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Lädt ... Silverview: A Novel (Original 2021; 2021. Auflage)von John Le Carré (Autor)
Werk-InformationenSilverview von John le Carré (2021)
   Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.  Zare | Jan 23, 2024 |   Review of the Viking hardcover edition (October 12, 2021) released posthumously with the eBook/Audiobook. I binged through several re-reads & first reads of John le Carré (1931-2020) novels after his passing and picked up the posthumously published novel Silverview almost immediately after its release. I wasn't very taken by its opening at that time and didn't follow through with reading it. Now I am re-binging Carré after reading A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré (2022) and the memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life (2016) and seeing the latter's film adaptation at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival in September. As revealed in the author's letters, Silverview was not the final book that he was working on at the time of his death. If it had been completed, that would actually have been a collection of short stories revisiting the Smiley vs Karla battle of British vs Soviet spymasters. Silverview was written sometime after A Delicate Truth (2013) and put aside in 2014. Finished the novel, read it, wasn’t convinced, wasn’t moved, revisited too many old themes, & decided to dump it. - Excerpt from a letter to Tom Stoppard, dated 27 October, 2014 from A Private Spy: The Letters of John Le Carré See photograph at https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/31312e81a4dd89cd8b970beb5e3c1f6640272566/0_143_30... Photograph of John le Carré by Jonathan Player, Image sourced from The Guardian (see link below) Even if Silverview isn't top drawer Carré, it is still interesting to read as an addendum to his writing. It does not feel fleshed out and is quite short at 200 pages or so. Carré's son Nick Cornwell (who otherwise writes science fiction under the penname of Nick Harkaway) was the editor for this posthumous release and provides an Introductory Note. As the letter to Stoppard reveals, Carré felt that he was revisiting previous themes of mole hunters and traitors without sufficient new insights and subplots. Other Reviews The Last Complete Masterwork? by Anthony Cummins, The Guardian, October 12, 2021. Silverview Is Not the Defining Final Chapter of a Literary Career by Dan Stewart, Time, October 12, 2021. John le Carré's Last Completed Spy Novel Crowns a Career Attuned to Moral Ambivalence by Joseph Finder, The New York Times, October 12, 2021. Trivia and Link See photograph at https://media.rightmove.co.uk/49k/48638/139336214/48638_TRS210037_IMG_00_0000.jp... John le Carré's home in Cornwall, England which was recently put up for sale. Image sourced from RightMove Co. UK. [Note: Links were working as of October 13, 2023. Image and link may no longer be available once the house is sold.] (  ) alanteder | Oct 13, 2023 |  ) jjbinkc | Aug 27, 2023 |  ) AChild | Aug 24, 2023 | ) RickGeissal | Aug 16, 2023 |
 While it's perhaps true that the posthumous publications of the recently deceased have a tendency to be more or less reviewer-proof, the good news is that Silverview, the 26th novel from John le Carré, who died last December, aged 89, offers plenty to enjoy and admire. Crisp prose, a precision-tooled plot, the heady sense of an inside track on a shadowy world... all his usual pleasures are here, although it can’t be ignored that they're aren’t always quite in sync. ... Ultimately, Silverview unspools as a cat-and-mouse chase narrative, with the novel's dual perspective putting us in the control room, one step ahead of the characters, able to see the bigger picture, albeit heavily pixellated until the final pages. Such are the layers of irony that it's easy to forget that the sting in the tale was already delivered upfront, in an enigmatic opening shorn of vital context. Suffice to say that, in the typically male world of le Carré's fiction, the defining act this time turns on the vexed filial loyalty between a mother and daughter. If we're left dangling by the end, there’s an added tease of sorts in the novel’s billing as le Carré's "last complete masterwork" – on the strong side, no doubt, but a tag that nonetheless holds out the prospect of rougher treasures still awaiting the light.  First-rate prose and a fascinating plot distinguish the final novel from MWA Grand Master le Carré (1931–2020). Two months after leaving a banking job in London, 33-year-old Julian Lawndsley gets a visit from an eccentric customer, Edward Avon, just before closing time at the bookshop Julian now runs in East Anglia. When Julian asks the man what he does, he replies, “Let us say I am a British mongrel, retired, a former academic of no merit and one of life’s odd-job men.” The next morning, Julian runs into Edward at the local café, where Edward claims he knew Julian’s late father at Oxford. Julian later learns that Edward, a Polish emigré, was recruited into the Service years before. Julian senses something is off, as does the head of Domestic Security for the Service, who’s investigating Edward’s wife, an Arabist and outstanding Service intelligence analyst. While laying out the Avons’ intriguing backstories and their current activities, le Carré highlights the evils spies and governments have perpetrated on the world. Many readers will think the book is unfinished—it ends abruptly—but few will find it unsatisfying. This is a fitting coda to a remarkable career. Bemerkenswerte Listen
"In Silverview, John le Carré turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past sixty years-the secret world itself. Julian Lawndsley has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop in a small English seaside town. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian's evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward, a Polish émigré living in Silverview, the big house on the edge of town, seems to know a lot about Julian's family and is rather too interested in the inner workings of his modest new enterprise. When a letter turns up at the door of a spy chief in London warning him of a dangerous leak, the investigations lead him to this quiet town by the sea . . . Silverview is the mesmerizing story of an encounter between innocence and experience and between public duty and private morals. In his inimitable voice John le Carré, the greatest chronicler of our age, seeks to answer the question of what we truly owe to the people we love"-- Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Klassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (3.68)
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3
Story is about the man, true believer, thrown into the Cold War, then various hot-spots across the world until he finally reaches the breaking point in Balkans, during the civil wars that shred the Yugoslavia. What he cannot accept is politicization of intelligence service he works at, service that takes people and uses them as long as it can after which they only get discarded (I mean, every security service is such, everybody is just means to the end but in books (and I guess in real life too) idealists can never come to terms with this). And when he sees the plans that will cause more bloodshed and destruction without doing anything of substance politically he makes his choice.
It is story of a man trying to redeem himself but while he does that he triggers the UK security services investigation into leaking information. What follow is kind of a cathartic journey - from broken man trapped in marriage [with basically personification of everything he hates in service], doing what he thinks is right (but which makes him a traitor), deep loss and finally exile, with person he admires very much. But in any case he will forever remain a pariah, hunted by all.
With all the above being said, story is a bit too direct. Some of the characters (Lily especially) are a little bit unclear in their motives. The entire we-are-family-of-spies approach does not make much sense. I mean betrayal is betrayal .... right? julian (book shop owner) is also very strange, with level of acceptance of certain events that is little bit too high (acting as courier for someone just for .... what?). He shows he is practical because he never even tries to confront security services once they appear but some actions (and general lack of suspicion) is weird.
Interesting story, but it feels raw, unpolished.
If you like spy stories give it a try. But be ready for a slightly different flavor of le Carre's work. (