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|title=Ancient Light

|author=John Banville

|publisher=Viking

|date=July 2012

|video=B7gD7ugjqUA

|summary=Banville's pace is slow but this is more a celebration of exquisite writing than a gripping plot. The narrator looks back on an old love affair in this evocative book. Not much happens but it is always beautifully described.

}}

The narrator in John Banville's ''Ancient Light'' is Alex Cleave, a stage actor in the curtain call of his career. For reasons that become clearer towards the end of the book, he is recalling his first relationship, when as a teenager in 1950s Ireland, he had a passionate affair with the mother of his best friend. However, his past is also blighted by recollections of his own daughter's suicide ten years previously.