It really is a bitchin' little novel.One of the shock effects of reading The Spy when it was published must have been the near-nihilism of its message. It is unremittingly dark...
The second remarkable aspect of The Spy is the skill with which it is constructed and written...
Also, for a relatively short novel a tremendous amount is included. The ellipsis between chapter two and three is a model of how a simple change of point of view can eliminate pages and pages of laborious exposition.
On a line-by-line level, furthermore, the prose is limpidly succinct and evocative. For example:"A girl performed a striptease, a young drab girl with a dark bruise on her thigh. She had that pitiful spindly nakedness which is embarrassing because it is not erotic; because it is artless and undesiring."Or:"The airport reminded Leamas of the war . . . Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates amongst people who have been up since dawn – of superiority almost, derived from the common experience of having seen the night disappear and the morning come."
Wikipedia sez it's in Time's Top 100 Novels of All Time and that Publishers Weekly named it the "best spy novel of all-time". So you don't have to believe just me...
