An unforgettable, suspenseful novel about childhood, grief and Cold War paranoia.
If you were a spy, how long do you think it would take before you forgot who you really were?
It is 1961, and the world is in black and white. Eight-year-old Anna watches the Cold War unfold on her television set and builds precarious houses of cards on the carpet. Her older brother Peter glues together German bombers , while their mother brightly bosses him to go outside to play.
Then one morning the world changes. A kiss that barely touches Anna's cheek, a blurred wave through an icy windscreen, and their mother is gone. Anna and Peter are told of a car accident, but they don't go to any funeral. With the reticence of the day, the middle-class English adult world about them shrouds the death in silence. Their father quietly tends his garden, burying his grief.
But Peter will not let go of his conviction that their mother is still alive. Fascinated by the tales of espionage in the newspapers, he tells Anna that their mother, a lone refugee from eastern Germany who had met their father in the ruins of occupied Berlin, was a spy, working under the cover of perfect post-war domesticity. Peter's questions lead them deeper and deeper into a game of suspicion that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.
A novel about the paranoia of the Cold War era and the fallout for the surviving generation after World War II, as well as a meditation on grief and the ways it affects families, The Spy Game is subtle, moving and stirringly evocative.
