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Lea Carpenter

Autor von Eleven Days

4 Werke 252 Mitglieder 11 Rezensionen

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Beinhaltet den Namen: Carpenter Lea

Werke von Lea Carpenter

Eleven Days (2013) 91 Exemplare
Mile 22 [2018 film] (2018) — Screenwriter — 62 Exemplare
Red, White, Blue: A novel (2018) 60 Exemplare
Ilium: A novel (2024) 39 Exemplare

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female

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In a world full of overly long books, Lea Carpenter’s Ilium dares to use sparse language to tell a sprawling tale of love, war, and espionage. The young, unnamed female narrator finds herself at the center of a nearly decade-long operation after she falls in love with a mysterious older man. Carpenter manages to build complicated characters, and she masterfully doles out information with pinpoint accuracy as they head to the inevitable conclusion. Ilium is not an action thriller, but a slow, thoughtful book about the inside of operations and the people involved.… (mehr)
 
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Hccpsk | 1 weitere Rezension | Mar 3, 2024 |
Thriller
 
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BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |
Much like John le Carré’s spies, the people who inhabit this novel are edgy, flawed, and morally ambiguous. Carpenter provides much of the intrigue one expects in spy novels, but with themes that are more common in literary fiction. She seduces her readers into liking both sides, regardless of their willingness to commit despicable acts in the name of patriotism and revenge. Not unlike most fictional spies, these characters have a facile hold on truth and are adept at inventing and reinventing their identities. However, Carpenter gives them an attractive sense of humanity.

The unnamed protagonist/narrator is a middle-aged woman who is reminiscing about a past when she first was recruited to a life of espionage. At 21, she was a lonely naive young woman looking for adventure and romance. She found both with the charismatic Marcus, an older man who swept her off her feet and married her. Unfortunately, he had a life-threatening illness and a hidden agenda. Before he died, he recruited her to work with a skilled crew of spies to carry out a revenge hit on a “retired” Russian spy living in isolation with his family in a secure compound on Cap Ferret, a remote peninsula on the eastern coast of France.

Carpenter’s deceptively simple spy plot evolves into a romance and coming-of-age story when her narrator becomes enthralled by the Russian family she was recruited to spy on, especially its patriarch and his young son. Likewise, she is captivated by the consummate competence and humanity of the members of the CIA/MI6/Mossad hit team.

Using a confessional narrative tone, Carpenter widens her focus to multiple themes, including loyalty, revenge, friendship, family, loveless marriage, and parenthood. Notwithstanding its broad thematic focus, the novel maintains tension with the measured use of flashbacks that give the reader an understanding of plot elements that initially seem puzzling. Ultimately this genre-bending novel provides a satisfying reading experience.
… (mehr)
 
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ozzer | 1 weitere Rezension | Nov 19, 2023 |
On the eve of her wedding, Anna, beloved by her father and abandoned by her mother, loses her father in a skiing accident. Soon, with the man’s protégé missing, rumors surface that Noel was a spy for the Chinese.

In France for her honeymoon, she meets a stranger who once worked with Noel, a man who shares information about her father. Soon Anna is in search of an elusive truth. But what is the truth, and what will it mean for Anna’s quest to understand her father?

Told in short chapters, the narrative moves along at a brisk pace. Alternately narrated by a CIA college of Noel’s and by Anna herself, this tale of espionage holds a plethora of reflections and reminders of the past, often reading more like a memoir than a spy thriller. Peopled with well-developed characters and filled with unexpected reveals, the mood of the narrative is sure to pull the reader into the telling of the tale.… (mehr)
 
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jfe16 | 1 weitere Rezension | Sep 12, 2018 |

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Werke
4
Mitglieder
252
Beliebtheit
#90,785
Bewertung
½ 3.6
Rezensionen
11
ISBNs
18
Sprachen
2

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