SOURCE: "Raskolnikov on the Couch," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 7, 1993, pp. 3, 12.

In the following review, Eder complains of the flat characterization in Banville's Ghosts.

Call me Ishmael.

No.

It's not that Melville needs us to say "yes" right at the start, so that he and we can get on with Moby Dick. "Maybe" or "let's see" will do; the "yes" can take its time. "I" in a first-person narrative invites us to a game and must charm, puzzle, annoy or even terrify us into wanting to play; but not immediately. What would stop things dead is a "no." The invitation extended by the narrator of Ghosts is all too easy for the reader to turn down.

The ghost in John Banville's novel about the aftermath of a gratuitous crime is the criminal. He is not literally dead but his sense of self is so shattered that...