Word: magnus
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...Magnus Pym shares much of the author's vita, including absentee parents, an unhappy public school education, academic success at Oxford, literary ambitions and a foreign-service job. But there is a speculative quality about the character. What if, Le Carre seems to suggest, David Cornwell did not break away from the murky world of cold war espionage to become an acclaimed writer? Might he have ended up like Magnus, middle-aged and distorted by a past that makes him good at his job but useless as a husband, friend and father...
...ironic burden of being a Perfect Spy is that the distinction is based on distortion. Masters of deceit, according to Le Carre, are borderline psychopaths. One of Magnus' colleagues speculates, "What I recognise in Pym is what I recognise in myself: a spirit so wayward that, even while I am playing a game of Scrabble with my kids it can swing between the options of suicide, rape and assassination." Pym's first wife Belinda contributes the observation, "He was a new man every day. He'd come home one person, I'd try to match him. In the morning...
...Carre excels at depicting this multitier personality. The most convincing dinner-party chatter, pillow talk and professional banter conceal howling secrets. Magnus' deepest one is that he is a double agent, a fact that becomes apparent about the same time readers realize they have fallen through the civilized surface of the novel. Betrayal comes naturally to Pym, himself the victim of bad faith and disappointments, revealed in flashbacks of youth, student days and beginnings as an operative...
...plot is a manhunt, both literal and psychological. Magnus vanishes, leaving his wife Mary and friend and fellow spy Jack Brotherhood to deduce his whereabouts. There is a false trail that seems to lead to Scotland; in fact, Pym is holed up as Mr. Canterbury in a Devon boardinghouse. He is fairly sure that his superiors know he has passed secrets to a Communist agent, an old school chum. But Magnus is not trying to escape; he is only buying time to write his story so that his family and friends will know the truth. In addition, Rickie...
...Brotherhood closes in, Magnus sets the crooked record straight, or as straight as possible under the circumstances. There is much here about the routines of spying: keeping in touch with your "Joes," the odd assortment of informants who provide trade figures, truck movements and the seemingly meaningless details that may or may not add up to something back at the Firm's headquarters. Magnus' operations take him to Vienna, Prague and Washington, where he concludes that "no country was ever easier to spy on . . . no nation so open-hearted with its secrets, so quick to air them, share them, confide...