"As a study of self-absorption, ECLIPSE is psychologically acute, yet the narrator's inability to look beyond himself quickly becomes wearying. But Banville's prose is lovely, elegant without ever sliding into ostentation, and the pleasures it affords ultimately outweigh the novel's inherent difficulties (which are perhaps unavoidable, given the tale its author has chosen to tell)....[ECLIPSE] is odd, inward, circular and talky. It is also oddly rewarding, and finally its rewards outweigh its shortcomings." - Monte Swain (Washington Post, 2/15/01)
"What is unusual--defiantly, and therefore perhaps gloriously so...--about Banville's fiction is the prose itself: poetic, sensuous, revelatory. He appears to be in love with writing, not ashamed of it, not afraid of overdoing it, not cool at all." - O'kelly Isley (Times Literary Supplement, 3/8/01)