John Le Carré’s Last Book, Silverview

 

John Le Carré’s Last Book, Silverview

 

I’ve been, for years, a great fan of John Le Carré.  His real name, in case that’s escaped your attention, was David John Moore Cornwell, but when he published his first book, Call for the Dead, Britain’s MI6, the Brit equivalent of the CIA, wouldn’t let him use his own name, hence the Carré version.

 

As you know, I have never published a bad review, but in this case I feel like I’m doing one of my favorite authors a big favor.  If you start with his latest and last book, you may give his first novels a pass and you shouldn’t deny yourself those pleasures.

 

Silverview reads as if T.S. Eliott (Thomas Stearns Eliot) and James Joyce combined to write a spy story and the rules of mahjong all in one, and had it edited by Sigmund Freud. 

 

Allow me to give it a go:

 

Right where the rubber meets the bra, Gertrude.  Six nickels to thirty cents.  Not a beast in the stable that hasn’t scared the butler, if you know what I mean.  And cancel the butter and send your Joe out in the world.  But, it was senseless to have a go at madness. He put his quivering face in his equally quivering hands.  What’s the matter?  Need a good fluff of the old pillow before you settle in on the couch?  It was like playing ping-pong with someone else’s balls and your head as a paddle.  We can’t go on this way on the road to the blowing sands of the Sahara, without a cup of swine flu and no way out of the tantrum tunnel.  I wouldn’t give a cloak of wolf-skin bulldogs to see his musty mallet beat the furry mammal.

Well, I did my best to copy the style!

 

My fingers clutched in vain at the raw bones of this laborious tale that was wrapped so tightly in an invisible cloak.  At last, about page 150 of this 208 page book, the door hiding the spy story cracked slightly.  Then angst took over again and you discovered the room was full of squirrels, arguing about which way to best cross the road, and who led them to the road in the first place.

 

John Le Carré was a wonderful writer, and my arrogant opinion is that over the years, he became an even better writer, with less and less to say.  But, in his defense, Silverview was only just completed before the autopsy.  May he rest in peace while you gently use your grubby fingers to grab copies of his earlier tomes, especially the George Smiley spy novels, unless of course, you have a yen to learn the obscure rules of the blindfold version of mahjong.

 

Start with Call for the Dead.