Classic Le Carré, this is still a minor work
SILVERVIEW by John Le Carré (Viking) ★★★✩✩
SILVERVIEW wasn’t the last book John Le Carré wrote, something Le Carré’s son, Nicholas, admitted to recently when he said that much of the book was written in 2013 and then set aside. Le Carré published two novels after starting this one – 2017’s A Legacy Of Spies and Agent Running In The Field from 2019. Essentially, this has been gathering dust in the great writer’s drawer for nearly a decade before being prepped for publication
Its plot focuses on Julian, a disillusioned thirtysomething financial trader who buys an underperforming bookstore in a shabby seaside town in an attempt to give his life some meaning. However, he’s quickly spun in yet another direction by his first customer, charismatic pensioner Edward, who is gradually revealed to be an old-school spy of gargantuan proportions.
Edward has been involved in heavy-duty work behind the Iron Curtain, in the Balkans and in the Middle East, and is now bitter at being betrayed by the security services and sidelined by backstabbing political careerists. But is this enough to provoke the old bear, who speaks as Le Carré’s conscience for most of the book, into disloyalty and even treason?
The often acid narrative is clearly one of the main reasons why Silverview has been shielded from the public’s gaze until after Le Carré’s death. Most obviously, for this former employee of the intelligence services, Le Carré’s condemnation of the futility of the vast majority of espionage activities is stark. Why do we continually allow our governments to ruin the lives of otherwise normal people who work in the security services in pursuit of information that is rarely useful? This whole strand of the security services’ work is morally and practically dubious, according to Le Carré – the scant results do not justify the calamitous means.
Another possible reason for the delayed publication is that Silverview is very much a minor Le Carré. It’s a slight tale with an abrupt, unsatisfactory climax and it suffers from being studded with female characters who rarely escape the bland clutches of stereotype. That said, even an average Le Carré is to be cherished – after all, he was one of the great moral writers of recent times.
His condemnation of the futility of the vast majority of espionage activities is stark