Spies and Cats

Sentinel

Matthew Dunn (William Morrow, $25.99)

There is something appealing about a spy thriller written by a former spy. After all, it is his experience in the 500 shades of grey universe of espionage that so well informs the plots and characters of John Le Carré. That, of course, and his huge talent as a writer.

Dunn, the book’s jacket copy asserts, is a former MI6 operative. It shows. The knowledge of the “everyday” practice of spycraft all but oozes out of the binding, especially in one long chapter where a target is being trailed through Moscow.

That said, in this chapter and elsewhere in the novel, there are a few notable factual slips regarding Moscow geography and transport. Hopefully these were corrected in the final version, as this review is based on an uncorrected proof.

But that sort of pedantic aside is immaterial to the flow and structure of this fast-paced and satisfying novel. Sentinel does not slow down much for Le Carréan ruminations on right or wrong, though certainly the main character is rather conflicted. And the backdrop to the plot, that U.S.-Russian relations have spiraled out of control, seems slightly more believable than it might otherwise be, given recent events.

The Way of Muri

Ilya Boyashov (Hesperus, $15.95)

Boyashov received the National Bestseller prize for this, his debut novel about an itinerant cat, wonderfully translated by the award winning translator Amanda Love Darragh. Of course, to say this is a “novel about an itinerant cat” is like saying Anna Karenina is a novel about a woman.

In fact, this is a novel with several layers and a rich multitude of interesting characters. On its most evident level, this is a picaresque novel, where we follow the fate of the Bosnian cat Muri, bombed out of his home in 1992, as he spends the next four years intently working his way north through Europe, seeking to find his human family, to reclaim his blanket and his daily saucer of milk.

There is a wealth of humor, satire and allegory in the people and places that Muri passes through (Muri himself is a perfectly drawn character of the human-exploiting cat). We soon find that everyone, everywhere is on a journey – some through geography, some through space, some very close to home.

Muri is a traveler with a specific goal. But other travelers introduced in the novel are merely wanderers, and Boyashov repeatedly cuts to a faux academic and philosophical dispute that stretches across countries and times, about whether travel must have a goal, or whether by having a goal it loses its sense of discovery and value.

A delightful discovery, The Way of Muri entertains while reminding the reader that the only life worth living is one that embraces the journey, no matter whether is has a goal or not, no matter if the journey is measured in miles or ideas, time or space.

OF NOTE:

Nina Bogdan, whose story “The Long Retreat” appeared in our Mar/Apr 2012 issue, has just had her book, The Desolation of Exile: A Russian Family’s Odyssey, published on Amazon’s Kindle : amazon.com/dp/B009D4BFPS