In reading Banville's novels through the work of key psychoanalytical theorists, John Banville's Narcissistic Fictions brings together apparently disparate thematic strands - missing twins, shame, false identities - and presents these as manifestations of a central concern with narcissism.

'Catching Bullets' is a love-letter to James Bond, Duran Duran title sequences and bolting down your tea quick enough to watch Roger Moore falling out of a plane without a parachute.