care to terminally ill patients within their own homes. Style Banville is highly scathing of all of his work, stating of his books: "I hate them all ... I loathe them. They're all a standing embarrassment." Instead of dwelling on the past he is continually looking forward, "You have to crank yourself up every morning and think about all the awful stuff you did yesterday, and how you can compensate for that by doing better today." He does not read reviews of his work as he already knows — "better than any reviewer" — the places in which its faults lie. His typical writing day begins with a drive from his home in Dublin to his office by the river. He writes from 9 a.m. until lunch. He then dines on bread, cheese and tea and resumes working until 6 p.m., at which time he returns home. He writes on two desks at right angles to each other, one facing a wall and the other facing a window through which he has no view and never cleans. He advises against young writers approaching him for advice: "I remind them as gently as I can, that they are on their own, with no help available anywhere". He has compared writing to the life of an athlete: "It's asking an awful lot of one's self. Every day you have to do your absolute best — it's a bit like being a sportsman. You have to perform at the absolute top of your game, six, seven, eight hours a day — that's very, very wearing". Themes Banville is considered by critics as a master stylist of English, and his writing has been described as perfectly crafted, beautiful, dazzling. He is known for his dark humour, and sharp, wintery wit. He has been described as "the heir to Proust, via Nabokov". Don DeLillo describes Banville's work as "dangerous and clear-running prose", David Mehegan of The Boston Globe calls him "one of the great stylists writing in English today", Val Nolan in The Sunday Business Post calls his style "lyrical, fastidious, and occasionally hilarious"; The Observer described The Book of Evidence as "flawlessly flowing prose whose lyricism, patrician irony and aching sense of loss are reminiscent of Lolita." Gerry Dukes, reviewing The Sea in the Irish Independent, hailed Banville as a "lord of language". Michael Ross has stated that Banville is "perhaps the only living