This literary thriller opens with a thorough description of the “long room”, the place of Stephen’s employment, because Stephen’s job is his life. He works for the English government listening to the recorded lives of others: those targeted as Communists and other political threats. The job is not as glamorous or as personally transforming as he’d hoped; he remains single and lonely.

Since Stephen has little social life, or more correctly, devalues the potential relationships that surround him, he grows fond and focused upon those lives he eavesdrops. Like Walter Mitty, he imagines friendship but, beyond even Mitty’s imaginations, Stephen believes he knows them better than they know themselves.

Stephen grows obsessed with the wife of a target. Because he cannot see her, he creates a vision of her in his mind, a sort of espionage Pygmalion story. What he cannot hear, the details of her thoughts, physical attributes and affectations, he fills in for himself. His fictionalizing of his target’s life goes too far, however, and winds up in his reports.
His ruminations about this woman are, at first, poetic and chivalrous. His escalation to stalking danced the edge of creepy yet he maintained a desperate humanity. He’s a likable character who makes decisions that keep the reader wondering: what is he capable of doing and how far will he take his obsession?

Overall, this story takes the reader on a journey more interesting than Camus’ “The Stranger” and keeps you wondering until the very end.