The Singularities was published by Faber & Faber in 2022. It is Banville’s most ambitious and perhaps final major novel — a book that deliberately gathers together characters, themes, and narrative threads from across his entire career into a single, vertiginous work. Freddie Montgomery is released from prison (again) and assumes the identity of Felix Mordaunt, recently deceased, in order to take possession of Donat Godley’s country estate — the same house from The Infinities where Adam Godley senior made his mathematical breakthrough.
The novel is crowded with returning figures: Hermes is again present as narrator-observer; the Godley family recurs; Inspector Strafford (from Snow) investigates a local death. The effect is of a writer surveying his life’s work and asking what it all amounts to — a question posed without self-pity but with genuine philosophical urgency.
The “singularities” of the title are multiple: mathematical (Adam’s infinities), physical (black holes from which no information escapes), existential (the irreducible core of individual consciousness). The novel asks whether a life spent constructing fictions — whether a murderer’s alibis or a novelist’s books — constitutes a genuine encounter with reality or an elaborate evasion of it. There is no resolution, only the gorgeous, melancholy suspension that is Banville’s characteristic mode.
Collecting The Singularities
First edition (Faber & Faber, London, 2022): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- UK first edition, fine/fine: $20–$45
- Signed copies: $60–$120
- US first (Knopf, 2023), fine/fine: $15–$35
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation. Late-career Banville.
The Return
The Singularities (2022) brings back many of Banville’s recurring characters — Freddie Montgomery from the Frames trilogy, the Godley family from The Infinities — in a novel that reads as a summation of his career. The returned Freddie, released from prison under a new identity, arrives at Arden House, where the mathematical and mythological themes of earlier novels converge. The novel is dense, allusive, and self-referential — Banville writing for readers who know his entire body of work. It divided critics: some saw it as a triumphant late synthesis, others as an impenetrable inside joke.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to have read his other novels? Yes — more than any other Banville novel, The Singularities rewards readers who have followed his work from The Book of Evidence through The Infinities. It is not a good entry point for new readers.