatch, Pound, and Alice; the cynical photographer, Sophie; dapper old Croke, in his panama and striped blazer; and sleazy, leering Felix. The group is watched and awaited by the house's occupants: Professor Kreutznaer, interrupted in his life's work, studying and writing about the artist Vaublin; his aide--both cook and typist--the dreamer Licht; and the book's narrator, an ex-con who came to the island for solitude and the opportunity to work with the professor on his book and found also the opportunity to examine his life as well as the lives of others. Imagistic, poetic prose from the author of The Book of Evidence (1990), among others. Eloise Kinney

From Kirkus Reviews
An eminent but broken-down art historian named Kreutzner lives in an island aerie with his strange assistant Licht--and the two one day find themselves playing host to a party of strangers who've been shipwrecked when the chartered boat they were on ran aground offshore. The Professor is the world's greatest authority on the painter Vaublin--creator of Watteau-like scenes of out-of-time mystery, of Pierrot figures gracefully adrift in ambiguous landscapes. When late in the story a newly released convict makes his way to the island as well and takes up residence among the dispossessed of the house, adding yet another character to its unclear society of confused sleepwalkers, Banville (Kepler, 1983; The Book of Evidence, 1990, etc.) has the last element needed to complete his rather mist-laden tableau: ``It is the very stillness of their world that permits them to endure; if they stir they will die, will crumble into dust and leave nothing behind save a few scraps of brittle lace, a satin bow, a shoe buckle, a broken mandolin.'' Quickly discovered by a reader, however, is that nothing is going to happen in this book except prose--high-quality, vaguely old-fashioned art prose--all of it dependent on a connoisseur's patience as the sentences noodle through the art/illusion hoops Banville sets up. Just as no character here does anything (though in the past each might have done something), Banville neither tries to overturn his allegory nor heighten it; he seems placidly satisfied just to set up its pieces and see if they stand. Precious in a showoffy way--and deadly static. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
In this brilliantly haunting new novel, John Banville forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence. "A surreal and exquisitely lyrical new novel by one of the great stylists writing in English today."--Boston Globe.

From the Inside Flap
In this brilliantly haunting new novel, John Banville forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence. "A surreal and exquisitely lyrical new novel by one of the great stylists writing in English today."--Boston Globe.

ANNOTATION

In this brilliantly haunting new novel, John Banville forges an unforgettable amalgam of enchantment and menace that suggests both The Tempest and his own acclaimed The Book of Evidence. "A surreal and exquisitely lyrical new novel by one of the great stylists writing in English today."--Boston Globe.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A group of strangers, passengers on a day-boat that runs aground, are washed up on an island. Shaken and sodden, they nonetheless make quick work of the situation at hand. But what is the situation? They've invaded the closely protected enclave of an eminent art historian, but their presence seems to rouse in the historian's assistant a long-ripening hunger for company. Certainly the grounding of the boat was an accident, but one of the passengers seem to know the professor and to have an air of purpose about him. Why as their day on the island progresses, do they seem to inhabit a series of weighty tableaux? And who is the man who moves among them as both spectator and player, the nameless, seemingly haunted narrator whose sensibility is the sometimes clarifing, sometimes distorting lens through which we view the action? Invoking all lost souls and enchanted islands, Ghosts gives us a brilliant mix of gaiety and menace to tell a story about the failures and triumphs of the imagination, about time's passage, and about the frailty of human happiness. It is an exquisitely written novel - stately and theatrical - by one of the most widely admired and acclaimed writers at work today.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The narrator of this lyrical novel by the author of The Book of Evidence banishes himself to a deserted island inhabited by two other castaways. (Nov.)

Library Journal