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On a freezing January morning in 1961, eight-year-old Anna’s mother disappears into the fog. A kiss that barely touches Anna’s cheek, a rumble of exhaust and a blurred wave through an icy windshield, and her mother is gone. Looking back, Anna will wish that she could have paid more attention to the facts of that day. The adult world shrouds the loss in silence, tidies the issue of death away along with the things that her mother left behind. And her memories will drift and settle like the fog that covered the car.
That same morning a spy case breaks in the news—the case of the Krogers, apparently ordinary people who were not who they said they were; people who had disappeared in one place and reappeared in another with other identities, leading other lives. Obsessed by stories of the cold war and of the Second World War, which is still a fresh and painful memory for the adults around them, Anna’s brother, Peter, begins to construct a theory that their mother, a refugee from eastern Germany, was a spy working undercover, and might even still be alive. As life returns to normal, Anna struggles to sort between fact and fantasy. Did her mother have a secret life? And how does anyone know who a person was once she is dead?
The Spy Game is a beautifully wrought novel about loss, history, memory, and imagination, and the way in which we shape these to construct our own identities. It is a painful and tender reminder of the importance of understanding the past and, in turn, the importance of letting go.
"[T[he shifts between present and past never fully integrate the suggestion of espionage into the otherwise effective story of children coping with loss." - Publishers Weekly.
"In this painful, remarkably tender tale, Harding's focus on Anna and Peter ... makes this powerful psychological study most effective." - Library Journal.
"Starred Review. There are few hard facts to be learned, but a deft conclusion pulls together the elusive, engrossingly atmospheric strands. An aching, delicate and affecting interpretation of loss and acceptance. " - Kirkus Reviews.
"[E]xplores the ways we invent ourselves, the unknowability of others, and the lacks that define us more than anything we possess." - Booklist.
This information about The Spy Game was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Georgina Harding is the author of the novel The Solitude of Thomas Cave and of two works of nonfiction: Tranquebar and In Another Europe. She lives in London and the Stour Valley, Essex, England.
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