The ubiquitous phenomenon of the unreliable narrator in the novelin the novel is an admission that the only truth in human hearts is its tendency to ambivalence; knowing, feeling and sensing opposite ideas , emotions and sensations to be true and possible at the same time. Why should we ‘know’ this? I use a reading … More The ubiquitous phenomenon of the unreliable narrator in the novel is an admission that the only truth in human hearts is its tendency to ambivalence; knowing, feeling and sensing opposite ideas , emotions and sensations to be true and possible at the same time. Why  should we ‘know’ this? I use a reading of John Banville’s ‘Venetian Vespers’ (2025) as a test case.

In a review of a book of poems by Paul Muldoon in 2015 Fran Brearton in The Guardian writes that: ‘In a 21st-century context where everything seems instantly “knowable” for everyone, where we are “assailed by information”, what is “worth knowing” or what remains unknowable have become pressing questions. … The earth … is now also … More “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”: Beware those who claim that there is only thing you need to know.