#ReadThis #WhomWeMiss #Silverview by #JohnLeCarre @lecarre_news
This will be the last new John Le Carre book review and we mourn his passing.
One of the best authors we've ever reviewed, John Le Carre has been previously featured on Whom You Know:
and our favorite, The Night Manager:
which inspired the tv series that earned our 24,000th post:
We couldn't have been more excited to read Silverview, and the last completed manuscript by Le Carre was impressive in both its plot and character development. Of course during covid, we all had the opportunity to slow down and that's precisely how this protagonist begins in Silverview. Of course this is a spy thriller which always brings morality and cunning to the forefront. With no shortage of drama and even a bit of romance thrown in, Silverview is a cracking short but sweet final firecracker from Le Carre deserving of your attention.
Silverview by John Le Carre is Recommended by Whom You Know.
We look forward to the pen of his son, Nick Harkaway (Cornwell).
Silverview is Recommended by Whom You Know.
The last completed manuscript from the masterful JOHN LE CARRÉ – an enthralling novel about secrets and lies in a quiet seaside town, and an incisive examination of what we owe our countries, and each other
SILVERVIEW
John Le Carré
Afterword by Nick Cornwell
The late John le Carré, author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Little Drummer Girl, and many more, was not only a master of spy fiction, but “one of the best novelists—of any kind—we have” (Vanity Fair). He has been praised for his sharp prose, keenly observed characters, and page-turning plots, many of which have been turned into award-winning movies and television shows. This fall, Viking is pleased to publish his 26th novel, SILVERVIEW (Viking; Hardcover; On Sale: October 12, 2021), in the year that marks the 60th anniversary of his first novel, Call for the Dead, and in the week that would have marked his 90th birthday. SILVERVIEW is the only complete, full-length novel left unpublished at the time of le Carré’s death in December 2020.
Set in a small English seaside town, SILVERVIEW follows Julian Lawndsley, who has renounced his high-flying job in the city for a simpler life running a bookshop. But only a couple of months into his new career, Julian’s evening is disrupted by a visitor. Edward Avon, a school friend of his late father’s and 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. Julian builds an unlikely friendship with Edward, as they work on a project for the bookshop together, but also finds himself drawn into a world of family drama, secret letters, and mysterious errands. As the lies pile up, and Julian begins to suspect that Edward is not quite who he seems, he becomes entangled in an investigation led by Stewart Proctor, the Service’s Head of Domestic Security—and in a romance with Edward’s daughter—that leave him questioning his loyalties and the truth around him.
SILVERVIEW is the mesmerizing story of an encounter between innocence and experience, and between public duty and private morals. In his inimitable voice, and with the clever craftmanship and psychological precision he has long been known for, le Carré seeks to answer the question of what we truly owe to the people we love. Like much of his work, SILVERVIEW draws fans into the hidden world of Britain’s spies, the secrets they tell, and the lives they lead.
Nick Cornwell, le Carré’s youngest son and a writer himself (under the pseudonym Nick Harkaway) has contributed a moving afterword to SILVERVIEW, examining his father’s career, his legacy, this novel’s place in the canon of his work, and why he left it unfinished and unpublished. As Cornwell puts it in a Q&A, SILVERVIEW is “indisputably a proper John le Carré novel. It has his voice, his elegance, his surgical anger, his sorrow and his hope. But it’s also uniquely itself, somehow more emotional and impressionistic than you might expect.”
A searing work from one of the most celebrated and influential chroniclers of our age, SILVERVIEW is both a captivating read and a testament to John le Carré’s brilliant literary legacy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. The son of a con man, he spent his childhood between boarding school and the London underworld. At sixteen he found refuge at the university of Bern, then later at Oxford. A spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (in MI5 and then MI6). He published his debut novel, Call for the Dead, in 1961 while still a secret servant. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley’s People. At the end of the Cold War, le Carré widened his scope to explore an international landscape including the arms trade and the War on Terror. His memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, was published in 2016 and the last George Smiley novel, A Legacy of Spies, appeared in 2017. He died on December 12, 2020.
SILVERVIEW: A Novel
John le Carré
Viking | On Sale: October 12, 2021
Hardcover | ISBN: 9780593490594
Also available as an e-book and audiobook
Penguin Random House, the world’s largest trade book publisher, is dedicated to its mission of nourishing a universal passion for reading by connecting authors and their writing with readers everywhere. The company, which employs more than 10,000 people globally, was formed on July 1, 2013, by Bertelsmann and Pearson, who own 75 percent and 25 percent, respectively. With nearly 275 independent imprints and brands on five continents, Penguin Random House comprises adult and children’s fiction and nonfiction print and digital English- and Spanish-language trade book publishing businesses in more than 20 countries worldwide. With over 15,000 new titles, and close to 800 million print, audio and eBooks sold annually, Penguin Random House’s publishing lists include more than 80 Nobel Prize laureates and hundreds of the world’s most widely read authors.
