I am reading my first ever spy novel, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John Le Carré, in an attempt to make my reading fodder a little more masculine after a run of great novels by female authors.
I’m enjoying it so far and making an effort to concentrate hard on names and details. I like hearing all of the espionage methods and conventions.
Today, I just wanted to share this line which carries an echo beyond its context on the page. I could be wrong but I sense the authorial intention behind it; it’s one of those sentences that deftly crystalises the “something bigger” that the novel itself is trying to say:
“At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back?
Reckoning points– painful, useful, revealing, launching, lethal and perhaps (dare I say it?), really quite masculine. I love the fact that a man wrote that sentence. It sounds as if he is speaking from experience.
“every man chooses”. I want a screen-print poster of that. Or at least a mug.
Hannah Stoney is a British artist and writer.