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.

The book's the thing...

And sometimes it’s even better when it is adapted for TV or a movie

If you are a fan of Elena Ferrante, and (like me) are suffering withdrawal pangs after having devoured every word she has ever written, then I have some good news for you. The Italian film and television production company, Wildside, has announced that it is working on adapting Ferrante’s Neopolitan quartert into a TV series, along with producer Fandango. The series will be shot in Italy, and in Italian.

The four novels, which trace the friendship of Lenu and Lina over half a century, will be adapted into a four-season TV series, which each novel taking in eight episodes, making it a 32-episode blockbuster. Ferrante is believed to be involved in the production, though nobody quite knows in what capacity or how closely. But then, given that nobody even knows who Ferrante is – she is still jealously clinging tight to her anonymity – that can’t be very surprising.

No release date has been announced but I am already salivating with anticipation. The story of Lenu and Lina consumed me entirely as I raced to the final book in the quartet, The Story of the Lost Child, and I can’t wait to see this tale of female friendship retold in a visual medium.

Of course, this anticipation is tinged with a dash of fear. It is the same fear that every book-lover experiences when a well-loved book is turned into a movie or a TV series. I felt that fear when the first series of Game of Thrones was released, not sure how that tale of kings and knights, love and lust, pride and passion, would work on the TV screen.

Would it all look a bit ridiculous, like some costume dramas tend to do? Would the story have the same power on TV as it did in the book? Would the characters be reduced to caricatures because of the demands of the visual medium? Would it just become yet another bodice-ripper of the kind that litter the television universe?

You can imagine my relief when the TV series proved to be as much of a triumph as the books. Of course, I felt a little miffed that I already knew what was going to happen, thus losing out on the thrill of anticipation that other viewers, who hadn’t read the book, were feeling. But then, George R.R. Martin, rather obligingly, went off script in the later seasons, and I could watch with the same edge-of-the-seat excitement that non-readers were privileged to experience.

So, yes, I am a tad nervous about how the Ferrante will survive the transition to our TV screens. Just as I am both nervous and excited about the movie adapation of Longbourn that is in the works. Random House Studios and Focus Features have acquired the film rights to Jo Baker’s novel about life below stairs in the Bennet household made famous by Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), and the release date is tentatively set for 2017. I just hope and pray that this adaptation remains true to the original and doesn’t go down the Downton Abbey route.

But the one author whose works I long to see on television is Georgette Heyer (just one of her books, The Reluctant Widow, has been made into a film – and a pretty bad one at that!). The prolific author of Regency Romances has given us such amazing characters as The Grand Sophy, Arabella, Frederica, Venetia, and it would be an absolute treat to see them come alive on the TV screen. But for some reason, British TV companies are too busy filming Pride and Prejudice again and again and again to pay any attention to the possibilities inherent in these Heyer heroines.

And that is an absolute pity, if you ask me. Heyer tells absolutely cracking stories, intricately-plotted and leavened with wit and humour. And her heroines are the absolute best; plucky little creatures who do their best in a society that hems them around with strict rules of etiquette.

Who else but Heyer could come up with a heroine like Sophia Stanton-Lacy who comes visiting her aunt with a little monkey to gift her young cousins, and thinks nothing of confronting an evil moneylender with an elegant but effective pistol? Or the impish Leonie de Saint-Vire, who masquerades as a young page in Parisian society, before being unveiled as an aristocratic beauty? Or even the stunningly beautiful Deborah Grantham, relegated to the fringes of polite society as Faro’s Daughter, who makes the greatest conquest of them all?

I could go on listing the marvelous, resourceful, witty, intelligent, beautiful women who people Heyer’s stories (the headstrong Lady Serena Carlow, Judith Taverner, Mary Challoner are just some names that come to mind) but then we’d be here forever. Instead you could go over to petitionbuzz.com and sign a petition asking that Heyer’s novels be made into a movie.

Though, if you ask me, television is better suited to telling Heyer’s stories (in my view, movies are like short stories, only TV series can do justice to the sweep of a novel). Surely the BBC or ITV, which spends millions on period dramas of dubious quality, could pick up one Heyer Regency Romance – my personal favourite would be The Grand Sophy – and adapt it into a six-part series. I would bet my entire collection of tattered copies of Heyer’s novels that it would do so well that production companies would be scrambling for the rights to the books yet to be filmed.

So, come on guys, look sharp. This is a world of fiction beyond Jane Austen and Julian Fellowes that beckons.

Spoiler alert!

No matter how much you hate them, there is no avoiding spoilers in this age of social media

Like much of the rest of the world, I was hooked by the TV series, Game of Thrones, from the word go. I swallowed the entire first season in one greedy gulp, rushing back home every evening to get my fill of Ned Stark, Daenerys Targaryen, Khal Drogo and the evil Lannister twins, Cersei and Ser Jaime. The wait for the second season seemed interminable and once that was done the only thing that kept me going was the thought of season three and so on...

Only now that I have started on the original books written by George RR Martin, I am beginning to wish that I hadn't seen the TV series at all. The books are a cracking read (I have finished the first in the series and am nearly through the second) but only half as much fun as they might have been now that I already know what is coming next.

It's a bit like that old chestnut. What came first: the chicken or the egg? Only in this case, the question is which one should you dip into first: the book or the TV series based on it? And there really is no good answer. Because no matter which route you choose into the story, there will be spoilers galore.

And like the President of United States – and I am guessing, most of the free world – there is nothing I hate more. (Barack Obama famously tweeted on the day that season two of House Of Cards was released on Netflix, “'No spoilers please" to his many million followers.) So, whenever a brand new show is released, I force myself to stay off social media, avert my eyes from TV reviews and magazine articles, so that some spoilsport can't spoil my fun by giving the plot away.

But no matter how vigilant I am, there is always that one annoying idiot who reveals the big surprise and ruins it all. I remember being incandescent with rage when a friend casually let drop that Brody was hanged at the end of Homeland while I was still on the first episode. (And I don't think I have been forgiven by another friend to whom I thoughtlessly revealed that Matthew Crawley dies in the Christmas special of Downton Abbey. In my defence, I thought she had seen the episode when she said she was done with the second season.)

Even as I write this, I am trying my damnedest to stay away from every article, tweet, review, or even passing mention of Breaking Bad because I haven't seen the final season and I really do want to be surprised by what everyone assures me is a super-twisty end. (So, all of you who've already seen the damn thing, do shut up until I catch up.)

But to come back to the chicken-and-egg conundrum, what should you do? Read the book and then watch the TV series? Or vice versa?

Well, speaking for myself, I would much rather begin with the book. Every time a see a new remake of Pride and Prejudice or Emma, I am ever so grateful that I read Jane Austen's original before I came to the TV version. So it is with the Inspector Lynley mysteries on TV; the Elizabeth George books are so much more nuanced than the spin-off television series. And then, there are the endless Poirot and Miss Marple remakes, which lose none of their suspense and wonder even if you have the read the original book a hundred times over.

Sometimes of course, it is the TV series that sparks off interest in the books. I read Darkly Dreaming Dexter only after watching the series. But this was so much darker than the television version (for instance, Dexter kills off Lieutenant LaGuerta in the first book itself, whereas she survives much later in the TV series) that reading it was an entirely different experience.

Actually, come to think of it, I would never have picked up a George RR Martin book if it hadn’t been for a TV series called Game of Thrones. And the loss would have been entirely mine.