John le Carré strikes again with another captivating novel that depicts his ability to keep the reader interested. After living a successful life, John le Carré passed away at the age of 89 on December 12th, 2020. This was just under a year before his book Silverview was released, thankfully being picked up by his son and published on October 12th, 2021. This book is not part of a series but some similarities can be drawn between Silverview and many of his other famous novels. The novel consists of two different parts, the one that it is more focussed on starts off with Julian, a middle-aged man who just moved out of the city to start a bookstore. He soon meets Edward Avon, an older mysterious man with seemingly limitless advice for Julian in the rise of his store. Avon mentions that he used to know Julian’s father before he passed away, but Julian remains unconvinced until Avon starts speaking of events of his past with Julian’s late father. The second part of the novel focuses on Proctor, another middle-aged man assigned a task to find a leak in the British government. Despite a slow start from the novel, it started picking up about midway through the story. There were many different characters to keep track of and this meant that not all characters were as developed and played a smaller part in the story than I would have liked. Additionally, jumping from the two different storylines added to the confusion of the novel, but towards the very end, everything became clear and started to make sense. However, the ending felt rushed and could have been stretched out for a little longer to satisfy the readers. I would recommend Silverview to readers who have enough patience to wait for the novel to pick up. In spite of this book being only 224 words, it feels like a much longer read because of the constant shifts that readers have to look out for. My final rating of Silverview by John le Carré is a four out of five because, despite the absorbing storyline, some parts of the book were slow which gave away all the momentum that John le Carré had managed to build up in the exciting parts.
Luke S.
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