the back burner

john le carré

...is my new favorite author. This spot in my life is always a time-bound position. To earn it, an author has to surprise me with real characters and an engaging plot while demonstrating mastery of writing. Pretty simple, eh? Is this too much to ask from our writers and our great publishing houses? Find some talent, you shmucks!

Sorry about that. I get a little bitter when I go too long without good fiction.

So, you might know Le Carré from The Constant Gardener: great film, better book. He's also written a slew of spy novels, including A Perfect Spy, which I just began. Maybe it's the emotional season or maybe it's low blood sugar, but by chapter three I'm seriously empathizing with both of the main characters. Tons of depth, tons of space for dramatic tensions.

If the words "spy novel" make you think of the stereotypical, pulp-fiction, give-me-some-hardnosed-dialogue-and-call-me-Tom-Clancy fare, please try this one out. I hope the author will forgive me for reproducing an excerpt or two below.

"Like many tyrants, Miss Dubber was small. She was also old and powdery and lopsided, with a crooked back that rumpled her dressing-gown and made everything round her seem lopsided, too." (pg. 2)

"In Vienna three hours earlier, Mary Pym, wife of Magnus, stood at her bedroom window and stared out upon a world which, in contrast to the one elected by her husband, was a marvel of serenity. She had neither closed the curtains nor switched on the light. She was dressed to receive, as her mother would have said, and she had been standing at the window in her blue twin-set for an hour, waiting for the car, waiting for the doorbell, waiting for the soft turn of her husband's key in the latch. And now in her mind it was an unfair race between Magnus and Jack Brotherhood which of them she would receive first...

"The telephone was ringing. By the bed. His side. Don't run, you idiot, you'll fall. Not too slowly or he'll ring off. Magnus, darling, oh dear God, let it be you, you've had an aberration and you're better, I'll never even ask what happened, I'll never doubt you again. She lifted the receiver and for some reason she couldn't work out sat in a heap on the duvet, plonk, grabbing the pad and pencil with her spare hand in case of phone numbers to take down, addresses, times, instructions. She didn't blurt 'Magnus?' because that would show she was worried about him. She didn't say 'Hullo' because she couldn't trust her voice not to sound excited. She said their whole number in German so that Magnus would know it was she, hear that she was normal and all right and not angry with him, and that everything was just fine to come back to. No fuss, no problems, I'm here and waiting for you like always.

"'It's me,' said a man's voice.

"But it wasn't me. It was Jack Brotherhood." (pp. 6-7)

Posted by nickles at December 6, 2007 05:23 PM | TrackBack