Silverview is another of John le Carre’s formidable examinations of individual conscience versus the needs of the state.Credit:Tom Jamieson
Cornwell did become an intelligence officer and then a writer under the pen-name of John le Carré. His first novel,Call for the Dead, was set in a school just like Eton. The great author was always watching and listening,not necessarily for political ends,but to tell riveting stories,exorcise the demons of his past and still his inner conflicts.
Adam Sisman opened his excellent biography of le Carré with a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald:“Writers aren’t people exactly. Or,if they’re any good,they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.”
Le Carré was a labyrinth of contradictions,a wealthy contrarian who often found great fault with the Establishment. A Labourite,he fell out with the party over Iraq and its waning support for individual freedoms,only to later return to the fold.
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He created the beloved figure of George Smiley,nobly fighting to save England from any ill winds blowing in from Europe,only to publicly declare himself a passionate Remainer. He was furious with the Brexit result and in protest successfully applied for Irish citizenship,but never abandoned England and his Cornish property with its 1.6 kilometres of coastline.
Silverview, le Carré‘s “final” novel,begins in London’s West End with a young woman,Lily,visiting an old man named Proctor. The conversation feels like so many in le Carré’s novels,with both trying to discover unspoken truths about the other while patiently waiting for the smallest of slip-ups:the lie not quite convincingly told,a hint of contradiction,the tremble of uncertainty.
Le Carré then cuts like a well-edited film to Julian,who has tossed in a successful London life to open a bookshop in an East Anglian seaside town. The eccentric Edward Avon unexpectedly arrives,and anyone familiar with le Carré well knows that eccentricity can be a blind for deceptive intent.