A charming package of miniature comic masterpieces. Magic Mobile Michael Frayn. Pocket Playhouse Michael Frayn. Now You Know Michael Frayn. A Landing on the Sun Michael Frayn. The Trick of It Michael Frayn. Spies Michael Frayn. Collected Columns Michael Frayn. The Tin Men Michael Frayn. The Russian Interpreter Michael Frayn. Towards the End of the Morning Michael Frayn. Sweet Dreams Michael Frayn.
Matchbox Theatre Michael Frayn. Skios Michael Frayn. Headlong Michael Frayn. Travels with a Typewriter Michael Frayn. Stage Directions Michael Frayn. Constructions Michael Frayn. The Human Touch Michael Frayn. Thus, he pieces together the mystery of her disappearance: she turns right at the end of the street and goes into the tunnel.
The next day, Stephen is waiting in the hideout alone when Barbara joins him. The man runs away and the terrified Stephen returns to the Close to his worried parents. Under the streetlights, he discovers that he brought back a sock from the croquet box.
Stephen and Keith go back to the tunnel together and find that the box has disappeared. They then hear footsteps that go up into the Lanes and decide to follow the sounds. They go all the way past the Cottages to the Barns, where they discover someone hiding in an underground hideout, concealed by an old corrugated iron sheet.
The boys start hitting the iron sheet with sticks until they become frightened that the man behind it has died from fear. The narrative returns to the present, with Stephen questioning what his younger self had known at that point.
He finds that Keith has abandoned their undercover mission and he accepts that everything is back to normal. He runs into her in the tunnel, getting slime on her dress, and tells her that Keith will be punished again if she does not bring the thermos back home. She takes out a cigarette that they smoke together, they look through the contents of the basket, and, eventually, they kiss.
Stephen and Barbara find a letter in the basket, which Barbara tries to open. The next day, Stephen returns home from school and assembles a makeshift package of food and medicine in a satchel to deliver to the mysterious man. At the Barns, he leaves the contents of the satchel near the iron sheet. It took me a little time to get into the story, but once in, I was turning pages feverishly.
I worried, as in other spy stories, will this one be obtuse and more confusing than anything else? I needn't have worried, though. Frayn doesn't leave us hanging in a maze of double agents and hazy memories. Elegant, captivating storytelling.
View all 29 comments. Another from the Booker longlist, this one is a quiet revelation and a masterly piece of storytelling. The action is narrated by an old man revisiting the scene and remembering his childhood adventures in suburban England during the Second World War. The story is narrated from the childhood Stephen's perspective, with occasional interludes in which the older man reflects on the story, the nature of childhood memories and what he did and didn't know when.
Stephen is a follower, not a leader, a Another from the Booker longlist, this one is a quiet revelation and a masterly piece of storytelling. Stephen is a follower, not a leader, a second child prey to bullies at school, who is befriended by Keith, a lonely child from a better school. Keith develops a fantasy that his mother is a German spy, and co-opts Stephen into a scheme to spy on her. The game becomes more serious because she does indeed have secrets, and the nature of these secrets and their gradual revelation form the core of the book, along with what Stephen learns about his own family.
Some of the key revelations are held back until very late in the book, others are hinted at earlier, but the whole is very satisfying. A lovely book which deserved better than a mere longlisting. View all 11 comments. Dec 05, Katie rated it really liked it. I was convinced this was going to be a five-star read until about twenty pages from the end.
Such a clever and artfully constructed book deserved a much better denouement. As it was the ending was flaccid for me and the final twist somewhat lame. Spies is narrated in the first person by an elderly man looking back at one experience during WW2. Early on we get an interesting look at the hierarchy of power between young boys. Stephen, the narrator, has no power. The only kid willing to befriend him is a stuck-up boy no one else likes.
The pace considerably hots up when Keith announces his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to follow her, but she always mysteriously vanishes. It has the exciting intrigue of a brilliant thriller at this point. And I loved how he showed kids with a feverish imagination inventing an adventure and then having to suspend disbelief, just like readers, to sustain the narrative.
Then came the ending. The endings somehow like the vacuum cleaning of a carpet — which never for me achieves a result that quite rewards the effort.
View all 16 comments. Jun 21, BlackOxford rated it it was amazing Shelves: british. Character, plot and pace are about as close to perfect as it gets. His intellectual subtlety is enviable.
His ethical sense is acute. He knows how to tell a story. The reader might expect, therefore, a less than up-beat moral. The theme of Spies is the sort of quantum physics of everyday life. We change the world into something different by our smallest and most passive acts. You take them for granted. It could be the definition of youth.
So it has to be learned, if it is learned at all, by every generation. View 2 comments. Or dream that we see, or imagine that we see, or imagine later that we remembered seeing? In a way, that is also how political propaganda and ideologies work - there's the backdrop of WW II, after all. While told by a much-older Stephen looking back on his past, the protagonist is still conveying the story from the point of view of his younger self — the reader almost always remains ahead of young Stephen, as from the point of view of a grown-up outside of the game, what is happening will be judged very differently.
These two levels work nicely and add to the suspense, because the question how Stephen and Keith will interpret a situation always lingers. All in all, the true mystery to me is how come this book was not shortlisted for the Booker but you shortlisted Unless? Apr 22, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. And then one night it happens. In your head, in your stomach. Spies is a very powerful and extraordinary coming-of-age novel.
Jan 15, Danielle rated it did not like it. If I hadn't had to read this book for English I never would have finished it. The concept for the book was interesting, the actual story however was really slow and I just couldn't get into it.
In the last chapter it was like the writer suddenly decided that he needed to add in some thing to shock the audience, however it was delivered in such away that there was no real shock value to it. View all 3 comments. May 06, Preeta rated it really liked it Recommends it for: People who like novels in which children do Very Bad Things. I can't decide whether to give this book four stars or five. The language was a lot more straightforward than the dense, breathless wordplay I usually love, but the further I got into the book the more I came to see this as another mark of Frayn's genius, because the language picks up and becomes more urgent and complex as the plot does.
The plot is brilliant; no question about it. I couldn't put this book down, and those of you who know my distractible self will know that this says a LOT. I put I can't decide whether to give this book four stars or five. I'm sure part of my total absorption owes itself to the fact that this book handles some of my favourite themes: the fallible nature of memory, the weight of childhood mistakes.
The narrator and a friend he is desperate to impress begin what seems at first like another rollicking adventure of the kind they've always played: spying on the friend's mother because they suspect she's a German spy oh yes: it's World War II. Along the way, as you might well suspect, their game turns horrible and terrifying. Perhaps the most terrifying discovery the narrator makes, and that we achingly remake with him, is the vulnerability of adults. Could the world of adults possibly be even more lonely than that of children?
The narrative is as brilliantly plotted as the best of murder mysteries, and nothing prepared me for the shock of revelation at the end. As with the best murder mysteries, I looked back and saw that it should all have been obvious; that copious clues had been planted for my benefit, but I'd been so swept up in fear and dread that I hadn't picked up on them.
View 1 comment. Aug 24, Kelly rated it it was amazing Shelves: favourites. Spies is one of my favourites. Admittedly, I only read it because it was part of my English Literature A level studies, and most of my class would disagree with me in my affections for this book since it was definitely a challenge to analyse!
However, I found that this only deepened my affections and admiration for Frayn's masterpiece. There are so many levels to Spies. It is complex, as Frayn chooses to narrate this story almost as a stream of consciousness, where events are disjointed and half Spies is one of my favourites.
It is complex, as Frayn chooses to narrate this story almost as a stream of consciousness, where events are disjointed and half remembered, then returned to later and expanded upon. It follows his train of thought, rather than a chronological sequence of events. This can make it difficult to read at times, however it captures the essence of a person revisiting old memories.
It mimics how our thoughts and memories work - each triggered by stimuli, such as a scent, a place, a feeling, and how they do not always follow a logical direction but may in turn, trigger other memories which may be linked in some way. Frayn captures this exceptionally well. Spies is a fitting title for the book, as it is a major theme throughout the novel where everyone appears to be spying on everyone else.
It is a touching and charming story, told through the perspective of an older man who revisits the neighborhood he grew up in, recalling his childhood memories. One of my favorite quotations is: "Everything is as it was, and everything has changed. An enchanting read, despite its complexities, and a must for all readers. This is a book I wouldn't mind reading again and again. And each time I have, it is easier to piece together the events and different things take on a different importance.
Well done!! The play was lacklustre, poorly staged, badly directed and appallingly adapted. Two thirds of the evening was wasted in moving around a clumsy, ugly set, while the boy spies galloped in and out and up and down in lieu of any meaningful exchanges. The shuffling, onstage narrator - Stephen's older self - was a clumsy device that did not work off the page, and many of us were bored and confused in equal measure, despite his explanations.
The original story may have some merit and charm - but this play has neither. Dawnchorus 7 Mar A pathetic plot that resolves itself in the last ten minutes of the play, if you hadn't managed to guess it before, that is. The set is ghastly, the music an unnecessary distraction which seems blatantly contrived in a vain attempt to provide pathos where none exists. The pretend children look just that, twenty-somethings in shorts, pretending to be twelve year olds.
It would have been better if it had been cast as a panto!
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