Some sixty years ago, E. D. O’Brien, writing in the Illustrated London News, said of John Le Carre: “If he continues at this level, he will soar beyond any of the great names of this century.”
Applause for O’Brien for impeccable prescience, for even in death, Le Carre continues to soar with the posthumous publication of SILVERVIEW.
Another exercise in political pragmatism, a grim exposition of the ignoble art of double bluff and deception, SILVERVIEW employs the same compelling story telling that Le Carre has sustained over six decades.
As much, though, as John Le Carre writes the bread and butter of spy stories rather than the toast and caviar of the James Bond type, SILVERVIEW shares a tangible link with the James Bond film, Skyfall.
Skyfall was depicted as the ancestral home of Bond and Silverview is also a hereditary abode of a spy who hearth has not warmed from the cold. Originally called The Maples, when Deborah inherited it from her father, her husband and fellow spook, Edward, an admirer of Nietzsche, renamed it Silverview in homage to Nietzsche’s house in Weimar, called Silberblick.
The evocation of Nietzsche announces a philosophical thread that is vintage Le Carre – individual freedom coming with inbuilt obligations. Is it a case of “Do what you think” or “Think what you do.” A dangerous dictum either way, a dilemma courting consequence and possible catastrophe.
Edward and Deborah are one of a trio of couples in SILVERVIEW, espoused spies, wed-locked spooks, a matrimonial state that can add a quantum of solace in the secret world or an extra quotient of suspicion.
The other couples depicted are Joan and Philip, retired operatives interrogated over a suspected security breach, and Stewart and Ellen, who have been together since the Falklands. Still in active service, Stewart is the investigator of the security breach that may be emanating from Silverview.
Seemingly the only character not kindred to the Service is Julian, an ex London banker now East Anglia bookseller, a position that facilitates more than a few literary allusions.
One such literary source that makes its presence felt is W.G. Sebald’ The Rings Of Saturn, a novel set in the East Anglia coastal region where much of SILVERVIEW takes place. It’s a brilliant conceit as Sebald’s works are largely concerned with the themes of memory and decay, of civilisations, traditions or physical objects, deliberated on with dry sense of humour. Much like Le Carre.
The characterisations are first rate, the manipulation of suspense masterful, and the plot all too plausible.
To invoke one other master of the spy novel in regarding SILVERVIEW, one is reminded of a line from Eric Ambler’s Epitaph for a Spy: Good did not triumph. Evil did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other, and created new evils, new goods that slew each other in their turn.
SILVERVIEW by John Le Carre is published by Penguin Viking.
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Featured photo: The late, great John Le Carre