In many respects Apuleius’ Metamorphoses is a sensory overload for the reader: the gripping narrative of Lucius’ transformation into an ass is repeatedly interrupted by tales of varying length and subject, ranging from erotic adventure to horror story, and is described in a vivid style that borders on the graphic. When Lucius is transformed into an ass, the readers can almost feel the man–animal's rough fur and smell the ass's stench but, through Apuleius’ literary mastery, they can certainly see before their eyes what is happening to the curious main character of the novel. It does not spare us the bad and the ugly.

B. sees something more than this, arguing that the Metamorphoses not only invites us to look at Lucius and to see the world through him, but to look for the invisible. His excellent book argues that a great deal of the Metamorphoses is unseen, not least the great mystery of Lucius’ initiation into the cult of Isis and Osiris in Book 11, and that invisibility is one of the novel's main concerns.

The six chapters of B.’s book discuss the different ways in which invisibility is addressed in the Metamorphoses. B. argues that the unseen is already prominent in the prologue, which is presented by a disembodied voice (Chapter 1), and that Lucius’ form renders him quasi-invisible, allowing him to observe the world around him without the scrutiny of others and evoking parallels to Gyges, bearer of an invisibility ring in Plato's Republic (Chapter 2). Invisibility is particularly important in the tale of Cupid & Psyche, which repeatedly sees Psyche's efforts to deal with the unseen frustrated (Chapter 3). B. stresses in Chapter 4 that the novel's obsession with bodies and dismemberment not only mirrors the fragmentation of the narrative, but that it invites a philosophical interpretation of the dismemberment as a symbol of Platonic metaphysics. In Chapter 5 he turns to a narratological analysis of Book 11, arguing that the internal focalisation gives way to an external focalisation, which does not allow the reader to see what Lucius sees during his cult initiation. The final chapter concludes that the first ten books have trained the readers to see the invisible, but that their limitations are laid bare by Lucius’ religious experience in Book 11, as it excludes the reader from encountering the gods Isis and Osiris.

B.’s book is the first systematic study of invisibility in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. He deserves credit for having uncovered its importance and having shown what a fascinating layer of the Metamorphoses has been neglected. The book offers a sophisticated reading of the novel, thereby doing justice to the sophistication of the novel itself. B.’s book has many strengths, but the close readings are particularly illuminating and interesting; especially convincing is his analysis of Book 11. He demonstrates that Lucius’ encounter with the gods Isis and Osiris is impenetrable for the reader and that the reader remains an outsider to the mystery of Lucius’ religious initiation. In his close reading of the beginning of Book 11, in which Lucius recounts a dream he had about Isis, B. reveals how the focalisation and verbal allusions make it difficult for the reader to visualise the goddess's appearance and how they exclude the reader from Lucius’ inner world. Religious experiences are, after all, subjective and to some degree unintelligible.

Equally convincing is B.’s analysis of Cupid & Psyche, which in his interpretation becomes a tale about the human struggle to envision and to make sense of what cannot be seen. By drawing on Apuleius’ philosophical works De deo Socratis and De Platone, B. shows the extent to which the tale is influenced by Plato's ideas of vision and imagination. He argues that Platonism is a common thread running throughout Apuleius’ work, but is cautious enough not to overlook the differences between Apuleius’ novel and his philosophical writings. He never brushes away the fact that Apuleius’ Platonic writings sometimes stand in opposition to his novel, for example that the philosophical treatises explain the ways in which the invisible can be seen whereas the Metamorphoses describes, through the character of Psyche, the ways in which it cannot be seen. His subtle and sensible interpretation makes a good case for why the works should be read on their own as well as in comparison with each other.

I was not, however, fully convinced by the analysis of the prologue. B. argues that the voice of the prologue has a daemonic quality and that it adds another layer to this already complex and confusing passage. While I agree with him that the prologue's disembodied voice sets the unsettling tone of the narrative and foreshadows the important role that invisibility plays in the novel, the relationship between the disembodied voice in the prologue and the voice that Psyche hears giving her instructions remains unclear. In order to support his reading of the prologue, B. shows that disembodied voices play a role in other parts of the novel too, in particular that there are remarkable parallels between Plato's description of Socrates’ daemon and the voice in Cupid & Psyche. Yet, he concludes that the latter is ‘just a voice’ (p. 46). Given that B. emphasises the parallels between the prologue and Cupid & Psyche and given that he argues in Chapters 1 and 3 that the prologue's narrator intervenes in the old woman's tale, he could have taken his interpretation of the daemonic quality of these voices further.

The book is beautifully produced and carefully edited; the few spelling mistakes I could spot did not hinder the reading experience in any way. It is, however, regrettable that there is no index locorum: since the book covers almost the entirety of the Metamorphoses, and since the close readings make for some of its highlights, an index would have made it easier to revisit B.’s readings of individual passages. The book is not just an important contribution to Apuleian scholarship, it is also an enjoyable read: its clarity and style, which strikes just the right balance between academic jargon and informality, guide the reader with ease and confidence through its philosophical reading of the novel. Lector intende: laetaberis.