SOURCE: Watman, Max. “Guileless Games.” New Criterion 20, no. 9 (May 2002): 66-71.

In the following review, Watman contends that the overall quality of Spies is compromised by its contrived, ineffective narrative devices.

If there is anything the reading public knows, it is that underneath the calm gentility of suburban life boils a hellish soup of misdeeds and perversions. The rolling hills of Winesburg, Ohio and its cast of fresh-faced ne'er-do-wells are always within view. Michael Frayn, in Spies, has turned this tradition a bit on its head, for in this book, the transgressions are mostly imagined by a young boy named Stephen.¹ That is, until the truth is revealed, and we see the real and grown-up banalities of adultery, ill-chosen love, and cowardice.

The book is set amidst the blackout curtains of World-War-II England. Stephen has a friend named Keith, who is a class above him, goes to a better...