Spies

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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. The first chapter introduces Stephen, the main character and narrator, an elderly man who recalls his past triggered by a familiar smell. While walking with his daughter and granddaughter, he encounters the same scent again. They identify it as coming from a common German bush called "linguster." Motivated by these memories, Stephen decides to revisit his childhood home in London.

In the fifth chapter, Stephen describes how the town has changed since his childhood, highlighting the impact of the war.

What happens in the end -- the magnitude of it all, the truth behind everything -- is much larger than anticipated (and in this way Frayn redeems himself), but some of the childish spying and piecing together of the puzzle along the way is tiresome. It is an odd, original, haunting little tale in which the teller is the really interesting thing. (...) But the book's real merit lies in the way Stephen comes to understand the truth behind the mysteries of his world by beginning to understand something about the difference between men and women. This is achieved entirely without crudity. (...) (A) modest but memorable book." - Robert Nye, The Times I don’t think I’ve ever read a more suspenseful novel than The Spies. Michael Frayn has crafted a remarkable story of WWII intrigue told through the eyes of a young boy living in a tight family neighborhood in London. Stephen Wheatley ... Or just plain Stephen ... On his school reports S.J.Wheatley, in the classroom or the playground just plain Wheatley.

Stephen fast-forwards the narrative to when he and Keith create an official hiding spot where they can spy on Keith’s mother in the privet hedges that adorn the front of Miss Durrant’s bombed house. They swear to never tell anyone about their secret mission, and Keith erects a sign labelled “Privet” (“private” misspelled) at the entrance of their concealed hangout. In a dreamlike sequence, Stephen sees his younger self exiting the house and roaming the neighborhood. He mentions Barbara and Deirdre, two girls known for their wild behavior due to their father's absence during the war. Stephen also notes that his older brother, Geoff, spent time with one of the girls. However, Stephen's closest friend was Keith, who lived at No. 9, came from a wealthy family, and preferred playing at his own lavish house. Stephen shares his discovery with Keith the next day, and they investigate the tunnel together. To their dismay, the box has vanished. Keith becomes angry, blaming Stephen for their failure. As they hide from Keith's mother, they witness her destination, but Stephen resists following her, and Keith is too fearful to do so alone.This is what Frayn does really well: taking archaeological strolls down memory lane. "Spies" is subtle, layered and highly revealing of human nature, but he plays fair and doesn't lob the ball of what's actually going on over your head. The characters, both the kids and the adults are well-crafted and the world of the little Close is highly reminiscent of cozy mystery settings. But a lot more sinister and a lot more real. As such, it is full of tender, latent comedy, but Frayn fights the impulse to play things for laughs. His previous novel, Headlong , was marred by an insistent humorousness at odds with a dark story, but here he refrains from the jokes that come so easily to him. That he is tempted is shown by some suppressed by play on the name of the definitive shrub of suburbia. Keith, whose spelling is not his strong point, writes 'Privet', meaning 'private', near their favourite hide, which is, as it happens, surrounded by privet.

Frayn had told us at the beginning of the evening that he had given the book to the childhood friend who was the original of Keith, and that this friend had recognised himself and the depiction of his softly threatening father. At the end of the evening, a reader made an eloquent plea for sympathy for this character. Did the novel not suggest that he might have suffered in the first world war? (He is an older father, too old to do military service in the second world war.) Indeed, was he not the potential twin of Peter, the terrified "hero" who has suffered such trauma as a bomber pilot? The character is "an awful man, obviously" – but for a reason. Frayn thought this was indeed a clever reading, of which he had not been conscious. The man on whom he was based had been horrible; the fictional character had slipped away from his original and become somebody altogether more complicated.At the beginning of the book he feels the need to stroll down "Memory Lane" once again -- to "the last house before you go round the bend and it turns into Amnesia Avenue" as he tells his children. One day, while Stephen is in the lookout, Keith's mother attempts to approach him, possibly to request his assistance in delivering a letter. However, she stops when she notices Stephen with Barbara. 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. The theme of Spies felt very familiar, a theme recurrent in film and literature, for instance in Whistle Down The Wind, in The Go-Between and, of course, in Atonement. I seem to remember saying Atonement was like the Go Between, now I'm saying Spies is like the Go Between and Atonement . How long before there is a book that is like the Go Between, Atonement and Spies? Stephen all along only sees and understands bits of a much larger picture, and so the reader is left in the dark about much as well.

The two boys start surveilling Keith's mother during her daily errands, taking notes on her interactions and growing suspicious of those she associates with. In their exploration of her sitting room, they find a diary marked with an X for each month. Startled by her return, they hide and retreat to discuss in the shrubs near Durrant's house. Mrs. Hayward – A mysterious character, implied as being very attractive. She vanishes for various amounts of time throughout the day for no apparent reason, leading her son to believe that she may be an undercover operative. She has a distant relationship with her husband and seems vaguely scared of him. Older Stephen's declining memory results in his search for clarification and closure, as Frayn uses a blend of different narrative viewpoints to distinguish what young Stephen thought was accurate at the time and reality. Update this section! Spies (2002) is a psychological novel by English author and dramatist Michael Frayn. It is currently studied by A-Level, and some GCSE, literature students in various schools. It is also studied by some Year 12 VCE English students in Australia. Unfortunately, even after sixty years, class difference and social status still influences how Stephen understands himself. As he is narrating his own childhood, he fails to concentrate the story around himself in the first place and instead focuses it around Keith’s perspective, through both his narrative declarations and by calling the characters names that would be appropriate for Keith rather than himself. Auntie Dee and Uncle Peter, for example, are not his own relatives, yet Stephen names them in the way that Keith would. And even speaking as an old man Stephen is still apologetic to his readers, and grateful for their attention. Finally, at the end of the book Stephen reveals his family as Jewish. Though he wasn’t aware of his Jewishness as a child, this could have contributed to his family’s “lowly” status and his own sense of not belonging, since anti-Semitism was prevalent throughout Europe at the time (even among the Allies) and it’s implied that the kids at school bully Stephen with anti-Semitic slurs.It is a study of what we think we know and what is real, and also of the difference between what we really know and what we are prepared to admit. It is a dark book, and a sad one" - John Lanchester, The New York Review. of Books