Ancient Light by John Banville: a book review

Ancient Light (2012) is mostly set in a small town in Ireland in the 1950s. Alexander Cleave is a 65-year-old stage actor whose only daughter, Cass, died 10 years ago at the age of 27, pregnant at the time, by throwing herself onto rocks from a seaside cliff in Portovenere, Italy. His wife Lydia remains in the background as a non-central figure. At 65, Alexander plays Axel Vander in the film The Invention of the Past – the impersonator who carried on the the life and career of a deceased journalist and critic.

The novel begins with Alex reminiscing about his first love, dalliance, affair, intense feelings – he doesn’t really know what to call it. At 15, in the 1950s, he had an intimate relationship with Mrs. Celia Gray, the mother of his best friend, Billy. Thirty-five-year-old Mrs. Gray had a non-descript husband and a daughter, Kitty. Alex’s memory is vague one minute, highly detailed the next, whimsical at times, honest at other times, but never with a confidence that an event happened at that time, or before, or later, or close together, or weeks apart, or even at all. His erratic memory though never forgets what the weather was like, or her scent, or her clothing, or the colour of her skin. Nevertheless he asks readers to bear with him ‘through this crystalline maze’ of his memory.

He doesn’t know if Mrs. Gray – now about 85 years old – is still alive. He doesn’t know why she ‘chose’ him. What would she think of him now? 

He knew nothing about girls when he first really noticed Mrs. Gray. He was visiting Billy when he saw the ‘briefest glimpse’ of a fragmented reflection of a reflection of a naked Mrs. Gray as he passed her open door. It was a week later he saw her again, playing tennis with her husband. Mrs. Gray offered him a lift home in her station wagon. Except that they didn’t drive home – they drove to the birch wood, where she asked him if he wanted to kiss her. He thought that one short kiss would inconceivably lead to more, but a week later, Alex’s ‘formerly passive intentions had moved onto the stage of active intent’ with an ‘odd sense of disengagement, of not registering fully’ what was happening. Weeks later he ‘made rapid progress’ brought about by his singlemindedness.

The affair lasted five months – 154 days to be exact. But the memory of it lasts a lifetime. He thought no other woman could match her lightness, grace, and uniqueness. She liked to talk, but he is surprised now at 65 at how little he learned about her and her life. He also realizes that it is his wife Lydia that he knows the least.

Only the first few meetings with Mrs. Gray are mentioned in detail as the novel moves to the present day and the making of the film. Billie Stryker is the movie scout and researcher; Tony Taggart is the director; and Dawn Devonpart plays Vander’s wife Cora. The other members of the cast fade into the background. Alex, still grieving the loss of his daughter, connects with Dawn who is grieving the death of her father a month before the start of the movie. Then she attempts suicide by ingesting pills, which brings Alex and Dawn closer together.

In Part II, Alex asks Billie Stryker to find Mrs. Gray, and she agrees without knowing the reason. Seeing Dawn in hospital, Alex’s emotions about his daughter’s death rise to the surface. Why was she in Portovenere? He also learns that his character, Axel Vander, was also in Portovenere around the same time.

The title, Ancient Light, refers to the ‘ancient light of galaxies that travels a million – a billion – a trillion! – miles to reach us’ so that what we see and perceive is like ‘always looking into the past.’ Alex is obsessed with the past, and his present life with Lydia is but an insignificant blur, only conscious in the context of Dawn’s presence, and the similarity of her situation with his – which his mind tries to justify.

This is a long, slow, fragmented stream of consciousness wrapped up in present-day cotton wool. But does it serve to resolve his daughter’s state of mind and her death; does it bring her back to life; does it resolve Mrs. Gray’s reason for choosing him; and does it bring back Mrs. Gray?

Although this is the third book of a trilogy – Eclipse (2001) and Shroud (2003) – it can be read on its own, but there are many missing threads, mostly due to Alex’s erratic and distorted memory, the missing information that he only seeks now at 65, and the disconnect he has with the people in his present life.

Like Banville’s other novels, such as the The Book of Evidence (1989) it is never really clear what triggers Alex’s memory of Mrs. Gray, or his need to write about her. Banville writes about another self-absorbed person who is attempting to explain his actions through trying to understand the actions of others. Once again, the writing style is well-crafted, and in fact beautiful in some parts, lifting Alex’s narration aloft as if floating in the breeze, never really grounded, and never really embodying his characters in the stark reality of life.