Before the advent of spy satellites and the Internet, espionage was a game played out largely by people with only the most minimal intervention of machines. Not entirely so, of course. Nazi Germany had its Enigma machines, and Bletchley Park its analog and primitive digital computers to decipher the messages they encrypted. And the U-2 spy plan went into service in the 1950s. But the Japanese Empire relied on code books little different from those of centuries past. And the Cold War that followed was waged largely by intelligence officers and their agents until the widespread deployment of satellites and computers in the 1980s. But those days are long past in John le Carré’s last novel, Silverview, a nostalgic look at espionage.
A NOSTALGIC LOOK AT ESPIONAGE
That game—the spy game, or HUMINT—was the stuff on which John le Carré built a six-decade career as a novelist. His early works, such as The Spy Who Came In From the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, dealt with the world le Carré had himself experienced in MI6 only a few years earlier. The game was still actively underway in the first decades of his career. But in more recent years, much of his writing has looked back at yesterday’s intelligence wars through the eyes of aging or retired spies. The author’s posthumous last novel is a case in point.
A DYING SPY, A MYSTERIOUS MAN, AND A REFUGEE FROM THE CITY
Silverview opens as a young woman delivers a sealed letter from her mother to Stewart Proctor in London’s West End one rainy evening. Lily’s mother, we learn later, is Deborah Garton. Like Stewart, she is a senior officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. But Deborah now lies dying at her palatial home by the sea in East Anglia.
Meanwhile, Julian Lawndsley greets a mysterious man who wanders into his bookshop. Lawndsley is 33, a former trader who grew wealthy in the City but tired of the compromises involved in making money. Three months ago, he moved to this small seaside town on the shore of the North Sea and bought the bookstore there. The visitor is an older man with the faint traces of a foreign accent. Though he buys nothing, he engages Julian in conversation. And this is merely the first of a long series of visits Edward Avon (“like the river”) will make to the store. The two eventually collaborate on a major project Edward dreams up: converting the store’s basement into a library of literary classics.
THE SPY GAME IS A FAMILY AFFAIR
Edward, we learn, is Deborah’s husband. He himself appears to be a spy. And as the story unfolds, Julian will become deeply involved with Edward, Deborah, and their daughter, Lily—and all four of them will find their lives upended by Stewart Proctor’s investigation into a leak of top-secret information that is turning up all over the Middle East.
Le Carré adroitly draws us ever more deeply into the lives of his principal characters, laying bare their deepest fears as well as their fondest hopes. They all live in a dark world, where black and white inevitably merge into gray and no one ever attains a full measure of satisfaction, much less happiness. This is the old master at his best, offering us a nostalgic look at espionage. As one old spy says to Stewart, “The thing is, old boy—between ourselves, don’t tell the trainees or you’ll lose your pension—we didn’t do much to alter the course of human history, did we? . . . As one old spy to another, I reckon I’d have been more use running a boys’ club. Don’t know what you feel.” And what Stewart feels appears to be little different.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
David John Moore Cornwell, who is known to us as John le Carré, died in December 2020 at the age of 89. On his deathbed, he had extracted a promise from his youngest son, Nick Cornwell: “if he died with a story incomplete on his desk,” Nick would finish it. And he found the manuscript for Silverview on his father’s desk, “not incomplete, but withheld. Reworked, and reworked again.” And it was not “bad,” as he had feared, but “fearsomely good.” Nick cleaned up the bloopers, typos, technical slip-ups, and “a very occasional muddy paragraph.” Which is how the finished project saw the light of day a mere few months later. And just in case you’re wondering, Nick Cornwell is a writer with six novels and one book of nonfiction under his belt. He writes under the pen name Nick Harkaway.
Silverview: A Novel
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Le Carré goes out with a bang, not a whimper
Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2021
Julian has left life in the big city to run his own bookshop in a small English seaside town. After a chance visit from a local resident, Edward Avon, aka Teddy, he learns that Avon was a friend of his father and had worked with him at one time. Edward is a very agreeable fellow and is delighted to share his ideas with the younger man, including plans for a sort of literary paradise to be located in the basement of the shop. And thus the idea for the Republic of Literature is born.Unsure of just how to take Edward, Julian questions another shopkeeper, Celia, who is very fond of Edward, and gives him a great deal of information. Edward’s wife is very ill, and she and Teddy aren’t on the best of terms. Her late father bequeathed her a great deal of money, as well as the house now known as Silverview. Teddy changed the name after he became fascinated by Nietzsche. The couple have a daughter named Lily.Stewart Proctor receives a letter from the daughter of one of his agents. The information it contains is very disturbing, and so he begins his own investigation to check into the accusations contained therein. In the meantime, Teddy has graciously installed computers in the future Republic and has begun to search for just the right books they will need to fill its shelves when the time comes.Proctor uses the cover story of using retired agents as potential training instructors for future hires to questions them on various subjects. In particular, a spy whose code name was Florian, who was active during the Bosnian crisis and who was deeply affected by events that happened then.The more Julian learns about Edward, the less he knows. He meets his dying wife Deborah, herself once an agent, and their daughter Lily. There is some sort of spark between him and Lily… maybe. But as events begin to unfold, Julian finds himself in the middle of something he never dreamed he’d ever be a part of.John Le Carre’s SIlverview is like a tapestry. It starts out with a number of loose threads, but as you keep reading the threads begin to wind themselves about one another until they form a picture. It’s a fascinating story about spies as people, and some of the aftermath of their experiences and how those affect them. I like Julian and found him an astute and sympathetic observer, but the true star of this book is Edward, aka “Teddy”, aka Florian. A very likeable and complex man whose life of professional deception has carried over into his actual personal life, to the point where it’s hard to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Is he who he seems to be? Was he ever?If the ending isn’t quite as clear-cut as one might like, well, that’s life. It’s clear enough to those who are left behind. After all, life doesn’t always wrap up nicely and neatly, much as we wish it might. But we have a clear idea of what lies ahead for the characters we’ve come to care about. Can one ask for anything more?John Le Carre is truly the master of spy fiction, and I think his final work is a testament to his craft and well worth reading.
Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2021
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Top reviews from other countries
The Cookster @ Reviewer ranking #31
The last (and, sadly, somewhat disappointing) completed novel of a master craftsman.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 14, 2021
Martin Jones
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 15, 2021
Siriam
Much better than the critics and die hard Le Carre fans might admit!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 29, 2022P. McCLEAN
As always, a human look at the world of intelligence agencies
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 16, 2021
