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Mr. Jones
Award-winning author Margaret Sweatman has proven herself a virtuoso writer of historical fiction. Yet nothing she has written can prepare you for "Mr. Jones."
Emmett jones is adrift. Having firebombed civilians as a pilot during World War II, Emmett searches for something to cling to when life loses focus. Post-war, he becomes compulsively drawn to John Norfield, a former POW who has found his focus in communism.
Set in a time of rampant paranoia, "Mr. Jones" peels back the veneer of Canadian politics to reveal a nation willing to sacrifice its own. It is a fearful time, a time of "peace" at the onset of the nuclear age.
Emmett's existence comes under scrutiny. His relationship with Norfield makes him a target of security forces. His marriage, his job, even his child are the target of investigation. And as the nuclear arms race heats up, Mr. Jones sets himself on a path that will risk the lives of everyone he holds dear.
Evoking the classic works of le Carre and Greene, Sweatman's novel is a shattering exploration of a past where world governments threaten annihilation while training housewives in the proper techniques for sweeping up radioactive dust.
Emmett jones is adrift. Having firebombed civilians as a pilot during World War II, Emmett searches for something to cling to when life loses focus. Post-war, he becomes compulsively drawn to John Norfield, a former POW who has found his focus in communism.
Set in a time of rampant paranoia, "Mr. Jones" peels back the veneer of Canadian politics to reveal a nation willing to sacrifice its own. It is a fearful time, a time of "peace" at the onset of the nuclear age.
Emmett's existence comes under scrutiny. His relationship with Norfield makes him a target of security forces. His marriage, his job, even his child are the target of investigation. And as the nuclear arms race heats up, Mr. Jones sets himself on a path that will risk the lives of everyone he holds dear.
Evoking the classic works of le Carre and Greene, Sweatman's novel is a shattering exploration of a past where world governments threaten annihilation while training housewives in the proper techniques for sweeping up radioactive dust.
484 pages, Hardcover
First published September 16, 2014
2 people are currently reading
145 people want to read
About the author
Margaret Sweatman
9 books15 followersMargaret Sweatman is a novelist, playwright, and lyricist. She teaches literature and creative writing and performs with the Broken Songs Band. Her three previous novels garnered Sweatman the McNally Robinson Prize for the Manitoba Book of the Year, the John Hirsch Award for the most promising Manitoba writer, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Award. She has also won a Genie for the song "When Wintertime" which she co-wrote with her husband Glenn Buhr for the film, Seven Times Lucky. She was born in Winnipeg where now makes her home.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 25, 2014
So on Thursday night, I was at the Canadian Children’s Book Centre Awards, sitting up the in the balcony (because the seats on the main floor had been filled while we were still out in the lobby getting that one last glass of wine), and the program was great—wonderful books celebrated, Shelagh Rogers was the host—but there I was reading a novel. Which is a shameful confession, as usual, my complete and utter failure to be in the moment, but what you have to understand about the moment was that I was on the final 100 pages of Margaret Sweatman’s Mr. Jones. A spy novel, no less, intrigue upon intrigue—and upon even more intrigue by that final stretch. How was I supposed to be doing anything else? And something more to understand: this isn’t a small book. A 500 page thick hardback, and I brought it in my purse. Which tells you everything, really. Mr. Jones is an electric, compelling, scintillating read.
endpapersOk, it’s 500 pages, but these are small pages—perhaps a bit too small? 500 narrowish pages are tough to get a grip on, so I dropped the book a few times. It was hard to hold open with my feet. (Does this count as legitimate criticism?) Apart from these niggling details, the book is of stunning design, so gorgeous. Check out the end papers. The prose just as appealing from an aesthetic point of view, all comma splices and curious sentences. The effect of the book as a whole slightly dizzying, as perspective moves 360 degrees, from character to character, but only in pieces. We never see it all at once until it all comes together at the end. Hence the last 100 pages, and my furtive reading in the auditorium balcony in the dark.
It’s a period piece, the spy novel ala Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana. Emmett Jones is Canadian, a World War Two Bomber Commander disillusioned by his wartime deeds and adrift in post-war Toronto. Attending university, he finds himself attracted to John Norfield, a charismatic figure with Communist sympathies, in which Emmett too becomes embroiled, partly out of a need to belong to something, and because of how he is drawn to Norfield (and Norfield’s sometime girlfriend, Toronto deb Suzanne).
We first meet Jones in 1953, a civil servant in External Affairs, post-Gouzenko and the Cold War (and McCarthy) heating up, and he’s under investigation with the RCMP for possible Communist connections. Emmett is now married to Suzanne, with a young daughter, and Norfield is a distant figure in their past—or so the Jones’ pretend as they attempt an idyllic 1950s life. But there are complications. Jones had fathered a son in Japan, where he was stationed in the late 1940s, and his own background (born and raised to Canadians in Japan) makes him a mysterious figure in the Civil Service, particularly as troubles in Vietnam are beginning and all things Oriental are viewed with suspicion (Asia seemingly a monolith vulnerable to to a Communist sweep). Suzanne too has trouble fitting into a cookie-cutter life, her subversive photography revealing her interests in a way that won’t necessarily be helpful for her husband’s career.
And there are other matters we see, as Sweatman moves us back and forth in time, through the 1940s and 1950s, when politics were complicated and nothing was ever quite as it seemed. There is no whole truth, we begin to understand, but only parts of a truth, and they come together to form a puzzle whose final pieces are harrowing and powerful. A Cold War spy novel with a Canadian bent—and a beautiful one to boot. A rare bird after all, Mr. Jones is, just like Jones himself is, perplexing, enigmatic, mysterious, and so intriguingly aloof.
endpapersOk, it’s 500 pages, but these are small pages—perhaps a bit too small? 500 narrowish pages are tough to get a grip on, so I dropped the book a few times. It was hard to hold open with my feet. (Does this count as legitimate criticism?) Apart from these niggling details, the book is of stunning design, so gorgeous. Check out the end papers. The prose just as appealing from an aesthetic point of view, all comma splices and curious sentences. The effect of the book as a whole slightly dizzying, as perspective moves 360 degrees, from character to character, but only in pieces. We never see it all at once until it all comes together at the end. Hence the last 100 pages, and my furtive reading in the auditorium balcony in the dark.
It’s a period piece, the spy novel ala Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana. Emmett Jones is Canadian, a World War Two Bomber Commander disillusioned by his wartime deeds and adrift in post-war Toronto. Attending university, he finds himself attracted to John Norfield, a charismatic figure with Communist sympathies, in which Emmett too becomes embroiled, partly out of a need to belong to something, and because of how he is drawn to Norfield (and Norfield’s sometime girlfriend, Toronto deb Suzanne).
We first meet Jones in 1953, a civil servant in External Affairs, post-Gouzenko and the Cold War (and McCarthy) heating up, and he’s under investigation with the RCMP for possible Communist connections. Emmett is now married to Suzanne, with a young daughter, and Norfield is a distant figure in their past—or so the Jones’ pretend as they attempt an idyllic 1950s life. But there are complications. Jones had fathered a son in Japan, where he was stationed in the late 1940s, and his own background (born and raised to Canadians in Japan) makes him a mysterious figure in the Civil Service, particularly as troubles in Vietnam are beginning and all things Oriental are viewed with suspicion (Asia seemingly a monolith vulnerable to to a Communist sweep). Suzanne too has trouble fitting into a cookie-cutter life, her subversive photography revealing her interests in a way that won’t necessarily be helpful for her husband’s career.
And there are other matters we see, as Sweatman moves us back and forth in time, through the 1940s and 1950s, when politics were complicated and nothing was ever quite as it seemed. There is no whole truth, we begin to understand, but only parts of a truth, and they come together to form a puzzle whose final pieces are harrowing and powerful. A Cold War spy novel with a Canadian bent—and a beautiful one to boot. A rare bird after all, Mr. Jones is, just like Jones himself is, perplexing, enigmatic, mysterious, and so intriguingly aloof.
March 1, 2015
I was intrigued right from page 1. A Canadian perspective of a highly charged political period - about an individual's search to belong and the brutal reality of idealism.
January 5, 2017
I received this book as a Goodreads first reads giveaway.
Mr. Jones is a Canadian citizen who happens upon the concept of Communism and people believing in it at a young age. This then continues to haunt him throughout his life, family, and work in a multitude of ways.
Despite this is not a book I would have picked off a shelf to read, it was very well written and captivating to the point that I wouldn't realize I had actually gone through so many pages in such little time! I think Lisa Moore captured the essense of this book in her review when she says that in this book "is communism as it unfolds in Canada during the 50s and 60s, the reprercussions of the Cold War [and] espionage [...]. Margaret Sweatman write all the dangerous fires - bravery, betrayal, loyalty, and love."
A must read for any avid reader of history, of Canadian politics, or of complicated family stories with realistic decisions we make in life (though we may not always agree with them). I greatly enjoyed this read, and finished it very quickly!
Mr. Jones is a Canadian citizen who happens upon the concept of Communism and people believing in it at a young age. This then continues to haunt him throughout his life, family, and work in a multitude of ways.
Despite this is not a book I would have picked off a shelf to read, it was very well written and captivating to the point that I wouldn't realize I had actually gone through so many pages in such little time! I think Lisa Moore captured the essense of this book in her review when she says that in this book "is communism as it unfolds in Canada during the 50s and 60s, the reprercussions of the Cold War [and] espionage [...]. Margaret Sweatman write all the dangerous fires - bravery, betrayal, loyalty, and love."
A must read for any avid reader of history, of Canadian politics, or of complicated family stories with realistic decisions we make in life (though we may not always agree with them). I greatly enjoyed this read, and finished it very quickly!
March 1, 2015
Mr. Jonesby Margaret Sweatman is Canada's answer to the work of authors such as John Le Carre. I have never read a more pitch-perfect example of an espionage novel. Based upon the unhappy career of the Canadian diplomat Herbert Norman with a dash of "Madame Butterfly" thrown in, the work is engulfed in deception. The characters reactions are both entirely human and very detailed. The author is more concerned with them than with a story of high adventure, and the threats that move the novel forward are much more complex than the fear of violence. Sweatman captures perfectly the cloud of duplicity and the fear of a nuclear holocaust that hung over all of our lives from the end of World War II to the early sixties. This novel should be on the must read list of anyone interested in espionage literature.
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February 20, 2015Following Amazon's purchase of GoodReads, I no longer post my reviews here.
If you would like to read my thoughts on this book, you can view them in the following places:
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If you read/liked/clicked through to see this review here on GR, many thanks.
If you would like to read my thoughts on this book, you can view them in the following places:
BuriedInPrint
LeafMarks
BookLikes
LibraryThing
Posting these links does not constitute permission to duplicate these thoughts anywhere, including corporate-owned sites.
If you read/liked/clicked through to see this review here on GR, many thanks.
September 27, 2014
Margaret Sweatman is a great writer. Within the first few pages of reading Mr. Jones I knew I was reading the work of a Master. The complexity of both the characters and the story deliver a double-punch to the thinking reader. Every page is written like gold, a gift that makes Mr. Jones a page-turner whose characters will stay with you long after your turn the last page.
August 29, 2016
Despite When Alice lay Down With Peter being one of my favourite novels in the world, I just couldn't get into this one. I'm not sure if it was simply that it's not my kind of novel (eastern Canada, male protagonist, espionage/government), or what, but it was really disappointing.
January 21, 2015
I just couldn't get into it so gave up reading at Chapter 8.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews