Read in September 2013
The Master, by Colm Toibin
Three stars
The Master is Henry James, the expatriate 19th century American author revered by many for his analysis of the art of fiction. The book opens when James is in his 50s and experiencing problems in his work — a play in London doesn’t go well and his fiction isn’t earning adequate praise or money. In eleven chapters that unfold over five years, Colm Toibin weaves a now story with a series of flashbacks to the past to draw a portrait of the artist as a middle-aged man. Toibin’s prose is more straightforward than the prose of James, but some things are left unspoken. Clearly, the author believes James was a closeted homosexual, a theme threaded throughout this novel without being tackled head on. Made much more clear are the other ways James holds himself apart — from his country, from his family, from his friends — and the price he pays for that distancing. Although Toibin’s last image of James — standing alone looking through a window — captures his essential complaint that James’ never really lived, the author also manages to provide the explanation for the Master’s choice: to succeed with his art, James needed to hold himself apart. I quite enjoyed this novel, as will most students of James’ fiction, but I don’t think it will appeal to most contemporary readers. Long on introspection and missing a conventional plot, The Master, like the fiction of James himself, is not for everyone
Mission to Paris, by Alan Furst
Three Stars
Alan Furst’s Mission to Paris is set in pre-war 1938 Paris, where a Hollywood actor born in Austria but now an American citizen is making a movie at the request of his studio head. As soon as Frederic Stahl arrives, the courtship begins — an invitation from a countess to her soiree, a plea to get-together from an acquaintance of long ago — as Nazi agents and Frenchmen sympathetic to the Nazi cause try to enlist Stahl in their campaign for “peace.” But French cinema, no less than American movies, is home to many refugees from Hitler’s regime, and everywhere he turns, Stahl sees the effects of the Nazi’s hot and cold wars on Jews, intellectuals, and opponents. Before long, he finds himself informally enlisting for undercover operations with the other side. I found a lot to like in this novel, especially Furst’s depiction of the how-to of relentless psyops pressure against private citizens. However, somehow the characters themselves left me pretty cold, including Stahl. Furst never managed to hook me into his characters emotionally. The story definitely engaged my mind, but the people failed to engage my heart.
Our Kind of Traitor, by John LeCarre
Four stars
This novel is a return to great form by a master after a few outings where his politics sank his storytelling. An Oxford don and his barrister girlfriend on a tennis vacation in the Caribbean get friendly with a Russian mobster and his odd extended family, including two little girls whose parents were just rubbed out execution-style back home a la Bonnie and Clyde. When the mobster asks the English couple to help him contact MI6 to discuss defecting, they are drawn into the world of espionage. But this is not Cold War spycraft, with boomtime budgets and the threat of nuclear annihilation overarching all else. In the straightened circumstances of post-crash Britain, few of the old rules apply and it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.