The Spy Game

Georgina Harding

The fog from which their mother never returns is as much a character as the protagonists. Her children remain smothered by a ‘fog’ of questions about her death, and doubts about whether their mother was hiding something or whether it is just their own childish imaginings, until the book ends in Berlin in brilliant sunshine with some questions answered.

It is a beautifully written book and recreates a bygone era when fathers said little, boys were sent to boarding schools and children were expected to amuse themselves. Anna’s brother, Peter, becomes obsessed with the unveiling of sleeper spies and espionage. Desperate to cling to the belief that his mother has not died in a car crash, he constructs a world in which his mother was a spy and is still alive, merely called back to base by her handlers. Tiny details of the little they know of their German mother’s background, and how she met their military father in Berlin after the war, add to their beliefs and their bond.