Age is just a number

For authors like John Le Carre, who continue to produce their best work  well into their 80s

My first introduction to spy thrillers came during my teenage years when I stumbled upon John Le Carre in my local library. It was the title of the book that caught my eye: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I was sufficiently intrigued to take the book home. And that night, as I lay down to read myself to sleep as I usually did, I cracked it open and delved into the story. The next thing I knew it was three in the morning and my mother was knocking on my door to ask why my lights were still on. George Smiley, I answered, it’s all his fault.

Since that initiation, I have lost count of the number of nights I have lain awake reading John Le Carre until the wee hours of the morning. But little did I suspect in those early days that Le Carre would keep me entertained for quite so long; that he would still be churning out novels and memoirs well into his 80s. And yet here he is, at the venerable age of 88, with a new book out this month.

Agent Running In the Field is vintage Le Carre, with the novelist at the height of his powers, now writing against the backdrop of Brexit rather than the Cold war, but with the same vim and vigour. As I galloped through the book, staying up till dawn because I just could not put the damn thing down, I couldn’t help but marvel at the author’s mastery of his medium, which has only got better with age.

I guess that is the difference between great songwriters and great authors. Song writers hit their peak in their 20s or, at most, their 30s. Rare is the songwriter who continues to produce great songs after the age of 40. No, seriously, go on, try and think of one great anthem that Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney have written in their later years. Yes, that’s right, you can’t even come up with one.

But with great writers, the longer they live, the more life experiences they accumulate, the better they get at their craft. It’s not just Le Carre, though he is the most recent example. Think back to that other master of suspenseful story-telling: Agatha Christie. She too kept writing well into her old age, and her books just got better and better with every decade. Sure, they were rooted solidly within a certain genre – a murder takes place; there is a surfeit of suspects; there are plenty of red herrings; and the least likely person is found to be guilty – but within those narrow confines, they sparkled and shone with an effervescence that was Christie’s alone, no matter how old she got.

Maybe it is something about murder mysteries as a genre, but they seem to encourage longevity among its practitioners. Take P.D. James, for instance. She only began writing her crime thrillers when she was in her 40s. But once she started, it was as if she could never stop. Her books kept coming till she was well into her 70s, with Adam Dalgliesh ageing gently along with his creator. James’ last book, Death Comes to Pemberley, a homage of sorts to Jane Austen, with James revisiting Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy six years after their wedding, as they are caught up in a mysterious death on their estate, was published just three years before she died at the advanced age of 94.

But while it could be said that Death Comes to Pemberley was far from James’ best work – with the murder mystery being the weakest link in a book that attempted to recreate the world of Jane Austen – there are other authors who have produced their best works in what should be the twilight of their lives.

The first such name that comes to my mind is Elizabeth Jane Howard. A brilliant writer, her professional work was always overshadowed by her personal life, given that she was married to Kingsley Amis, and stepmother to Martin Amis for a while. It was only after her divorce, when she was freed from the shackles of enforced domesticity, did the writer in Howard flower completely.

The result was a set of five books, a family saga set in the aftermath of the Second World War, dubbed The Cazalet Chronicles. This traced the lives of an extended clan of brothers and sisters, cousins and siblings, governesses and maids, as they dealt with a rapidly-changing world, in which the old certainties they swore by did not hold. Howard allowed the sprawling cast of characters – all of them fully fleshed out with dreams, desires and motivations of their own – story arcs that extended over a ten year period, showing how completely family fortunes can change over a single decade. If you haven’t read these books yet, you’re in for a treat when you finally do.

All of this makes me wonder how things would have turned out if Jane Austen hadn’t died at the age of 41. What if she had grown into her 70s or even 80s; what if she had married and acquired a family, or even a step-family; what if she had dealt with the indignities of ageing; what if… How many more masterpieces like Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility would she have produced if only she had been allowed the gift of old age? Sadly, we will never know.

  

Big Little Bestsellers

And can they make a seamless transition to our TV screens?

I discovered Liane Moriarty (what a splendid surname for a writer of murder – well, sort of – mysteries to have, by the way) rather late in the day. Somehow, her major breakthrough novel, The Husband’s Secret, passed me by when it released in 2013. It was only after I read her 2014 book, Big Little Lies, that I was intrigued enough to go back and see what else she had written. Suffice to say, I was not disappointed. And then, last year Moriarty released her latest novel, Truly Madly Guilty (yes, she is rather prolific that way) and I was well and truly hooked. And like most newly-converted people, I went around recommending her to all my friends and acquaintances (“Yes, yes, I know, you’ve never heard of her; but believe me, she’s fantastic!”).

Well, it now turns out that Liane Moriarty will no longer be such a tough sell in these parts. And that’s because Little Big Lies, far and away her best book so far, has been made into a television series starring such A-list stars as Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, with a cast that includes Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Alexander Skarsgard and Zoe Kravtiz, and is playing on a TV screen right in your living room every week.

Of course, it’s much more fun to watch if you haven’t read the book – and don’t worry, this piece contains no spoilers at all. But even those of us who know how it all ends, can’t help but get caught up with the twists and turns of the plot. And it doesn’t hurt that both Witherspoon and Kidman are rather easy on the eye, as are all the lush shots of rolling beaches, with their full complement of sun, sea and surf.

So, how does the TV series compare with the book? Well, I was prepared to be all sniffy about it, but as it turns out, the TV version captures the novel rather well, with its mixture of domestic drama, dark comedy, schoolyard (yes, I kid you not!) politics, sexual tension and, of course, suspense thriller. There is a murder at the heart of it, but that’s just the hook on which to hang a great story on. And the story survives the transition to a different medium rather well.

As I watched the latest episode this week, I started to wonder which other book had made the transition to TV series quite so successfully. And here, just off the top of my head, is my entirely subjective list of the top three:

Pride and Prejudice: The BBC adaptation of the Jane Austen novel aired more than 20 years ago, with Colin Firth playing Mr Darcy to Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet. But even two decades on, the show lives on in our collective memory thanks to that one scene of Firth emerging from a lake in a wet white shirt and bumping into Elizabeth. It is a tribute to Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay, that even though this scene never occurs in Austen’s book, it has become a seminal moment in popular culture.

But leaving wet shirts aside for a moment, this was a show that captured the intelligence and spark of Elizabeth Bennet, the constrained lives of women of that era, and raised an elegant brow at the snobbery and elitism that prevailed in the England of that day. Quite brilliant.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Anyone who has seen the TV series that came out in 1979 (do get a box set if you haven’t) will remember this because of Sir Alec Guinness’ star turn as legendary spymaster, George Smiley, who is brought out of retirement to hunt for a mole buried deep into the heart of the British secret services. Guinness was brilliant in this adaptation of John Le Carre’s novel of the same name, so much so that the author admitted that, “If I were to keep one filmed version of my work, this would be it.”

And it is easy to understand why. The plot unravels with the same stately pace that Le Carre brings to his own writing. Each character is fleshed out into three dimensions. The mechanics of spycraft are brought to light in intricate detail. And then, there is the quiet but unmistakable presence of Guinness’ Smiley, all repressed passion and suppressed feelings. An absolute masterpiece.

Game of Thrones: My chronology is a little off when it comes to the Game of Thrones books by George RR Martin. I was introduced to him by the first two seasons of the TV show, which I binge-watched while on vacation. Appetite appropriately whetted, I came back home to download all his books and devoured all five of them in one greedy gulp. So, when season three launched, I was prepared to be disappointed. After all, I knew what was going to happen, so how much fun could it be? Short answer: a lot!

The TV series brought the fantasy to life with such panache that it mattered little that I knew how things were going to turn out. I knew what was coming in the Red Wedding, how the dragons would save the fireproof Daenerys Targaryen, and how Arya Stark would hit rock-bottom. But seeing it on screen still brought a fresh thrill. It helped, of course, that as the series moved along, Martin and the screenplay writers shook things up by varying the endings of various storylines, to give us smug readers a bit of a jolt.