A Shadow Intelligence
I don't know where to begin with this. I feel like I have less of a through line of analysis and more an assemblage of unordered reactions and observations. And so rather than try desperately and clumsily to weave them into something resembling a natural narrative progression, I will dump them in as an unordered list.
Before I do so, I'll say that I recommend this book. If le Carré is the master of spy fiction, the exemplar to which all other writers must be compared, Oliver Harris gets very close.
One. This is a dense book. You are expected to have a strong enough working memory to keep track of many fractal sects, sects within sects, proper nouns, and locations. Splitting through reviews on Goodreads to calibrate my own thoughts, I was amused to find this levied as a critique of the book — whereas I found it an enforcement of its realism. This is a book that is interested in modernity being defined by, amongst other things, every node being connected to every other node in existence. No one and nothing sits in isolation. They have pre-existing relationships. They have networks. They have problems.
Very few characters or manufactured organizations feel totally wooden, even though many of them are strictly one-dimensional. This is a problem with most books in the espionage genre; Harris has a flair for little flourishes and observations that define and reify characters who would otherwise seem completely flat.
Two. One of the things I liked least about Red Sparrow was its attempt at a sort of metafictional swerve in the form of injecting recipe cards at the end of each chapter, as if signaling to readers that this was all a bit of a silly and consumptive exercise. Without attempting to draw too much into the realm of autofiction (see my writing on The Killer a couple days ago), there are hints of this in this book too. The protagonist studied literature and languages at Cambridge and spends a lot of time sidebarring about writers and art — poetry in specific. You get the impression that our protagonist is, in some ways, reluctantly drawn into a career less tweed than he had hoped. Which of course is true of the author, who himself is a professor.
But I find myself less bothered by this than in worse books, because the writing is actually good. Le Carré and Graham Greene both have their own distinctive and largely stoic writing styles meant to reflect the hard lines of the world they wish to depict. Here, the discursive and inquisitive nature of Harris's writing works in the opposite direction: conveying that the world is both more opaque and more translucent than ever before. The surfeit of information can be devoured or ignored, at your own peril.
He struggles in making the transition from investigation to action, and that's excusable because the vast majority of this book is quiet. Protagonist quietly exploring, quietly discussing, quietly reflecting.
Three. Do you care about a book being plausible? Again, I have le Carré as an unfair but useful example. Le Carré's characters are callow and fallible. His plots are petty and pedestrian, even if the stakes are dramatic. The realism of his work draws much virtue from your ability to see the faces and motivations of the men — there are always men — embroiled in them.
Harris's characters are either gods or corpses, protagonists included. With a couple important exceptions, our point-of-view protagonist is essentially a flawless super spy with no situation he can't immediately escape. He is knowledgeable in every terrain, field, skill, and language. This makes for pleasant monologuing, but takes you out of the book when you really step away from it and try to examine it holistically.
The same can be said of the plot, the brunt of which is essentially delivered via exposition in the final chapters of the book — though not in as clumsy or ineffective a way as that description suggests. The feeling of this book is that you and your protagonist are on a rollercoaster ride, or perhaps within a video game, where everything is assembled just so. And nothing moves while out of view. It's disorienting and a little unsuccessful, I think.
Your enjoyment of the book, I think, largely depends on your willingness to accept and appreciate the tiny vignettes and bon mots along the way in lieu of a cohesive plot that delivers on what is promised.
Here is roughly the plot of the book — not as told through its pages, but as revealed by the end. A group of very powerful and very wealthy Westerners who are partially but not totally affiliated with MI6 hatch a plan to PSYOP China and Russia into attacking each other over Kazakhstan by manufacturing a completely fake and vast oil field within Kazakhstan, then drawing the two countries' attention to it by first pretending to have the largest British oil firm be interested and then by luring our protagonist onto the scene.
They also have the ability to make and manufacture completely artificial and convincing videos and photos of arbitrary individuals. The protagonist then proceeds to go to Kazakhstan and basically follow this shadowy cabal's instructions to the letter for the first 90% of the book, and then saves the day by allying himself with the KGB and solving things just at the last moment — though along the way, the president of Kazakhstan is murdered in Karabakh.
The things that are quietly and confidentially disclosed to us throughout the book have, to borrow anime's terminology, too high of a power level, and feel somehow dissonant with the writing and quietude of the text itself.
If this sounds like I'm critiquing or complaining — I really did enjoy myself while listening. I thought this was one of the few espionage books that felt both modern, realistic, and well-written. And yet, despite those three things, I have a litany of complaints.
I have dispensed with my complaints. Let me return where I began. This is the first in a trilogy of books, and the strongest and simplest review I can give is that after a palate cleanser or two, I plan on reading the next one.