Spies by Michael Frayn - Outstanding!!

Quite an outstanding book, this the 2002 Whitbread winner, enigmatic yet
humorous and poignant at the same time. Beautifully descriptive yet simple
and evocative. I cannot recommend too highly this novel. A simple story of a
Summer in a childhood spent in a suburb during WW2 - told from a child point
of view. For me it brought back all the memories from childhood, yet
childhood is universal so the appeal here is for anyone who has ever been a
child and not necessarily those who grew up in the 1940's.

I won't give spoilers or plot lines here, suffice to give a simple rundown
of the story and leave others to discover the books secrets. Steven and
Keith are growing up in a 1940's London Suburb, a cul-de-sac where nothing
much happens in the lives of the genteel Middle Class families living there,
no Angela's Ashes hardship here. The long summer days are spent playing and
trying to have adventures - but as is the case with children some children
are more forceful than others. One of them is in charge deciding who does
what in the game and when.

Steven is quite a lonely boy slightly easily led whilst Keith is more
dominant. They start a game, which has massive consequences to their
families and those in the street. The innocence of their play is quite funny
yet heartrendingly painful to read, all the confusion of childhood
especially for those children less confident or shy, all the perceived
injustices of childhood and the slight cruelties of children are there on
the pages. For me it opened a world of memories I had quite forgotten some
good some bad. It is well known the cruelties of children to each other and
it is surprising that any of us reach adulthood well balanced at all - or do
we?.

The plot twists and turns as the game plays out to its inevitable
conclusion, we are given beautifully descriptive explanations of the other
families in the street, their perceived social standing compared with each
other and how they appear to the children. The relationship between them and
their parents is very well observed, the minor details so unnoticed by an
adult that are mortifying to a child. I realise that there is a tendency
amongst many who were born in the 50's & 60's toward introspection,
reappraising themselves and their childhoods again and again. The current
trend towards retro and the many novels which use this as a theme may lead
some commentators to see "childhood" based books as a cop-out freeing the
need for new original subject matter, but this book is beyond that leaning
more toward the whole human experience and interaction.

Outstanding and original with unsettling and surprising plot twists a worthy
Whitbread winner and I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all readers
young or old.

On 6/4/04 2:02 AM, in article c9pdp9$fv1$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk, "notme"
<never.DeleteThis@here.ok> wrote:

 > [various stuff in support]

I remember him as the playright who did *Copenhagen*, the Russian translator
who did *The Cherry Orchard* and, first and foremost, the novelist who did
*Headlong*.

The Grauniad has a nice little bio at: <http://tinyurl.com/yqhcj><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->