Spies
Reviews
Beautifully accomplished, richly nostalgic novel about supposed Second World War espionage seen through the eyes of a young boy".
This is a deeply satisfying account of the everyday torments and confusions experienced by a not especially bright boy at a time of international madness. Frayn has written nothing better".
Michael turns the suburban close into an echo chamber for the cries and whispers passing between the child and the adult.
Michael Frayn is the most philosophical comic writer – and the most comic philosophical writer – of our time.
Nobody could better his descriptive passages. Compelling as the narrative is, it is the author’s acute observation that makes this suburban study in miniature a masterpiece.
The plot is strong and compelling, but the star of the book is its beautifully wrought atmosphere... Frayn’s delicate prose... With SPIES, Frayn may have even outdone his previous novel... SPIES will captivate those with a taste for the bittersweet and the mildly melancholic.
With a taking blend of irony and nostalgia, Frayn reconstructs the innocently lurid adventure fantasies of schoolboys over half a century ago... It would be an exceptionally perverse reader who could resist becoming equally involved... Frayn has never written more seductively and surely than in this book.
Frayn re-enters [the 1940s] with patience, invention and meticulous absorption in the details that draw one further in, transmuting what could be tedious into a compelling story.
Frayn’s new novel, SPIES, drapes a valedictory sadness upon a mystery armature... understated tact and ingenuity of mystery plot...
SPIES will certainly be read with pleasure, but the dynamics of this book – the way it goes about hiding and uncovering it’s secrets, the way it works – are in themselves enormously entertaining.
Frayn is a master of the intellectual mystery masquerading as ripping popular entertainment.
This is a lovingly conceived, handsomely detailed novel in a conservative vein with a vivid sympathy for how lonely, scared and helpless being a child often feels.
It is cerebral and sensuous; extremely funny and yet deeply serious about the peculiar mixture of curiosity and profound incuriousness that characterises children – and, Frayn, suggests, adults too.
Exquisitely written and probably my favourite novel ever. There’s not a word that’s wasted; every description grips you. You can almost smell the leaves on the trees, it’s so potently written.
[Frayn] is one of those people with more talent than is good for them… A deeply touching, involving read
This is a delicate, finely-stitched little novel and there’s a twist at the end that will have you flicking back to the beginning, nodding your head in assent.
It is an odd, original, haunting little tale in which the teller is the really interesting thing... The evocation of Second World War existence from a child’s point of view is a powerful component in this novel’s success. So is the actual writing... a modest but memorable book.
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