agent running in the field

When David Cornwell, who wrote as John le Carré, died a few weeks ago, I wanted to re-read something by him again soon. I chose his final published novel, Agent Running in the Field, which I'd read when it first came out in 2019.

Being his newest, it is the only book of his that I hadn't read at least twice. Like all le Carré, it's better and better with each re-read.

I hope, now that he's gone, people will continue to read him. Hopefully his books will become classics that are widely read decades and even centuries from now.

He is such a masterful writer, with beautiful prose and layers inside layers inside layers. He truly peels his characters and stories like the proverbial onion.

What I particularly like about Agent Running in the Field is how his perfectly rendered characters are on a collision course for each other, and you can't help but watch like a horrible accident happening before your eyes.

I've read news reports suggesting Cornwell aka le Carré had an unfinished novel in the works at the time of his death. I hope that it's far enough long to be published, and I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing this will happen.

If you've never read le Carré, Agent Running in the Field would be a great and accessible first read. If you've read other books of his but not his last one, treat yourself soon to a read soon.

the kindness of women

Back in September, I wrote about how I re-read J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun and wanted to read the sort-of sequel The Kindness of Woman, which I'd never read.

I've now finished that and while I overall found it a good read, it has nothing of the power of Empire. Both novels tell of a character significantly based on the author and his life experiences.

The main character is the same in the two books, but the two stories don't quite mesh because the protagonist in one book does some things where in the other book he does the opposite.

In both books, the young central character is born and raised in the Shanghai International Settlement before World War II, as Ballard was, and then interned in the Lunghua Internment Camp during the war, again like the author.

Reading the book, I thought about how Ballard's parents and many others were foolish to stay in Shanghai and other British colonies so late when it was so obvious that the world was on the brink of war. They exposed their children to near certain danger and a greater chance of death.

The experience certainly scarred Ballard as it does the young protagonist in both books. Like his fictional counterparts, Ballard also witnessed horrendous wartime atrocities.

In the novels, he does not mention how the parents felt when their child was put in the prison camp. Did they feel guilt or was it just stiff upper lip?

As for their captors, if you're sending children into internment camps, you have to know you're a decidedly horrible person. I imagine most people who made such decisions were sociopaths who didn't even care about the damage they were doing to young lives.

book recommendation

Last night, I finished reading Agent Sonya: Lover, Mother, Soldier, Spy, by British author Ben MacIntyre, published in September of this year. It is sold in North America with the title Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy.

This nonfiction work tells the true story of Ursula Kuczynski, code named Agent Sonya, who spied for the Soviet Union against pre-Revolutionary China, Poland before World War II, Switzerland during World War II, and post-war Britain but was never caught.

She was one of the principal players responsible for passing reams of top secret documents to Moscow so that the latter could build its own atom bomb in the early 1950s. While she was suspected of being some kind of covert operative, the British never realized how important she was until it was too late.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys biography, history, and espionage. It's as much a page-turner as any fictional thriller and MacIntyre is a gifted prose stylist.

Although Kuczynski spied against the west and, indirectly, against the United States, the author nonetheless shows her as an empathetic figure who came to realize she had devoted her life to serving a deeply flawed state. She was so blinded by her hate of fascism that she did not notice that she served an evil equal in barbarity and ruthlessness.

biography of a cock tease

Back in August, I wrote on this blog about my positive reactions to Martin Amis's most recent novel The Zone of Interest. I noted there I wanted to read some more of his work.

Last night I finished his novel London Fields, described by some as his best book. I have to say I wasn't blown away.

With one exception, I found the characters really unlikeable and not in a compelling way, on contrast to those in Zone, which had really awful but compelling people.

One of the major characters in London Fields is a cock tease who really is an obnoxious snob and cruelly manipulative of men. We're told from the beginning that the book will be about her murder, but given she's so unlikeable, it's very difficult to find pity for her.

Some of the writing in the book is really quite brilliant, and I can see why people are taken by it. But the book is too long and frequently repetitive so it ends up feeling like a rough draft in parts. I'm wondering how assertive the editor was, given Amis is quite a famous author.

I didn't hate the book, but I didn't absolutely love it, either. Nevertheless, I will read some more Amis to see what I think.

fiction pet peeve

There are literally thousands of given names, plus all sorts of diminutive names and nicknames like Spike and Tiger and so on.

So why do some novelists make the careless blunder of creating two or more characters with very similar names?

I read a novel not too long ago where two male characters had very similar names: Jack and Jake. It was not an affectation because it wasn't that kind of book. Keeping the two straight was a chore.

They're characters you're painting on an infinite palate. Be more creative. Give one a common name but the other a unique nickname. That gives the latter something interesting you can tuck into the backstory and you won't confuse your readers in the process.

In real life, you can use mnemonic devices to keep people's names straight. But with fiction, that's often not possible.

Last week was "Banned Books Week" in the United States. One of the themes of this year's observance was a focus on the ten most frequently banned books in America; you can see them in the photo below (enlargement).

I can understand why some parents not might want younger children reading some of these books. But to insist they be removed from libraries so no one could read them is criminal.

While much of book banning goes on in school libraries, there is utterly no reason why teenage readers should be barred from having a chance to read these books. A sixteen- or seventeen-year-old shouldn't be allowed to read Fahrenheit 451 or 1984 or Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies is ludicrous.

What to read should be a decision made by parents and their children, not some community busybody who doesn't have anything better than to organize a book ban. This is 2020, not 1920 you peabrains.

empire of the sun

Last night I finished re-reading J.G. Ballard's now modern classic novel Empire of the Sun, first published in 1984. I wasn't yet born then but read the book for the first time when I was in middle school, and I'm sure much of it went over my head at the time.

Sometime in my late teens I saw the movie based on the book. My memory of seeing the movie, of course, is stronger than reading the novel.

What struck me was how much darker the book is than the movie. What also struck me was how arguably the best part of the novel was left out of the movie — a long, dark section that deals with the horrible anarchy in China after Japan surrenders.

The movie was directed by Steven Spielberg, who was ultimately responsible, of course, for rounding all the sharp corners in the book and making it into a much more honeyed coming-of-age tale about life in a POW camp. That makes me wonder — and hope — that a more accurate retelling of the book might make it to the screen, arguably best as a limited TV series.

The novel is fiction, of course, but it's autobiographical in many ways, too. Like the protagonist in his book, Ballard spent two years in a Japanese internment camp, the same one that is used as a setting in the novel.

I re-read Empire of the Sun so I could read Ballard's sequel of sorts, which I've never read. I'll report on that when I do.

hominids

Last night I finished reading the novel Hominids by the Canadian writer Robert Sawyer and found it a very fun read. It's science fiction but grounded very much in present-day reality.

The premise is straightforward: a fictional physics experiment at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Ontario, a real facility, accidentally tears open a brief portal to a parallel universe, where a quantum computer experiment is underway.

A scientist from the latter tumbles into our universe but there's a twist: he's a highly civilized and intelligent Neanderthal physicist. In our world, or course, Neanderthals are extinct. But in the parallel world, homo sapiens are extinct.

In some ways it's a fish out of water story. The mass media in our world goes bonkers and the wayward Neanderthal becomes an instant mega-celebrity.

Once the language difficulty is worked out, the Neanderthal physicist and a homo sapien physicist fall in love. For his part, the Neanderthal is not ape-like but, instead, is a hunk in homo sapien eyes, but he thinks our species is scrawny and sickly looking.

The book is fast-paced, escapist fiction without being heavy. There's also a great ticking clock jeopardy engine, because back in the Neanderthal parallel universe, a scientist there is being tried for murder and no one believes his theory that his coworker was sucked into a parallel universe.

I recommend the book to all readers, even those who normally eschew science fiction. It's not heavy-duty scifi and reads much more like commercial fiction as opposed to genre fiction.

the zone of interest

Last night I finished reading The Zone of Interest, a 2014 novel by the British writer Martin Amis, his most recent published book. I had never read Amis before and heard it was his most accessible work, notwithstanding that nearly all of the book takes place in Auschwitz during World War II.

Needless to say, there are parts of the book I don't think I'll ever forget. It is as horrifyingly memorable as Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The depth and breadth of Amis's research is obvious throughout the book.

Zone has been described by some as satirical, but I don't know if that is entirely precise. I think absurdist would be a better description — not because there are any historical inaccuracies but because it so deftly unpeels the thinking of some of history's greatest monsters and how banal they often are in their rationalizations and distractions.

If you want a truly compelling novel and aren't leery of a difficult subject matter, I strongly recommend The Zone of Interest. I now will make a point to read some of Amis's other novels and soon.

story jeopardy

I'm currently reading a very good Robert Goddard mystery thriller. Part of what makes the book an enjoyable page-turner is that the author really knows how to use story jeopardy.

So many writers don't understand how to use this fundamental storytelling tool. Here's how:

Early in the story, a significant obstacle appears in the hero's path, often because of some flaw in that character. The hero manages to clear that obstacle, but in doing so, sets in motion a series of events that causes an even more formidable obstacle to appear in the hero's way.

And repeat. And repeat again and several times more, each time with the obstacle becoming more difficult and the consequences more dire if the hero fails to clear an obstacle. Only after clearing the final and most difficult obstacle will the hero prevail.

This is not a difficult concept. Many successful writers use it skillfully albeit invisibly time after time. Yet, equally, many writers seem clueless how to use it effectively. Or even to use it at all. Or that it even exists.

a reading bucket list

I have decided that, for the next several months, I will only read books by (1) authors I already really like and (2) books I've always wanted to read but never got around to.

None of this reading a new author and then not liking the writing. Save that for when there isn't a pandemic that might snuff me out without any notice.

I'd hate to get through the Pearly Gates and learn they don't have libraries or book stores. Then I'd be cursing myself for all eternity for not having read the books I probably would have preferred.

And I certainly hope I'm not reading a book I really like and then croak a few pages before I finish. I may never know how it turns out.

I haven't told my husband this, of course. He hates when I talk about the possibility of dying, even vaguely.

mysterious ruth

Up until about a year ago, I had the idea that the late British writer Ruth Rendell wrote cozy mysteries of the Agatha Christie knockoff variety. Boy was I ever wrong.

Somehow I picked up one of her novels and gave it a read. I discovered she most certainly is not a cozy mystery novelist.

Often shelved and sold as a mystery writer, she really isn't and yet defies classification. I've read fourteen of her novels so far and have enjoyed them all.

There's always a crime or several at the core of each book. And often the characters in the novel are oblivious to that fact. Using an omnipotent narrator's voice, Rendell writes of complex social bonds and festering secrets. It's a thoroughly satisfying read.

To date, the best of her books I've read are Girl Next Door, Crocodile Bird, Portobello, and Thirteen Steps Down. But I suspect you could hardly go wrong with any of her nearly eighty published novels.

catch and kill

Last night I finished reading the new nonfiction book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, by Ronan Farrow.

The book did not turn out to be about what I thought it was. Nonetheless, I found it a very compelling read.

I thought it would be about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's years long predatory and outright criminal behavior toward women. While there's a lot of that in the book, it's all after the fact and set against the backdrop of the author trying to report the true story when he was at NBC and constantly thwarted, both by the complicit network and spies hired by Weinstein.

I had no idea about the size and scope of the operation Weinstein deployed to protect himself. This included many prominent lawyers who had to be asking themselves if he was guilty of the crimes and predatory behavior he was trying to hide.

So I definitely recommend Catch and Kill. It's a very compelling read about a truly disturbing series of crimes and the years-long cover-ups.

under occupation

Last night, I finished reading Under Occupation by Alan Furst, a historical thriller set during the Nazi occupation of Paris with a story about the French Resistance. The book is terrific and highly recommended.

Under Occupation is the fifteenth thriller in Furst's "Night Soldiers" series. Set during the 1930s and 1940s in Europe, the books are all related by theme and occasionally by crossover supporting characters, but they can be read in any order.

I have read all of Furst's Night Soldier novels and some several times over. The stories are not intricate nor complex, but the real joy in his writing is the prose and atmosphere. He is much more than a genre writer. The books read like the best of literary fiction but also with the urgency and jeopardy of a good thriller.

If you've not read Furst before, Under Occupation would be a good place to start. Then again, any of the fifteen Night Soldiers books would be a good place to start.

dateline dresden

Once of the most memorable books I've ever read is Victor Klemperer's two-volume I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 — A Diary of the Nazi Years.

Klemperer was a Christian who had converted from Judaism. Hence, in the eyes of the Third Reich, he would always be a Jew. But because he was married to a gentile and had earned an Iron Cross during World War I, he was exempt from the Jewish roundup and deportation orders and thus avoided being sent to a concentration or death camp.

Nonetheless, he and his wife experienced many forced deprivations, from losing his university teaching job, his savings, and ultimately his home. The couple was crowded with other mixed couples into a "Judenhaus," and he was forced to wear a yellow star and ordered to perform menial forced labor.

That was until February 1945, when Klemperer, too, learned that all people such as himself would receive deportation orders and be forcibly relocated "to the East." By sheer coincidence, however, that never happened because the scheme was interrupted by the hellacious Dresden firebombing.

Klemperer and his wife survived the infamous destruction of the German city, which he wrote about vividly in his diary, along with an account of what happened to the couple immediately afterwards: he removed his yellow star and they simply walked out of the city and joined a long stream of refugees fleeing to safety.

I thought of that book again when I saw a sobering photo essay in the New York Times to commemorate the Dresden firebombing, which happened seventy-five years ago this week. The amount of visible damage is staggering.

You have to wonder where all of those people managed to live in all that rubble. Many were in cellars, of course, but the ruins suggest those must have been at a premium. Perhaps many of them simply lived in the open air.

The picture below shows a streetcar making its way through the ruined city enlargement. Surviving the firebombing must've been pure hell, and then the aftermath doubly so.

fraudulent bookselling

Over the weekend, I finished reading Imaginary Friend, a new novel by the American writer Stephen Chbosky. This was definitely the wrong book for me, because it turned out to be a fantasy/horror hybrid and I was expecting a conventional thriller.

Fantasy just doesn't interest me, but for what the writer set out to do, he seems to have done so competently. The book is too long and could have used some judicious editing and trimming, but that's neither here nor there.

My beef is the fact that the jacket copy on the book flap made it sound like a straightforward suspense thriller with a hint of the supernatural, but it turned out to be anything but. It also made it seem as if an adult woman was the central character, not a young boy, and this too was not the case.

Simply put, the jacket copy was deceptive. It made the book seem like something it wasn't while hiding what it actually was.

Why was this done? Did the publishers fear it would be too hard to sell if accurately described? Or was it just simple incompetence.

I'm tempted to write a letter to the publishers to complain about their fraudulent bookselling. I'll sit on the idea for a week or so, and if I'm so inclined still, I think I'll do that. I didn't actually buy the book, I borrowed it from the library, but I invested the time in reading it and am no less annoyed than had I purchased it.

winter in madrid

Last night I finished reading Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom, a historical espionage thriller set in 1940 Spain, the year after their brutal civil war ended.

First published in 2006, the book is a very engaging page-turner. My only quibble was with the ending. I didn't feel it rose to the level of the first 95 percent of the book. But the rest of the book really is superb, with beautiful writing, complex characters, vivid settings, and often lyrical prose.

So if you're looking for a skillfully written thriller that's also an artful suspense novel, look no further than Winter in Madrid.

how a modern classic was born

The current issue of The Atlantic includes a fascinating essay about Margaret Atwood and her latest book.

At the beginning, the writer includes an anecdote about how Atwood's most famous book, the modern classic The Handmaid's Tale, was germinated:

In 1980, "Atwood was appearing at a poetry festival in Portland, Oregon, when her trip was disrupted by natural disaster: Mount St. Helens, in nearby Washington State, began erupting for the second time that spring. Plumes of volcanic ash and gas grounded all flights in Portland, and with trains booked up as well, Atwood joined forces with the poet Carolyn Forché to find a route out of town. The pair ended up driving south to San Francisco, and over the 11-hour car ride, Forché told Atwood about the horrors she’d witnessed as a Guggenheim fellow during the lead-up to the civil war in El Salvador: sexual violence, men kept in cages, torture, death squads. What was happening there, she told Atwood, was going largely unreported."

Five years after that road trip, Handmaid was published.

The linked essay details how that trip transformed Atwood's life in important ways, a metamorphosis that resulted in her now most famous work. While the book doesn't bear any resemblance overtly to the El Salvador tragedy, you can see how that opened Atwood's eyes to the evils of totalitarianism, which ultimately inspired a massive research effort where she collected carton after cartoon of news stories about people living outside democratic societies.

Were it not for that serendipitous roadtrip, would Atwood have ever written Handmaid? After reading the linked essay, I came away convinced she would not have. And I don't think she would have written many of her other novels, either.

teleportation troubles

Last night I finished reading a not particularly compelling scifi thriller that included teleportation as a plot element.

The story is set in the year 2028, so not very far into the future. The idea that teleportation could be nearly perfected within the next decade is highly implausible and one of the reason I wasn't thrilled about the book because it wasn't grounded in common sense.

Teleportation seems to me a technology that's so advance and complicated that it would be centuries before humans could develop the science and engineering to make it work, if ever. For teleportation to work, you'd need to break a body down atom-by-atom within a few dozen seconds, somehow broadcast those atoms far faster than the speed of light, and then reassemble them without any errors.

I just don't buy it.

If you're wondering about the book, it was Obscura by the American writer Joe Hart.

chances are

Last night I finished reading Richard Russo's new novel Chances Are, which was published in July in the United States.

I really liked some of Russo's previous books, notably Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer, and Nobody's Fool. With this one, I neither loved not hated it. I was left feeling indifferent.

Russo writes beautifully when he's at the top of his form, but here the writing often feels flabby, characters ramble on and on, and there's a lot of repetitive prose. Was Russo hurrying to meet a deadline for a book with which he'd lost his enthusiasm and passion? It certainly feels that way at times.

So a thumb sideways on this one for me. There are plenty of better books out there to read instead of this, like Russo's own Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool.