Silverview: A Novel

by John le Carré

Hardcover, 2021

Status

Available

Genres

Collection

Small Print

Publication

Viking (2021), 224 pages

Description

"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"--… (more)

Media reviews

The Guardian

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.

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Publisher's Weekly

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.

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