- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Faber and Faber; 1st Edition edition (4 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0571212867
- ISBN-13: 978-0571212866
- Product Dimensions: 21.6 x 13.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (72 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 636,736 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Spies
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
In Michael Frayn's novel Spies an old man returns to the scene of his seemingly ordinary suburban childhood. Stephen Wheatley is unsure of what he is seeking but, as he walks once-familiar streets he hasn't seen in 50 years, he unfolds a story of childish games colliding cruelly with adult realities. It is wartime and Stephen's friend Keith makes the momentous announcement that his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to spy on the supposed spy, following her on her trips to the shops and to the post, and reading her diary. Keith's mother does have secrets to conceal but they are not the ones the boys suspect. Frayn skilfully manipulates his plot so that the reader's growing awareness of the truth remains just a few steps beyond Stephen's dawning realisation that he is trespassing on painful and dangerous territory. The only false notes occur in the final chapter when the central revelation (already cleverly signposted) is too swiftly followed by further disclosures about Stephen and his family that seem somehow unnecessary and make the denouement less satisfyingly conclusive. This is a much sparer and less expansive book than Headlong, Frayn's Booker Prize-shortlisted 1999 novel, more understated in its wit, but it is, in many ways, more compelling.--Nick Rennison
Review
'Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer - and the most comic philosophical writer - of our time.' Michael Arditti, Daily Mail 'As you're dragged into his headlong race for fame and riches, you never know what will happen next, only that more torture lies in store.' Blake Morrison, Independent on Sunday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent successor to The Go-Between but a bit dry?,
By A Customer
This review is from: Spies (Paperback)
Some reviews have already mentioned the book's common ground with LP Hartley's "The Go-Between". As a child's-eye view of adult behaviour, this novel also has plenty of acute insights into childhood, and a similarly bittersweet mood of nostagia for the lost past. Limited in scope to the young Stephen's surburban street and its inhabitants, the novel is probably at its best in its excellent observations of how children think and talk. Stephen's relationships with his friends and neighbours are very believable, often amusing, and at times very poignant when he is at his most frightened and powerless in the face of incomprehensible adult behaviour. But despite feeling sympathy for Stephen I never felt totally involved in his story. The plot was neatly worked out but I didn't find it emotionally compelling. The family revelations are a good example - they're undoubtedly clever and neat, but perhaps a bit too clever and neat judging by the feelings of many reviewers here. Ian McEwan's "Atonement" has similar preoccupations with childish perception, regret and culpability - but the difference was that "Atonement" made me cry. "Spies" is an acute intellectual study of wartime society and human relationships, but despite the subject matter it never quite threatened a tear.
41 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Always fresh and inventive, Frayn breaks new ground,
By A Customer
This review is from: Spies (Hardcover)
I have been comprehensively bowled over by Spies. I have never seen the dilemmas, confusions, excitements, insights, and incomprehensions of childhood better, more truthfully, done; and its balance of comedy and anguish - indeed the blend of comedy and anguish - is handled with exceptional delicacy. The fun is real fun, but it isn't allowed to cheapen or lessen Stephen's anxieties, fears, sense of his own unworthiness. (As an old man, he may have lost two of those, but not the third, I think.) All that would be enough to make this an exceptionally fine and unusual novel.But Frayn also presents an adult story, imperceptibly humming in the background almost at the start, then thrumming more and more audibly as he brings it to the fore. When finally it declares itself openly, fortissimo and on centre-stage, one realizes that it has (and how it has) been at the centre of the story from the outset, though always - even at the climax - we get it through the consciousness of the boy. The presentation of the adult story is an astonishing technical feat. Frayn shows superlative skill in the way he paces it - not just the rate at which the story comes forward, but the steps it takes to get there: the thriller-like excitement as it is gradually revealed, the discipline with which the revelation comes entirely through the experience of the boy Stephen, with nothing leaking around the edges, the growing revelation (starting long before we know what the story really is) of its sadness. It is an astonishing achievement. The central adult story is heart-breaking. One is also sad for others, including the boy Keith and his poor limited frightened frightening father. Frayn is never sentimental. He allows Stephen to be better in some ways than he thinks he is, and to have some significant decencies. But he also allows him to fail pretty seriously, letting down each of the two adult protagonists. The failures are shown as growing organically out of the condition of being a child, but they are failures nonetheless. The long list of Frayn's novels has contained nothing else remotely like this. He continues to extend his range, taking new risks, exploring new territory.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Too much of a good thing,
This review is from: Spies (New Windmills) (Hardcover)
“Spies” is an incredibly mysterious and thought-provoking piece, written in the increasingly popular ‘unreliable narrator’ style. Using war-time Britain as a subtle backdrop and plot catalyst, Frayn explores the patchy, incoherent childhood memories of an old man stopping to discover the truth behind a major turning point in his life. Touching on many aspects of childhood life, we are shown only the memories that are given to us, whist occasionally being teased by tiny clues as to the story’s eventual conclusion. By the means of foreshadowing, tension and a complicated narrating technique, the reader always feels one step ahead of the author, and yet – at the same time – acutely aware that you are totally at Frayn’s mercy.For me there was only one major problem, and this was the story’s length, which leaves the reader tired and frustrated, let alone desperate for an increase in tempo. This is mercifully supplied, and one is suddenly conscious of the spiraling plot twists and thrilling peaks that eventually lead to a rich and emotive resolution.
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