Silverview

SILVERVIEW
John Le Carre
Penguin Random House

REVIEWED BY GEOFF ADAMS

John Le Carre died at the age of 89 after a fall at his home in Cornwall in south-west England in December 2020. In his youth he had a short spell working for British Intelligence, the Secret Service (MI5 and MI6). After his first novel Call for the Dead (1961) and leaving the Service, his third book The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and his trilogy led by; Tinker Tailor, Soldier Spy, Le Carre had attained international fame.

His son found this book (his father's 26th novel) after John's death. It pokes some scathing ridicule at the secret (but so important) lives and methods of Britain's men and women working for the Service.

There is undoubtedly an element of sneering at its methods and secrecy, yet also a strong feeling of the book being carefully planned as a deliberate and intricate labour of love. Le Carre not only invented the many characters but also designed an entire plot for them. It is based on the launching of a book shop and the occupants of the old house Silverview and their acquaintances. It seems some memories, happy or otherwise, about the Service might also have been useful to the author. Or is it all fiction?

The tale begins with us meeting Julian Lawndsley, a 33-year-old who has dropped out of his financial-trading career to open a small bookstore. He soon meets an interesting person at the shop: Edward Avon, a sly former intelligence field agent emotionally scarred by harrowing experiences during the Bosnian conflict. Avon portrays himself as a school friend of the bookseller’s deceased father, and becomes a supporter of the shop. He lives with his wife, a revered Middle Eastern analyst for the British intelligence services who is dying of cancer, in the fading mansion Silverview.

Lawndsley is easily coaxed by Avon into delivering a secret message to a woman with whom Avon claimed to be having an affair. Two computers disappear from the bookshop and the book's plot certainly thickens as we meet many more characters.

An agent from the Service visits Silverview to see another two retired spies who were once the Service's “golden couple.” Preparing to leave he is is pulled aside by one of them: “We didn't do much to alter the course of  human history did we? ... As one spy to another, I reckon I'd be of more use running a boys' club.”

It seems like that is the author's strong comment too, in the long and complex plot of this final book that will delight his many fans.