The Russia House

I wonder what it was like to read The Russia House as the Soviet Union was collapsing.  Back then, I was mostly reading what my parents called "books without words" (chemistry and chemical engineering textbooks), and lighter weight mysteries to take my mind off polymerization and kinetics. 30 years later, we know how things turned out, and once again Russia is an enemy, albeit not officially declared.

That time lapse colors my view of The Russia House.  I know how pointless Barley Blair's missions, but perhaps that's the entire point.  Blair is the head of a small, family-owned publishing house, one that specializes in safe, unchallenging genre fiction. On a prior trip to the Moscow Book Fair, he spent a long, vodka-soaked afternoon with a few writers and a physicist.  Several years later, that physicist gives his former lover three notebooks he wants published in the west, and she gives them to Blair's representative at the latest book fair.  It seems simple, but of course it's not.  Blair is only tangentially involved in his company's business at this point, more interested in leading a slightly dissipated life in Spain, and no one knows whether the notebooks are legitimate.  MI6 takes a chance on Blair and the notebooks and sends him to Moscow where he falls in love with his contact.  As is the case with many of LeCarre's books, the complex plot ultimately leads to a disquieting futility, but his use of language is superb.