Word: novelled
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nothing was wrong with it, of course, and it is back for sure in The Russia House. Scarcely a dozen pages into this novel, Le Carre's twelfth, a document of potentially enormous importance has been passed from East to West during an exhibit of audiocassette wares in Moscow. Three grubby notebooks full of highly technical drawings and mathematical notations also contain some eye- popping assertions: "The American strategists can sleep in peace. Their nightmares cannot be realised. The Soviet knight is dying inside his armour." If true, such statements and the accompanying evidence pointing out the military incompetence...
This is never an easy question (autobiographies frequently contain more fancy than novels), but so far as one needs a guide to the free state of Theroux's imagination, it is this: like the author, the novel's hero, Andrew (sometimes Andre) Parent, was born and reared in Massachusetts, spent a good part of the '60s teaching and traveling in the Third World, and eventually made his mark as a London-based writer...
...droll reminder that nature adores deception. His admission that "in order to be strong I needed to have secrets" sounds no more or no less deceitful than the call of any unhousebroken creature who relies on stealth to catch a meal, a mate or juicy material for a novel...
Whatever the biological or social truth of Wolves, the novel's artistic conviction cannot be separated from its language, a private brew of nuance, unexpected humor and explosive strength that can already be quickly and appreciatively distinguished as the Chase style...
...departing Old Guard, dubbed the "dead souls" in a reference to Nikolai Gogol's 19th century novel, read like a Who's Who from the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Included were a former President, a former Prime Minister, five marshals, six generals and a portfolio of onetime Politburo members. What's more, they had "requested" to resign in an extraordinary statement that expressed "unanimous support for the political course of our dear party." As Gorbachev explained to the plenum, "One generation of party members has naturally to replace another...