On the Booker long-list - but is it too waffer thin to win? (Spies - Michael Frayn)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Spies - Michael Frayn
Date:	06/05/02 (3034 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Beautifully written, short and satisfying.

Disadvantages: Yet another story about a wartime childhood.

Isn't it funny how kids often seem to grow into the names they're given?
Maybe names shape personality to some extent. Every Simon I've ever
met has been a cheeky sod, for example, and boxers called Tarquin are quite thin on the ground. Okay, there are always exceptions to the rule - like the 1995 Mastermind champion, who was called Kevin. And I suppose there may be someone out there who was bullied at school by a Cuthbert, but it doesn't seem very likely somehow, does it? Some names are posh, some are as common as muck, and some are a bit wimpy. Sad, but true.

Which brings me to Keiths... If someone asks you to name a famous Keith, what would you say? Chegwin? Floyd? Penelope? Harris of Orville shame? Vaz? Or that Tory who applied for BT shares in umpteen different names?
I've only ever met one Keith, I whupped him in a uni snooker tournament. He seemed like a sad nerdy sort of lad. (I felt a bit sorry for him, I think his pals must have put his name down for a laugh.)

Ah, but what's in a name? A turd by any other name would smell as... erm, shitty. Smell is a powerful aide mémoire, Proust understood that - but then his name was Marcel, not Keith. And you see, it's the smell of a shrub in late June that sets Stephen, the narrator of Spies, off down memory lane as he revisits the cul-de-sac where he lived as a child during the war. (Yes, sorry, it's another book set during the war. Just like Ian McEwan's Atonement, Rachel Seiffert's Dark Room and Mick Jackson's Five Boys, to name but three from the past year. Of these, Spies is the one I would recommend, but when are writers going to move on for goodness sake?)

Stephen recalls events he was too naïve to understand at the time, revolving around the family of his friend Keith. Keith is the snotty posh boy of the neighbourhood whom no-one apart from Stephen likes. Together they spy on the comings and goings in their cul-de-sac from a
hidey-hole hacked from the overgrown garden of a bombed out house - trying to spy spies. One day, as they follow Keith's mother, she seems to vanish...

Keith's mum's furtive behaviour proves that there is Something Going On. This being a wistful, looking-back-trying-to-put-the-pieces-back-togethe r
kind of novel, you just know that the boys' privet investigations, and interference into Keith's family secrets, will have tragic consequences...

At first I thought Spies was going to be just another one of those wartime boyhood stories. I had that oh-no-not-another-one-I've-heard-it-all-before feeling. Well, to a large extent it is, and it does seem predictable, but that's what the author wants you to think. He dangles the obvious in front of your eyes, so that, as with the film The Sixth Sense, you don't guess what's really going on. A subtle twist which, with hindsight connects all the dots, and is both satisfying and believable (unlike Amsterdam, Jill!)

I know you're probably as fed up with books set during the war as I am, but Michael Frayn is such a good writer, and after all, Spies is only a waffer thin book... I'm sure you can find room for it, can't you?


Update 19th August:
Not surprisingly, "Spies" is on the long-list for the Man Booker Prize 2002,
and I'm sure it has a good chance of reaching the short-list.
But can such a waffer-thin book win? Probably not.


¶ Hardback: £14.99 ¶ ISBN: 0571212867 ¶ pp 213 ¶
¶ Paperback: £7.99 ¶ ISBN: 0571212964 ¶ pp ``` ¶ 3 March 2003 ¶
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