Life After Life and its companion A God in Ruins are among my favourite novels, so I was anxious to
read Atkinson’s latest book.
Unfortunately, it proved not to be as masterly.
In 1940,
18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is recruited by the Secret Service. Her job is to transcribe recordings of
meetings between British Nazi sympathizers and Godfrey Toby, a British spy
posing as a Gestapo agent. Later, MI5
puts her out in the field, infiltrating another group of Hitler
supporters. The novel then switches to
1950 when Juliet is a BBC producer, but her work during the war comes back to
haunt her. She receives a note with a
threat: “’You will pay for what you did’”
(186). Who is threatening her and why
does a former colleague refuse to admit knowing her?
The novel
emphasizes how truth is lost in wartime.
Juliet believes “that appearances were invariably deceptive” (188) and
this belief is reinforced when she is told that “’The mark of a good agent is
when you have no idea which side they’re on’” (116). Juliet lies easily when first interviewed for
a position with Secret Security, but she is accepted anyway; her interviewer “knew
everything about her – more than she knew herself – including every lie and
half-truth she told him at the interview.
It didn’t seem to matter. In
fact, she suspected that it helped in a way” (37).
When first
sent into the field and given a false identity, she is advised, “’And remember,
if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a good one. . . . It can be a difficult
concept, fabricating a life – the falsehoods and so on. Some people find it challenging to dissemble
in this way.’” Juliet’s reaction is
telling: “Not me, Juliet thought” (80). Looking back at the war, Juliet comments,
“The war had made the world weary of facts” (178) because “People always said
they wanted the truth, but really they were perfectly content with a facsimile”
(185).
By the end
of the war Juliet knows “she has moved away from [truth]” (19). The problem is that, after adopting so many
identities during the war, she seems to have lost herself: “There had been other identities too,
although she never owned up to them in public.
And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed
like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the ‘real’ Juliet. But then what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself,
just a game of deception” (259)?
One is left
wondering how truthful Juliet is. There’s
an episode with earrings that shows her to be untrustworthy. And ten years later, she continues to
deceive. She admits to lying in her BBC
interview and she destroys incriminating evidence to protect herself and a
colleague: “It was not the first time
she had destroyed evidence of wrong-doing and she supposed it wouldn’t be the
last” (214). At the BBC, she rewrites children’s
radio histories to enliven them, often leaving out details, so one cannot help
but wonder if she is leaving out details about her life. Since her name is closely associated with a
dramatic script, is Juliet playing a role?
Of course, Juliet is not the only enigma. Juliet’s colleagues (Godfrey Toby, Peregrine
Gibbons, Miles Merton) also remain largely unknown, as befits spies.
The problem
is that it is difficult to emotionally connect with Juliet. At the beginning, she is so naïve. Her age explains her innocence, but surely
she should have realized the truth about Perry much sooner. And
throughout her wartime activity, she makes frivolous comments. She thinks of her role as an adventure, as
she is told to do; though one incident makes her aware of the fatal
consequences of her spying, her comments and interior dialogue suggest little
true change in her attitude. Would
someone having to clean up after a killing actually quote Shakespeare: “She would have to clean again. And Again.
Out, damned spot” (284)? Something seems missing, perhaps some warmth
in her personality? Juliet even refers
to this: “The unfathomable hollow inside
her would never be filled” (171) and “She sometimes wondered if there was some
emptiness inside that she was trying to fill” (205).
There are
wonderful touches of humour. Juliet’s
thoughts during Perry’s courtship, for example, are hilarious. What is missing is tension; for a spy
thriller there is little danger except in a couple of episodes. And because of the first chapter, the reader
knows that Juliet survives. The pacing
is also uneven; for long stretches, nothing happens. Though this shows spy work is often mundane,
unlike what James Bond films might suggest, such plotting does little to
maintain the reader’s interest.
The book
has the literary allusions I love, quite a few surprises, and several layers: “’There can be many layers to a thing. Like the spectrum of light’” (312). Unfortunately, the book just didn’t resonate
with me; it didn’t have the emotional impact of Atkinson’s other World War II
novels. Juliet ends up feeling that
people are often pawns in “someone else’s great game” (313) and in some ways I
feel the reader is manipulated by how information is divulged and withheld. I do think, however, that I might re-read the
book because, like Juliet misses and misconstrues details, I might also have
done so. I guess I’d be a lousy spy!
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