Does anybody really understand spy novels? I mean really understand, as opposed to being intimidated into admiration by incomprehensible plots and sub zero characters? Has anybody ever sat down with a pencil and worked out whether all the dead ends and half hinted horrors actually make sense? This one - which, it's only fair to point out, won last year's Guardian fiction prize - takes the biscuit. It has all the opacity of le Carre at his most enigmatic, but without le Carre's humour and humanity. Worse, it revolves around a love affair which is even more baffling than the plot, the narrator being in thrall throughout to an extremely unappetising career spy named Polina. It's postmodern and clever and it sends everything up including itself; but sometimes, as here, all that just isn't enough.
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