The Honourable Schoolboy by John Le Carre'

I finished reading this book some time ago, but I haven’t been able to sit down and write about it. It could be that the story exhausted me! Not that I don’t enjoy that, especially in a spy novel.

The Honourable Schoolboy is a follow-up novel to Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Everybody’s favorite spy (well, mine anyway), George Smiley and his people at “the Circus” have a lead on Karla, Smiley’s particular Soviet nemesis. A very convoluted trail is uncovered, mostly in Asia and Jerry Westerby, the “Honourable Schoolboy” of the story, does most of the footwork.

I think it was Westerby’s hard and often pointless work that was so exhausting to me as I read this novel. I somehow was induced to willingly follow him along as he skillfully pulled off some dirty but necessary deeds, bravely burrowed into war-torn Southeast Asia on a somewhat Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now-style quest, unwisely fell in love, and eventually spiraled downward into a sort of justified madness.

Often, I get pretty angry with characters who make the kinds of decisions Westerby makes in this novel and even at the authors who created them. (This happened when I read Blue Angel by Francine Prose.) But, somehow, John Le Carré made me understand Westerby and many of the other ultra-paranoid, just-about-to-crack characters. I felt more like I was invited to learn something than implored to feel something. Sure, I felt the heartburn and exhaustion of this story, but I also was made to understand it. I didn’t just empathize with the characters, but was given a subtle but complete study of them to ponder. Nothing was gratuitously graphic, but everything was informatively detailed. I was taken on the mad, paranoid journey with these exceptional characters. With Le Carré’s skill, I couldn’t help but believe every word of The Honourable Schoolboy.

Some people might come out of a novel like this feeling depressed or fearful about the scummy-ness of humanity, and, I suppose they are entitled to that. Somehow, I really enjoy the sneakiness and spookiness, the paranoia and the pulled-out rugs. Yes, the intrigue and action and pain and uncertainty can be exhausting to read, but for me, it’s a good tired. I’m already deep into Smiley’s People, and am thoroughly enjoying that one too.

  

You might also like Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now

Wednesday Word

squill (skwil) n. the dried bulb of white varieties of a plant (Urginea maritima) of the lily family, formerly used in medicine


I first saw the word squill used by a clever player (not me) in an electronic Scrabble game. Since the all-knowing Scrabble program accepted the word, I had to assume it really was a word. My paper and ink dictionary agreed. Then, I came across the word in The Patchwork Garden by Sydney Eddison. It seems that I can no longer be skeptical. Squill is a real word for a real thing.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack is the first in a series of steampunk-style adventure novels by Mark Hodder. It is set in Victorian England (well, sort of), and is filled with mechanical and genetic improbabilities. The heroes of the story are Sir Richard Francis Burton and Algernon Charles Swinburne, guys who actually existed, though not exactly in the way they do in this novel.

There are a few overlapping plots in this story, and they all become in some way connected to the strange being known as Spring Heeled Jack, a frightening character who has been attacking and abusing young women. Burton, formerly a famous explorer and adventurer, has been given a special position by the king (yes, the king…that’s as close to a spoiler as I’m willing to give). He finds himself in the middle of all of this and applies his unique abilities and strengths to try to get to the bottom of the whole affair. His oddball poet friend Swinburne eventually helps him out and ends up being a valuable partner, if a bit eccentric and unpredictable.

The story is action-packed and fun, with elements of old-fashion pulp adventure, suspense, and hard science fiction. The setting is stuffed with funky machinery, such as roto-chairs and steam-powered penny farthing bicycles as well as genetically-modified animals, such as foul-mouthed messenger parakeets. These anachronisms really add a lot of fun to the story, especially since Hodder gives us so much detail about the steampunk props and the attitudes and philosophies that gave rise to those wonderful inventions. Here is a description of an engineer named Brunel, who has been modified to exist well beyond his natural life:

He stood on three triple-jointed metal legs. These were attached to a horizontal disk-shaped chassis affixed to the bottom of the main body, which, shaped like a barrel lying on its side, appeared to be constructed from wood and banded with strips of studded brass. There were domed protrusions at either end of it, each bearing nine multijointed arms, each arm ending in a different tool, ranging from delicate fingers to slashing blades, drills to hammers, spanners to welders…

            At various places around the body, revolving cogwheels poked through slots in the wood, and on one shoulder – it was impossible to say whether it was the left or right because Brunel had no discernible front or back – a pistonlike device slowly rose and fell. On the other, something resembling a bellows pumped up and down, making a ghastly wheezing noise. Small exhaust pipes expelled puffs of white vapour from either end of the barrel.

There are other historical figures in this novel besides Burton and Swinburne (and the Brunel mentioned above), such as Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, and Oscar Wilde. They each receive their own amusing (often darkly so) twists by Hodder. Spring Heeled Jack is also based on someone, or a few someones, who terrorized women in Victorian London. (He was mentioned in Her Little Majesty by Carolly Erickson.) Since the real Jack was never caught, nor really very well understood, he provided the greatest opportunity for the author to take liberties with his story, and Hodder does so with great creativity and high entertainment.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack was my first introduction to the steampunk genre, and there are two more books so far in the Burton and Swinburne series that I’m looking forward to reading as well. This was really a great piece of escapist speculative fiction to kick off some lazy summer reading.

A Year of Books I Should Have Read By Now