Suleika Dawson
Autor von The Forsytes
Werke von Suleika Dawson
Fleur 1 Exemplar
Getagged
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Review of the HarperCollins Audiobook (October 18, 2022) narrated by the author, with reference to the Kindle eBook, simultaneously released with the hardcover original.
Under the penname of Suleika Dawson, the writer, researcher and audiobook producer writes about her relationship with the spy novelist John le Carré (penname of David Cornwell), which began sometime after she first met him in 1982 when he came to John Wood Studios to narrate an abridged audiobook edition of Smiley's People (1979). Dawson was the abridgement editor for that first recording and then for several other Carré novels. Cornwell turned 52 years old soon after their relationship began, Dawson mentions only that she was in her mid-20s.
This was in the first days of audiobooks, pre-digital, pre-streaming, when the most convenient medium was cassette tapes playable on walkmans, boomboxes and some car players. Full unabridged recordings were rare at first, as they would have often required 7 to 10+ tapes to cover 10 to 15 hour books. Dawson worked in partnership with producer Graham Goodwin, who...
Dawson and Goodwin were apprehensive at first about using a non-professional narrator, even with them having the authority of being the actual author. That uneasiness was soon dispelled:
Dawson and Cornwell proceeded to have a 2-year-long relationship which eventually broke-up due to the increasingly complex stratagems devised by the author to hide the relationship from his wife. This often involved the various tools of the espionage trade with dead letter drops, cutouts and coded or encrypted addresses or phone numbers. Dawson also realized the Cornwell was acting out in real life the scenes which he would then incorporate into his books and which she would later recognize in print. There was then a 14-year hiatus until it all began again for a shorter late fling in the 1990s.
See photograph at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/books/2022/10/03/TELEMMGLPICT00031147499...
Photograph of Suleika Dawson as photographed by David Cornwell on a beach in Lesbos, Greece in 1983. Image sourced from a review in The Telegraph.
Unless you are a Carré fan, which I've been for most of my life, this book will likely hold little interest for you. For me it was completely fascinating though. Much of that was being able to observe how much of Cornwell's writing pathology was derived from his own life and how it was not that far removed from that of his con-man father Ronnie, not only a financial betrayer but also a longtime philanderer. For both Dawson and Cornwell, this did seem to be the love affair of their lives. Dawson is refreshingly unrepentant about it all, even if Cornwell comes off clichéd in parts as the rich older man grooming the younger woman and lavishing her with gifts.
Other Reviews
A Private Spy & The Secret Heart, by Anthony Cummins, The Guardian, October 16, 2022.
Trivia and Links
Suleika Dawson reviews Adam Sisman's The Secret Life of John le Carré (2023), which included excerpts from her own book at The Spy Novelist Who Loved Me at the Literary Review, November, 2023.
Five of the novels of John le Carre as abridged by Suleika Dawson and narrated by the author and first recorded in the 1980s have been recently collected as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Other George Smiley Stories (2022). Three further similarly abridged & narrated novels have been collected as The Little Drummer Girl and Other Stories (2022) [not yet listed on Goodreads, link goes to Audible].… (mehr)