Product Description

In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live there is very little evidence of the Second World War. But the two friends suspect that the inhabitants of the Close are not what they seem. As Keith authoritatively informs the trusting Stephen, the whole district is riddled with secret passages and underground laboratories. Then one day Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family, and the children find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10814 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Michael Frayn's novel Spies an old man returns to the scene of his seemingly ordinary suburban childhood. Stephen Wheatley is unsure of what he is seeking but, as he walks once-familiar streets he hasn't seen in 50 years, he unfolds a story of childish games colliding cruelly with adult realities. It is wartime and Stephen's friend Keith makes the momentous announcement that his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to spy on the supposed spy, following her on her trips to the shops and to the post, and reading her diary. Keith's mother does have secrets to conceal but they are not the ones the boys suspect. Frayn skilfully manipulates his plot so that the reader's growing awareness of the truth remains just a few steps beyond Stephen's dawning realisation that he is trespassing on painful and dangerous territory. The only false notes occur in the final chapter when the central revelation (already cleverly signposted) is too swiftly followed by further disclosures about Stephen and his family that seem somehow unnecessary and make the denouement less satisfyingly conclusive. This is a much sparer and less expansive book than Headlong, Frayn's Booker Prize-shortlisted 1999 novel, more understated in its wit, but it is, in many ways, more compelling.--Nick Rennison

Review
'Deeply Satisfying... Frayn has written nothing better.' Independent; 'Spies improves upon rereading, which is the true test of depth. It is cerebral and sensuous; extremely funny and yet deeply serious.' Sunday Telegraph

Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
'Frayn has never written more seductively and surely than in this book.'

Customer Reviews

Profound denouement is a adaquate compensation
'Spies' is described as 'beautifully crafted' and I have to agree. Even when I wasn't enjoying what I was reading, which for a large part of this novella I was not, it is stil impossible to deny that it has been formed with a glorious technique.

Until the last 60 pages of Spies I found the overt simplicity of the childhood Stephen's narative rather grating. However, from this point onwards the adult Stephen plays an almost unbroken lead role in narrating the story and once he does, the beauty of the ideas really begins to show.

It is astonishing to anyone who has grown up that Frayn manages to remind us of aspects of childhood that we had forgotton despite his vastly superior age.

It is only in considering the role of the narrator in a story that we can really understand why Frayn was justified in winning the Whitbread prize. The realisation that characters themselves have not changed, merely the Stephen's (the narrator) perspective (and therefore our perspective) is a remarkable transition from the regular narrative method of the omnipotent narrator, one who is unaffected by the narrative, despite playing an integeral role in it. Frayn's perspective on narrative here, and equally his attention to detail is what saves this novel from what might have been a disapointment to what is ultimately, a masterpiece.

Always fresh and inventive, Frayn breaks new ground
I have been comprehensively bowled over by Spies. I have never seen the dilemmas, confusions, excitements, insights, and incomprehensions of childhood better, more truthfully, done; and its balance of comedy and anguish - indeed the blend of comedy and anguish - is handled with exceptional delicacy. The fun is real fun, but it isn't allowed to cheapen or lessen Stephen's anxieties, fears, sense of his own unworthiness. (As an old man, he may have lost two of those, but not the third, I think.) All that would be enough to make this an exceptionally fine and unusual novel.
But Frayn also presents an adult story, imperceptibly humming in the background almost at the start, then thrumming more and more audibly as he brings it to the fore. When finally it declares itself openly, fortissimo and on centre-stage, one realizes that it has (and how it has) been at the centre of the story from the outset, though always - even at the climax - we get it through the consciousness of the boy.
The presentation of the adult story is an astonishing technical feat. Frayn shows superlative skill in the way he paces it - not just the rate at which the story comes forward, but the steps it takes to get there: the thriller-like excitement as it is gradually revealed, the discipline with which the revelation comes entirely through the experience of the boy Stephen, with nothing leaking around the edges, the growing revelation (starting long before we know what the story really is) of its sadness. It is an astonishing achievement.
The central adult story is heart-breaking. One is also sad for others, including the boy Keith and his poor limited frightened frightening father.
Frayn is never sentimental. He allows Stephen to be better in some ways than he thinks he is, and to have some significant decencies. But he also allows him to fail pretty seriously, letting down each of the two adult protagonists. The failures are shown as growing organically out of the condition of being a child, but they are failures nonetheless.
The long list of Frayn's novels has contained nothing else remotely like this. He continues to extend his range, taking new risks, exploring new territory.

Great Mystery
I loved this book. I compulsively read this to find out what an earth was going on. Frayn handles the suspense wonderfully and draws the scene of war time with elegance and restraint. He somehow evokes the time without being patronising or simplistic and one felt the people could have existed in any time, except this was theirs and the worries they had were merely compounded by war.

I loved it - recommended.