Spies: With IGCSE and A Level study guide (Faber Educational Editions) - Softcover

Frayn, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571335799 ISBN 13: 9780571335794

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2017

Synopsis

Designed to meet the requirements for students at IGCSE and A level, this accessible educational edition offers the complete text of Spies with a comprehensive study guide. Highlights of Andrew Bruff's guide include:

- detailed analyses of character, setting and theme;
- close examination of the novel's plot, structure and narrative techniques;
- key quotations and activities both for the student working alone and in the classroom.

In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bomb site. But the two boys start to suspect all is not as it seems when one day Keith announces a disconcerting discovery: the Germans have infiltrated his own family. And when the secret underground world they have dreamed up emerges from the shadows they find themselves engulfed in mysteries far deeper and more painful than they had bargained for.

About this title

Review:

In Michael Frayn's novel Spies an old man returns to the scene of his seemingly ordinary suburban childhood. Stephen Wheatley is unsure of what he is seeking but, as he walks once-familiar streets he hasn't seen in 50 years, he unfolds a story of childish games colliding cruelly with adult realities. It is wartime and Stephen's friend Keith makes the momentous announcement that his mother is a German spy. The two boys begin to spy on the supposed spy, following her on her trips to the shops and to the post, and reading her diary. Keith's mother does have secrets to conceal but they are not the ones the boys suspect. Frayn skilfully manipulates his plot so that the reader's growing awareness of the truth remains just a few steps beyond Stephen's dawning realisation that he is trespassing on painful and dangerous territory. The only false notes occur in the final chapter when the central revelation (already cleverly signposted) is too swiftly followed by further disclosures about Stephen and his family that seem somehow unnecessary and make the denouement less satisfyingly conclusive. This is a much sparer and less expansive book than Headlong, Frayn's Booker Prize-shortlisted 1999 novel, more understated in its wit, but it is, in many ways, more compelling.--Nick Rennison

Review:

A beautifully accomplished, richly nostalgic novel about supposed second-world-war espionage seen through the eyes of a young boy., Sunday Times

Deeply satisfying ... Frayn has written nothing better., Independent

A novel with a vivid sympathy for how lonely, scared and helpless being a child often feels, and how easily and eagerly we forget it ... A pleasure to read., Guardian

This brilliant and serious novel is Frayn on absolutely top - if unashamedly smart - form., Daily Telegraph

Bernard Shaw couldn't do it, Henry James couldn't do it, but the ingenious English author Michael Frayn does do it: write novels and plays with equal success ... Frayn's novel excels. -- John Updike, New Yorker

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0571335799
• ISBN 13: 9780571335794
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336