Alexander Cleave, a famous -- and suddenly failing -- actor, who took to the stage in order to hide behind his characters, has retreated to his empty childhood home in hopes that, hidden from his audience, he might finally stop performing and simply be.

But the house is unexpectedly populated: by memories (his father's death; his relationship with his now estranged daughter; the beginnings, and possible dissolution, of both his career and his marriage); by the unsettling presence of the caretaker and the teenaged housekeeper; and by apparitions (ghosts? premonitions? visitations?) whom Alexander feels to be somehow "intricately involved in the problem of whatever it is that has gone wrong with me". As he struggles to determine what exactly has gone wrong, he comes to understand -- over the course of this brilliantly conjured and realized novel -- the ways in which things and people are not what they seem, and how they reveal what they are.

Eclipse is John Banville at his unique and superb best.