Silverview by John le Carré

​   John le Carré was a luminary of spy fiction, the master of the genre, in many ways he was spy fiction for six decades. And I haven’t read a single one of his books. Didn’t really want to either, I don’t like the spy genre. It’s fine enough for movies, but in literature it never managed to interest me. And yet, since I like to think of my reading as both prolific and well-rounded, I figured I’ll check one out now. Reading the author posthumously is both commemorative and a good way to find out if you’ve bene missing out. Plus, this one was short and thus required only a limited commitment.
    And so, having read it now, I can say…no, definitely didn’t miss out on a thing. It still isn’t for me. I don’t know how accurate of a representation of le Carré’s writing this one is – according to his son who finished this one up and got it ready for publication, it got shelved originally for being simply too personal for the author and his own time in Secret Service. I’m actually a fan of his son’s writing, that man writes the most excellent wildly imagined adventures. But that’s neither here nor there, because Silverview is all spies all the time.
     Even having a bookstore owner for a protagonist didn’t do much. It was still all so strangely unexciting.
     And also, a quick and relevant digression…I read a lot of oldies through Lume (formerly Endeavor) publishing  - a company that’s dedicated itself to resurrecting dusty forgotten tomes of yesteryear and digitally producing them for modern audiences. Those books all usually have the same tone – very British, very eloquent, very emotionally distant, very stodgy, very old-tmey…and invariably quite dated. Decent but seldom if ever excellent. And this book, though its social mores were updated enough, had the exact same style to it. The only thing is those other Lume authors are barely known these days and John le Carré is as famous as ever. Go figure.
      At any rate, this book and its muddled spy-like convolutions didn’t do a thing for me, except had the decency to go by quickly. Spy genre fans would likely disagree. But anyway, I wanted to know and now I do. Experiment completed.