Silverview, John le Carre
Silverview, John le Carre
16 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Silverview

Bestseller

Author: John le Carré

Narrator: Toby Jones

Unabridged: 6 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 10/12/2021


Synopsis

An instant New York Times bestseller!

In his last completed novel, John le Carré turns his focus to the world that occupied his writing for the past sixty years—the secret world itself.

“[Le Carré] was often considered one of the finest novelists, period, since World War II. It’s not that he 'transcended the genre,' as the tired saying goes; it’s that he elevated the level of play… [Silverview’s] sense of moral ambivalence remains exquisitely calibrated.” —The New York Times Book Review

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.

About John le Carre

Fiction imitating real life seems to be an apt mantra for British born author, David John Moore Cornwell, or his pen name, John le Carre'. He had a very "un-normal" childhood, having been abandoned by his mother when he was five years old, and his father made and lost fortunes several times by using tricks and schemes, and even landed in jail for insurance fraud. le Carre' was reunited with the mother he never knew when he was 21. Unbeknownst to him, he developed his fascination with secret lives from his observation of his father's unsavory lifestyle.

le Carre' studied and received a degree in modern languages after a few "bumps in the road" along the way. He joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army stationed in Allied-occupied Austria, serving as a German language interrogator, then worked covertly for the British Secret Service, M-15 as a spy to detect Soviet agents. He taught at Eton College while he was an M-15 officer. He ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephones, and supervised break-ins. He was encouraged to write by other authors, writing his first novel, Call for the Dead in 1961. In 1960, he had transferred to M-16, the foreign intelligence service. His cover for that position was Secretary of the British Embassy at Bonn, and later Hamburg. It was at that time that he wrote, A Murder of Quality, and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. He assumed his pen name when he wrote, since officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.

le Carre's novels include: The Looking Glass, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Smiley's People, The Little Drummer Girl, The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama, The Constant Gardner, A Most Wanted Man, and Our Kind of Traitor. All of the John le Carre' novels were adapted for film or television.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara

Stewart Proctor is in the upper echelons of the British Secret Service and - during and after the Cold War - oversaw the handlers who actually recruited and ran spies. During the Bosnian war, a husband and wife team of handlers recruited a Polish polylinguist named Edward Avon, an avid anti-communist......more

Goodreads review by Melanie

This book was disappointing for me. I generally like John le Carre, but found Silverview confusing and disjointed, and the pay-off in the end was meh. I just didn't know what was going on most of the time. The characters were shallow, every one an enigma of some sort. But as a result, I did not care......more


Quotes

One of:
TIME's "34 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2021"
The Guardian's "50 biggest books of autumn 2021"
Toronto Star's "35 books you need to know about in Fall 2021"
Yahoo’s “20 buzzy books for Fall 2021”
Barak Obama’s 2022 Summer Reading List

Praise for Silverview:


“A fitting requiem for the career of the man who brought a new level of complexity and humanity to espionage fiction.”
Booklist, starred review

“[In Silverview,] le Carré plays out revelations about [the characters] slowly and teasingly, and, in the end, they’re as damning as you could wish. The real drama, however, is in the present, where all the characters are hopelessly intertwined and compromised by their loves and loyalties, none of them innocent. . . . The author’s last few novels have been increasingly valedictory, but this one is truly haunted by intimations of mortality.”
Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“First-rate prose and a fascinating plot distinguish the final novel from MWA Grand Master le Carré ... This is a fitting coda to a remarkable career.” 
Publishers Weekly

“[S]uperb. . . . Fraught as it is with reflections on death and dying, Silverview is tinged with an autumnal sense of loss and the self-examination of an old man looking back on his extraordinary career. John le Carré, one of the great analysts of the contemporary scene, has left us a minor masterpiece of secrets and lies in spy land.”
Evening Standard (UK)

“[Silverview] is a wonderful posthumous gift to his readers. . . . There will never be another John le Carré.”
Toronto Guardian

“[A] fitting conclusion to the long career of a writer who redefined an entire genre with the deceptive ease of pure genius. Le Carré’s compassion for his characters shines through, along with the gleam of humour. It’s also deeply thrilling, in the best way.”
—The Irish Times