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The Long Room
Set in London in the early eighties, award-winning novelist Francesca Kay's third novel tells the story of a spy who falls for the wrong woman.
What happens to a man who has his ear pressed to the lives of others but not much life of his own? When Stephen Donaldson joins the Institute, he anticipates excitement, romance and new status. Instead he gets the tape-recorded conversations of ancient communists and ineffectual revolutionaries, until the day he is assigned a new case: the ultra-secret PHOENIX. Is PHOENIX really working for a foreign power? Stephen hardly cares; it is the voice of the target's wife that mesmerizes him.
This is December 1981. Bombs are exploding, a cold war is being waged, another war is just over the horizon and the nation is transfixed by weekly installments of Brideshead Revisited. Dangerously in love, and lonely, Stephen sets himself up for a vertiginous fall that will forever change his life.
As beautiful as it is intense, The Long Room is the dazzling new novel from an award-winning writer. With her mastery of the perfect detail, Francesca Kay explores a mind under pressure and the compelling power of imagination.
What happens to a man who has his ear pressed to the lives of others but not much life of his own? When Stephen Donaldson joins the Institute, he anticipates excitement, romance and new status. Instead he gets the tape-recorded conversations of ancient communists and ineffectual revolutionaries, until the day he is assigned a new case: the ultra-secret PHOENIX. Is PHOENIX really working for a foreign power? Stephen hardly cares; it is the voice of the target's wife that mesmerizes him.
This is December 1981. Bombs are exploding, a cold war is being waged, another war is just over the horizon and the nation is transfixed by weekly installments of Brideshead Revisited. Dangerously in love, and lonely, Stephen sets himself up for a vertiginous fall that will forever change his life.
As beautiful as it is intense, The Long Room is the dazzling new novel from an award-winning writer. With her mastery of the perfect detail, Francesca Kay explores a mind under pressure and the compelling power of imagination.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published January 7, 2016
About the author
Francesca Kay
9 books36 followersFrancesca Kay’s first novel, An Equal Stillness, won the Orange Award for New Writers in 2009. She lives in Oxford with her family.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
December 14, 2015
Stephen lives a lonely and isolated life. Each day is very much like the last; work, eat, sleep; and yet, despite his insular little world, inside his head is full of excitement and adventure, and dreams.
Stephen works for the Institute, sitting in the Long Room with his colleagues, each day is taken up with the conversations of other people. With his headphones clamped firmly to his head, Stephen does not have to take part in the ordinary office banter, or mindless chit-chat, instead he immerses himself in the lives of the people that he listens to. The listeners at the Institute spend their working hours eavesdropping on people of interest; old men who were once active and well-known for their communist dealings. Stephen is expected to trawl through the daily recordings of these telephone conversations and take note of anything that may be suspicious. This is not an exciting job, and Stephen's imagination is the one thing that keeps him from going mad.
When Stephen is assigned a new, top-secret case; listening in on a man only known as PHOENIX, he feels honoured and a little excited, and when he hears the voice of the target's wife Helen, he falls in love. Madly and desperately in love. Stephen's vivid imaginings create a whole personality for Helen, and Stephen is convinced that she is unhappy and mistreated.
Spurred on by his love and concern for Helen, Stephen begins to take risks that he would never have contemplated before he heard her voice. Stephen has always, in the past, towed the line. His colleagues think of him as a quiet, uninteresting man who has little to say to them, but his desperate need to do something for Helen makes him push his own boundaries, until he is very close to the edge.
Understated, gentle and so beautifully constructed; The Long Room is such an incredible read. Slow moving and finely woven, it explores the depths of the imagination and the impact that a voice can have on a life.
Francesca Kay has created a whole world within The Long Room, there's a feeling of the 1950s to this room full of silent listeners, in the days before the world wide web and mobile technology. The darkness of the shuttered room and the secrecy of the work that they do seeps into the story and transports the reader right into the heart of the Institute.
Stephen is a complex character, and the added back story, told from the point of view of his aging mother adds a layer to his character and enables the reader to empathise with him and appreciate why he sometimes acts as he does. His vulnerability and incredible naivety is astonishing, yet believable and the inevitable conclusion is heart-breaking.
Francesca Kay's writing is distinctive and forceful. Her sense of place is impeccable and her characters are carefully created. The Long Room is elegant, sensitive and intelligent. I enjoyed it so very much.
My thanks to Sophie and Hannah at Faber & Faber who sent my copy for review.
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Stephen works for the Institute, sitting in the Long Room with his colleagues, each day is taken up with the conversations of other people. With his headphones clamped firmly to his head, Stephen does not have to take part in the ordinary office banter, or mindless chit-chat, instead he immerses himself in the lives of the people that he listens to. The listeners at the Institute spend their working hours eavesdropping on people of interest; old men who were once active and well-known for their communist dealings. Stephen is expected to trawl through the daily recordings of these telephone conversations and take note of anything that may be suspicious. This is not an exciting job, and Stephen's imagination is the one thing that keeps him from going mad.
When Stephen is assigned a new, top-secret case; listening in on a man only known as PHOENIX, he feels honoured and a little excited, and when he hears the voice of the target's wife Helen, he falls in love. Madly and desperately in love. Stephen's vivid imaginings create a whole personality for Helen, and Stephen is convinced that she is unhappy and mistreated.
Spurred on by his love and concern for Helen, Stephen begins to take risks that he would never have contemplated before he heard her voice. Stephen has always, in the past, towed the line. His colleagues think of him as a quiet, uninteresting man who has little to say to them, but his desperate need to do something for Helen makes him push his own boundaries, until he is very close to the edge.
Understated, gentle and so beautifully constructed; The Long Room is such an incredible read. Slow moving and finely woven, it explores the depths of the imagination and the impact that a voice can have on a life.
Francesca Kay has created a whole world within The Long Room, there's a feeling of the 1950s to this room full of silent listeners, in the days before the world wide web and mobile technology. The darkness of the shuttered room and the secrecy of the work that they do seeps into the story and transports the reader right into the heart of the Institute.
Stephen is a complex character, and the added back story, told from the point of view of his aging mother adds a layer to his character and enables the reader to empathise with him and appreciate why he sometimes acts as he does. His vulnerability and incredible naivety is astonishing, yet believable and the inevitable conclusion is heart-breaking.
Francesca Kay's writing is distinctive and forceful. Her sense of place is impeccable and her characters are carefully created. The Long Room is elegant, sensitive and intelligent. I enjoyed it so very much.
My thanks to Sophie and Hannah at Faber & Faber who sent my copy for review.
http://randomthingsthroughmyletterbox...
May 5, 2016
It is not the intrigue of spying but the intimacy of it that Francesa Kay explores in her hauntingly beautiful novel The Long Room.
Stephen Donaldson is a listener for the British government in 1981, which is to say that he spends the majority of his waking hours listening to the private lives of the defence ministry's targets. Via tapes from the bugged houses of these targets, Stephen forms powerful but one-sided relationships with people who will never know he exists. He hears the tense silence between a man and wife eating dinner together, he hears their drunken arguments, he hears them making love. It makes sense that Stephen, whose own life is desolately empty of intimacy, would fall in love with a woman he feels he knows better than her own husband, but who doesn't know him at all.
Despite its aching beauty and introspection, the Long Room doesn't quite live up to the spy novel's promise. Francesca Kay's sense of place and character are flawless and transporting, but the exquisite prose doesn't quite make up for the insubstantiality of the plot, which leaves a reader at loose ends. Even when compared to the more cerebral examples of the spy genre, the storyline doesn't take advantage of its situational set-ups; the twists come at the very tail end, are not quite believable, and aren't inter-connected. Of Stephen, I expected development toward an extreme. He was poised for it: his loneliness, intelligence, and passion made his psyche fertile ground for either ruin or healing. I expected either great or terrible things of Stephen, and in the end, he gave me neither.
Stephen Donaldson is a listener for the British government in 1981, which is to say that he spends the majority of his waking hours listening to the private lives of the defence ministry's targets. Via tapes from the bugged houses of these targets, Stephen forms powerful but one-sided relationships with people who will never know he exists. He hears the tense silence between a man and wife eating dinner together, he hears their drunken arguments, he hears them making love. It makes sense that Stephen, whose own life is desolately empty of intimacy, would fall in love with a woman he feels he knows better than her own husband, but who doesn't know him at all.
Despite its aching beauty and introspection, the Long Room doesn't quite live up to the spy novel's promise. Francesca Kay's sense of place and character are flawless and transporting, but the exquisite prose doesn't quite make up for the insubstantiality of the plot, which leaves a reader at loose ends. Even when compared to the more cerebral examples of the spy genre, the storyline doesn't take advantage of its situational set-ups; the twists come at the very tail end, are not quite believable, and aren't inter-connected. Of Stephen, I expected development toward an extreme. He was poised for it: his loneliness, intelligence, and passion made his psyche fertile ground for either ruin or healing. I expected either great or terrible things of Stephen, and in the end, he gave me neither.
December 10, 2017
I very much enjoyed the premise of this novel, the set-up (a young man employed in surveillance falling for the wife of one of the subjects who he is monitoring), and the descriptive style was very effective in creating a complex and confusing atmosphere, dark, threatening, drawing in the reader complicit with what was happening - though never quite allowing everything to be understood.
It was this, perhaps, which was one of my two main issues with the novel. Perhaps the fault lies with me not concentrating hard enough, perhaps the author could have been more complete in her explicit and implicit balance, in any case I felt I 'got' most but not all of what was happening. The more problematic aspect for me was that the central character started to behave in an increasingly unrealistic fashion - taking risks, blundering from one poor decision to the next, letting his heart rule his head. It was an impulsiveness and a strangeness which I just couldn't square with my expectations of someone in his position and of his nature as described in the early part of the book.
So certainly an interesting and atmospheric novel, but one which for me failed to deliver on its early promise.
It was this, perhaps, which was one of my two main issues with the novel. Perhaps the fault lies with me not concentrating hard enough, perhaps the author could have been more complete in her explicit and implicit balance, in any case I felt I 'got' most but not all of what was happening. The more problematic aspect for me was that the central character started to behave in an increasingly unrealistic fashion - taking risks, blundering from one poor decision to the next, letting his heart rule his head. It was an impulsiveness and a strangeness which I just couldn't square with my expectations of someone in his position and of his nature as described in the early part of the book.
So certainly an interesting and atmospheric novel, but one which for me failed to deliver on its early promise.
March 20, 2017
I am so disappointed. I really want to give this well written book a higher score. Unfortunately about two-thirds of the way through the lead character fell out of character. After that, I no longer had sympathy or empathy for him. It was almost as if in plotting the story, the author boxed herself in and had to stretch the character in a non-believable direction. Shame because the writing is beautiful.
March 9, 2017
A well-written, multi-layered story of a 1980's British intelligence officer, who listens to tape-recorded conversations of "ancient Communists and ineffectual revolutionaries." Assigned to a new case, the lonely and isolated Stephen falls in love with the wife of his contemporary target, who is suspected of being an internal leak at the agency. I was drawn to Stephen, his real life and his fantasy life from the very beginning. Despite the measured pace. Kay's characterization and sense of time/place are equally excellent. However, the addition of a "suspicious character" in the last quarter of the book seemed like an "oh, by the way," and Stephen's resultant behavior seemed out-of-character. I had imagined several different endings to The Long Room, none of them especially happy, but I found the one offered not only disappointing, but also difficult to believe.
January 28, 2016
Twenty-eight-year-old Stephen is a listener. He spends his days in the long room at the Institute playing back tape recordings of phone conversations between spies who have been persons of little interest since World War Two. When he joined the Institute, fresh out of Oxford, Stephen imagined his life would be one of espionage and intrigue, and that at the Institute he would finally enter a rarified, secret world that he sought and failed to find at university. But his work at the Institute is dull and monotonous, and he’s twice been passed over for promotion. He lives alone, has few friends and spends each weekend with his ailing mother, Coralie.
Meanwhile, all around Stephen, his fellow Brits are equally disillusioned. It’s 1981, Margaret Thatcher is at her least popular, Brideshead Revisited is screening on television, Christmas is fast approaching and Britain is sick with yearning for a past that never was and a future that will never be.
Stephen’s one case of interest is a potential double agent working within the Institute. But it’s the agent’s wife, Helen, that draws Stephen’s interest. Though he’s never seen her face, he begins to imagine their life together, drawing closer and closer and increasingly blurring fantasy and reality until he can no longer distinguish between them.
Meanwhile, Stephen’s mother shapes her life around the routines and traditions she has observed since Stephen’s boyhood, thinking only and always of her often-absent son, the husband and children she has lost and the family she might have had.
Francesca Kay’s The Long Room (Faber & Faber, Jan. 2016) is an unsettling novel of yearning, desire, disillusionment and obsession.
I’m just going to come right out and say this: I. Loved. This. Book. And I know it’s only January, but I’ve already marked The Long Room as one of my favourite reads of 2016. There’s an unofficial rule in book reviewing that you’re not supposed to liken a book to other books, but whatever. If a Highsmith got busy with Eliot’s The Wasteland, The Long Room would be their love child. And it reminded me of so many other favourite titles, too: Brideshead Revisited, The Secret History, The Great Gatsby, The Strays, The Line of Beauty—stories of characters barred from paradise, yearning to return to a place they have never been.
Kay lingers over mundane and domestic details, steeping her reader in the drudgery of Stephen and Coralie’s lives (her style reminds me so much of Highsmith), and then, quite without warning, ascends to flights of poetic fancy, referencing the poets Steven studied at Oxford—’Baudelaire, Bryon, Dante, Donne, Herrick, Keats, Marvell, Marlowe, Christina Rossetti, Shakespeare and Shelley’ are among those named in Kay’s acknowledgements. These departures come as a welcome reprieve, reminding both Stephen and the reader of his vision of a greater life (a life which he believes his right) that leads him ever closer to his downfall.
Kay narrates in third person, following Stephen and Coralie and occasionally zooming out to give a broader view. However, it is Stephen Kay shadows most closely. Initially, he’s sympathetic: a lost and lonely soul overwhelmed and unprepared for the world’s indifference and his own ordinariness:
"Dust metal breath and roar of an approaching train: too bright, too loud, too fast. The doors slide open. to propel himself inside them, to give himself up to those devouring jaws, requires effort of the will. Within the carriage, when the train plunges back into its tunnel, Stephen’s face reflected in the window looks pale and moon-like, imbecilic. He remains standing and he stares at his reflected self. Mon semblable, mon frère. I never knew death had undone so many."
But as Kay draws the reader closer, she reveals Stephen as a man convinced of his own cleverness and uniqueness—a man entitled to a place among the crème de la crème:
"No one is the sole author of his life. Stephen, looking back, sees his own divided into chapters—before school, junior school, secondary school—in which his younger self was swept along by the tide of other people’s actions. …He remembers how sure he was in the beginning that that … [Oxford] would contain an open door, the door that would magically yield to a secret password and give onto a new and better world. … The seventy-two weeks that are all you get of stone staircases, linenfold panelling, low-lying mist on mown grass, girls in silk and rainbow colours—they don’t give you time to turn yourself from the boy you were into the man you want to be. But they do show you where the doors are and how to forge the keys."
Stephen fixates on Helen as his ‘key’ to this better world. And as his obsession with her grows, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to be privy to his thoughts:
"If he made a move too soon, he would scare her off. He’d rather sever his right hand than cause her to be frightened. When the time comes he will approach her gently, as he would a shy, wild creature—a kitten or a fawn—step by slow and careful step, holding out a coaxing hand until he gains her trust."
Meanwhile, Coralie prepares for Christmas, counting the days until her son returns home. She fusses over the tree and decorations that have remained unchanged since Stephen’s boyhood, frets about where she’ll store the turkey and buys Stephen a jumper like the ones Sebastian wears in Brideshead Revisited. Alone at night she wonders how many more Christmases she has left and if there will come a time when Steven will no longer come and she be left to pass the holiday alone.
In this way, Kay builds slow-burning tension, with the narrative gathering speed as it descends towards inevitable tragedy.
The Long Room won’t be for everyone. It’s sinister and bleak and infused with a damp, seeping melancholy that I could happily wallow in for many more pages, but won’t necessarily appeal to all. Some thriller fans may also find the pace too slow—there are no sudden twists, no unexpected movements, just a steadily mounting sense of unease. But for me, the only criticism was that it was over all too soon. Kay has two other novels: An Equal Stillness (2009) which earned her the Orange Prize for New Writers that same year and The Translation of the Bones (2011)—I’ve added both to my reading list.
Thank you to Faber and Faber for providing a copy of The Long Room in exchange for an honest review.
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Meanwhile, all around Stephen, his fellow Brits are equally disillusioned. It’s 1981, Margaret Thatcher is at her least popular, Brideshead Revisited is screening on television, Christmas is fast approaching and Britain is sick with yearning for a past that never was and a future that will never be.
Stephen’s one case of interest is a potential double agent working within the Institute. But it’s the agent’s wife, Helen, that draws Stephen’s interest. Though he’s never seen her face, he begins to imagine their life together, drawing closer and closer and increasingly blurring fantasy and reality until he can no longer distinguish between them.
Meanwhile, Stephen’s mother shapes her life around the routines and traditions she has observed since Stephen’s boyhood, thinking only and always of her often-absent son, the husband and children she has lost and the family she might have had.
Francesca Kay’s The Long Room (Faber & Faber, Jan. 2016) is an unsettling novel of yearning, desire, disillusionment and obsession.
I’m just going to come right out and say this: I. Loved. This. Book. And I know it’s only January, but I’ve already marked The Long Room as one of my favourite reads of 2016. There’s an unofficial rule in book reviewing that you’re not supposed to liken a book to other books, but whatever. If a Highsmith got busy with Eliot’s The Wasteland, The Long Room would be their love child. And it reminded me of so many other favourite titles, too: Brideshead Revisited, The Secret History, The Great Gatsby, The Strays, The Line of Beauty—stories of characters barred from paradise, yearning to return to a place they have never been.
Kay lingers over mundane and domestic details, steeping her reader in the drudgery of Stephen and Coralie’s lives (her style reminds me so much of Highsmith), and then, quite without warning, ascends to flights of poetic fancy, referencing the poets Steven studied at Oxford—’Baudelaire, Bryon, Dante, Donne, Herrick, Keats, Marvell, Marlowe, Christina Rossetti, Shakespeare and Shelley’ are among those named in Kay’s acknowledgements. These departures come as a welcome reprieve, reminding both Stephen and the reader of his vision of a greater life (a life which he believes his right) that leads him ever closer to his downfall.
Kay narrates in third person, following Stephen and Coralie and occasionally zooming out to give a broader view. However, it is Stephen Kay shadows most closely. Initially, he’s sympathetic: a lost and lonely soul overwhelmed and unprepared for the world’s indifference and his own ordinariness:
"Dust metal breath and roar of an approaching train: too bright, too loud, too fast. The doors slide open. to propel himself inside them, to give himself up to those devouring jaws, requires effort of the will. Within the carriage, when the train plunges back into its tunnel, Stephen’s face reflected in the window looks pale and moon-like, imbecilic. He remains standing and he stares at his reflected self. Mon semblable, mon frère. I never knew death had undone so many."
But as Kay draws the reader closer, she reveals Stephen as a man convinced of his own cleverness and uniqueness—a man entitled to a place among the crème de la crème:
"No one is the sole author of his life. Stephen, looking back, sees his own divided into chapters—before school, junior school, secondary school—in which his younger self was swept along by the tide of other people’s actions. …He remembers how sure he was in the beginning that that … [Oxford] would contain an open door, the door that would magically yield to a secret password and give onto a new and better world. … The seventy-two weeks that are all you get of stone staircases, linenfold panelling, low-lying mist on mown grass, girls in silk and rainbow colours—they don’t give you time to turn yourself from the boy you were into the man you want to be. But they do show you where the doors are and how to forge the keys."
Stephen fixates on Helen as his ‘key’ to this better world. And as his obsession with her grows, it becomes increasingly uncomfortable to be privy to his thoughts:
"If he made a move too soon, he would scare her off. He’d rather sever his right hand than cause her to be frightened. When the time comes he will approach her gently, as he would a shy, wild creature—a kitten or a fawn—step by slow and careful step, holding out a coaxing hand until he gains her trust."
Meanwhile, Coralie prepares for Christmas, counting the days until her son returns home. She fusses over the tree and decorations that have remained unchanged since Stephen’s boyhood, frets about where she’ll store the turkey and buys Stephen a jumper like the ones Sebastian wears in Brideshead Revisited. Alone at night she wonders how many more Christmases she has left and if there will come a time when Steven will no longer come and she be left to pass the holiday alone.
In this way, Kay builds slow-burning tension, with the narrative gathering speed as it descends towards inevitable tragedy.
The Long Room won’t be for everyone. It’s sinister and bleak and infused with a damp, seeping melancholy that I could happily wallow in for many more pages, but won’t necessarily appeal to all. Some thriller fans may also find the pace too slow—there are no sudden twists, no unexpected movements, just a steadily mounting sense of unease. But for me, the only criticism was that it was over all too soon. Kay has two other novels: An Equal Stillness (2009) which earned her the Orange Prize for New Writers that same year and The Translation of the Bones (2011)—I’ve added both to my reading list.
Thank you to Faber and Faber for providing a copy of The Long Room in exchange for an honest review.
Get Lectito reviews delivered to your inbox.
December 25, 2022
A taut, intense novel. It doesn't draw you in so much as drag you.
It's set in the offices of some murky government surveillance operation, sinister yet believably mundane: there's continual talk of Christmas Parties, Chris Kingle, sausage rolls. Even the conversations that the operatives listen in on are frequently dull. The presence of ordinariness against such a murky backdrop gives an interesting insight into shady Government operations: by and large, they're staffed by normal people with normal concerns.
Against this backdrop, there's a surprisingly physiological tale of obsession, thwarted ambition, inferiority and missed opportunities. It's frequently oppressive and grim in its intensity. Kay is less concerned by external conflicts than internal ones.
The novel can be really tragic too, especially some of the sections written from the mother's perspective. These parts cleverly fill in some of Stephens backstop and add to the novel an aching air of melancholy, of lost chances and dissapointment.
Overall, it's a strange, gripping and unpredictable novel. I honestly had no clue how it would end.
It's set in the offices of some murky government surveillance operation, sinister yet believably mundane: there's continual talk of Christmas Parties, Chris Kingle, sausage rolls. Even the conversations that the operatives listen in on are frequently dull. The presence of ordinariness against such a murky backdrop gives an interesting insight into shady Government operations: by and large, they're staffed by normal people with normal concerns.
Against this backdrop, there's a surprisingly physiological tale of obsession, thwarted ambition, inferiority and missed opportunities. It's frequently oppressive and grim in its intensity. Kay is less concerned by external conflicts than internal ones.
The novel can be really tragic too, especially some of the sections written from the mother's perspective. These parts cleverly fill in some of Stephens backstop and add to the novel an aching air of melancholy, of lost chances and dissapointment.
Overall, it's a strange, gripping and unpredictable novel. I honestly had no clue how it would end.
April 23, 2018
A curious telling of a descent into confusion, if not actually into madness. Stephen, the focus of the novel, is a lonely man, working as a listener for the Secret Service, in post War, early sixties London. Days spent listening to his targets is as isolating as any job can be, and he lives a solitary life throughout. It's hardly surprising that his imagination takes over and that he starts to invent relationships with his subjects. His behaviour becomes more and more reckless as he flouts the extreme order and control of his working environment, ignores restrictions and seems to start to be involved in stalking the wife of one his subjects, apparently believing himself to be in love with her.
He makes assumptions, misidentifies people and moves from confusion to disaster, while around him his colleagues plan for Christmas, support other sections in vital work, deal with family emergencies and the daily trials of working in central London in a snowy winter. All of this detail is beautifully realised as is the sad and tiny life of his equally lonely mother, the grey life of the day to day delicately described and vividly brought to life.
The writing is absolutely perfect, but, to my mind, the plotting of this novel falls apart in the final section, the role of one of the key protagonists being less than clear. However, the reader is left aghast at some of the things Stephen does, 'What is he thinking?' is the question constantly being asked as he pockets tapes, snatches files, sneaks about parts of the office building for nothing more than curiosity. A really clever realisation of a sad and lonely man.
He makes assumptions, misidentifies people and moves from confusion to disaster, while around him his colleagues plan for Christmas, support other sections in vital work, deal with family emergencies and the daily trials of working in central London in a snowy winter. All of this detail is beautifully realised as is the sad and tiny life of his equally lonely mother, the grey life of the day to day delicately described and vividly brought to life.
The writing is absolutely perfect, but, to my mind, the plotting of this novel falls apart in the final section, the role of one of the key protagonists being less than clear. However, the reader is left aghast at some of the things Stephen does, 'What is he thinking?' is the question constantly being asked as he pockets tapes, snatches files, sneaks about parts of the office building for nothing more than curiosity. A really clever realisation of a sad and lonely man.
January 9, 2017
This one draws you in until suddenly you realize there is no way out. I was reminded of the movie The Lives of Others (both follow spies who are listeners, one for the British government in 1981, the other for the Stasi in East Germany circa 1984) but on the whole they don't really compare. The movie was really, really good, this book was just ok.
November 7, 2016
A lonely spy engaged in surveillance activity is drawn to the wife of his main subject. Given his lonely detached life, the agent's attraction leads to his destruction. It's a sad, well written book that reminds me as bit of the movie in which Gene Hackman, the ultimate eavesdropper-for-hire, descended into madness due to his isolation.
June 17, 2020
Francesca Kay's The Long Room is story about the loneliness and obsessions of a spy, the sort of spy whose life is dull, drab and tedious, not at all exciting.
It's primarily told from the point of view of Stephen, a man in his late 20s, recruited to the secret service at university. He works at the Institute with a team of friendly colleagues, but he doesn't like to socialise with them. During the week he lives in London where "it is a long time since he remembered to wash the sheets." At the weekends he retreats to his elderly mother in Didcot. It's a lonely life.
Stephen's job involves listening to tapes of telephone and house bugs and transcribing them to help identify security threats. This is 1981 Britain, when the IRA are planting bombs and members of CND are considered to be communists. In the course of his work, Stephen has become obsessed with Helen, the wife of a target, PHOENIX. He has only ever heard her beautiful voice, which "speaks poems to him, and her piano playing, and the sweetness of her nature." His thoughts veer towards worship, believing girls like Helen are "pure and vestal, the innocent and the good". His is a devotional, romantic idea of love.
Ultimately The Long Room is a character-driven story with a well-drawn protagonist, however it comes across as a bit too clever. If your literature studies ended at age 16 you might not pick up on some references. A google search after finishing revealed allusions aplenty to Byron and romantic love, Shelley and the quest for perfect union, Goethe and introversion, all of which are themes of the book. In spite of the fine characterisation and descriptions, Stephen's ultimate actions weren't credible, and if you're the sort of reader who needs a fast moving plot, you may find yourself putting it to one side without finishing.
It's primarily told from the point of view of Stephen, a man in his late 20s, recruited to the secret service at university. He works at the Institute with a team of friendly colleagues, but he doesn't like to socialise with them. During the week he lives in London where "it is a long time since he remembered to wash the sheets." At the weekends he retreats to his elderly mother in Didcot. It's a lonely life.
Stephen's job involves listening to tapes of telephone and house bugs and transcribing them to help identify security threats. This is 1981 Britain, when the IRA are planting bombs and members of CND are considered to be communists. In the course of his work, Stephen has become obsessed with Helen, the wife of a target, PHOENIX. He has only ever heard her beautiful voice, which "speaks poems to him, and her piano playing, and the sweetness of her nature." His thoughts veer towards worship, believing girls like Helen are "pure and vestal, the innocent and the good". His is a devotional, romantic idea of love.
Ultimately The Long Room is a character-driven story with a well-drawn protagonist, however it comes across as a bit too clever. If your literature studies ended at age 16 you might not pick up on some references. A google search after finishing revealed allusions aplenty to Byron and romantic love, Shelley and the quest for perfect union, Goethe and introversion, all of which are themes of the book. In spite of the fine characterisation and descriptions, Stephen's ultimate actions weren't credible, and if you're the sort of reader who needs a fast moving plot, you may find yourself putting it to one side without finishing.
May 19, 2025
I read this book on patches. Although it didn't keep me intrigued or wanting to turn the page, I was curious how it would end and what happens to Stephen.
The book is well written but has long passages of intense back story which I sometimes skipped, they delved heavily into past events that informed and helped to gain an understanding of the character, but I think they were heavy-handed and interruptesd the flow of the story. The deep introspection into the mother was poignant but her ending was missing (and so I felt cheated).
Overall, I enjoyed the premise of the story. I didn't relate to Stephen, but he was a credible lonely man who slides into obsession. His demise was hard to believe and his final acts seemed too naive or even stupid which, I think, brought the story undone.
The ending felt abrupt and I found it generally unsatisfying.
The book is well written but has long passages of intense back story which I sometimes skipped, they delved heavily into past events that informed and helped to gain an understanding of the character, but I think they were heavy-handed and interruptesd the flow of the story. The deep introspection into the mother was poignant but her ending was missing (and so I felt cheated).
Overall, I enjoyed the premise of the story. I didn't relate to Stephen, but he was a credible lonely man who slides into obsession. His demise was hard to believe and his final acts seemed too naive or even stupid which, I think, brought the story undone.
The ending felt abrupt and I found it generally unsatisfying.
December 16, 2016
“This has been a rough year for folks on both side of the Atlantic. Brexit shook England to its foundation, while Americans continue to experience our own fracturing in the face of one of the strangest and most divisive elections in recent history. In this time of confusion--existential dreading, even--a book like this one grabs at our deepest fears and offers them up for examination.”
Read the rest of my review over at the Dallas Morning News!
http://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/...
Read the rest of my review over at the Dallas Morning News!
http://www.dallasnews.com/arts/books/...
August 23, 2020
Purchase The Long Room here for just $12!
Set in London, almost 40 years ago, Kay's third novel is about spy Stephen Donaldson who falls in love with his target's wife's voice and therefore her. Kay's writing is so stunning and atmospheric, you will be taken along for the ride from the first few pages. Like a Le Carre novel or the film The Conversation.
Elisa - The Book Grocer
Set in London, almost 40 years ago, Kay's third novel is about spy Stephen Donaldson who falls in love with his target's wife's voice and therefore her. Kay's writing is so stunning and atmospheric, you will be taken along for the ride from the first few pages. Like a Le Carre novel or the film The Conversation.
Elisa - The Book Grocer
February 7, 2021
Hmmm. I really liked the premise of this and think there was a lot of potential in the various threads in the story, however I found it confusing as we only got half finished perspectives, even though we mainly followed one character. And I don't really know what happened at the end. There are lots of literary references that went completely over my head, which may make it a more enjoyable read for those into classic poetry. Did I love it? Definitely not. Did I hate it? No. Would I recommend it? Also no.
February 13, 2022
Very atmospheric writing & the character of Stephen is well considered. Such a lonely man and his job as a secret service “listener” & counter espionage operative means he becomes obsessed with the wife, Helen, of a subject. The complications of his obsession & his totally unwise decision to meet with Alberic, a foreign man he met at a pub, leads to a tragic conclusion. I enjoyed the sub plot of his relationship with his elderly mother. Very subtle writing & the cast of his work colleagues are well thought out. Probably should be closer to a 4
September 17, 2017
I was hugely disappointed with this. Recognising the writer's name, knowing I already had 'An Equal Stillness' on my bookshelf, I assumed this would be as entertaining. It was not. A totally feeble (and near-unbelievable, insofar as how could someone so unworldly be selected to do such a job) protagonist in a story suffocating in place- and time-evoking details of domestic ennui and acting in ways that were both banal and stupid.
I finished it but it left me feeling very cross.
I finished it but it left me feeling very cross.
June 9, 2025
A Greek tragedy in 1980s London and its environs. Stephen is a socially awkward young man working for the government as a listener, checking tapes of tapped phones. He is seconded to a more serious case, where the subject's sitting room is bugged. Relying only on voices, he develops an obsession with the subject's wife.
The story is set in mid-December and while Stephen's colleagues organise secret santas and bring-and-shares Stephen slowly loses his sense of right and wrong.
The story is set in mid-December and while Stephen's colleagues organise secret santas and bring-and-shares Stephen slowly loses his sense of right and wrong.
March 27, 2018
7.0/10. For its trappings, this is not a spy novel, exactly (Kay’s protagonist is, among other things, terrible at keeping a secret), and it’s at once a lot funnier and. unsettling than I was expecting in that lovestruck delusional (if comparatively harmless) nerd, lives of quiet desperation sort of way.
April 15, 2021
Credible portrayal of the strange, claustrophobic world of a professional intelligence "listener" in 1980s London. Nicely set up and quite involving, although the ultimate resolution seems a bit forced and not very convincing. The main character drifts into an obvious mistake, perhaps out of a need for self-destruction, perhaps not. It's not very satisfying either way. But we'll written for sure.
November 17, 2016
This book held so much promise for me. There is
an obvious build up of tension as the protagonist
gets deeper and deeper involved in something he
should never be doing, but the whole story just
ends a bit disappointingly for me.
an obvious build up of tension as the protagonist
gets deeper and deeper involved in something he
should never be doing, but the whole story just
ends a bit disappointingly for me.
May 6, 2017
A suspenseful story of a man unravelling. Spoilt by an abrupt end.
May 24, 2017
Well written, but I didn't enjoy the story.
July 25, 2018
Beautiful writing, a bleak world of emptiness about a listener in the intelligence sector of England in the eighties.
January 14, 2021
A very atmospheric read, so much detail and description. A slow build for an almost disappointing end.
February 1, 2021
Waste of time
March 15, 2021
Not my typical read, still enjoyed the different pace of this one!
May 9, 2021
Loved this book. It kept me guessing to the end
January 9, 2024
2.5 Well written, but the main character was disconcertingly unworldly and tedious which spoiled the intriguing premise of the story.
January 4, 2018
Well-written, excellent characterisation and fascinating detail. HOWEVER, no plot really.
Arggghhhhh!!!!!!!!! This seems to be the 21st century literary disease. Endless beautifully rendered portraiture but no story, no real message. When will novelists stop drifting about in this comatose post-modernist daze. Such a shame because I really enjoyed the writing.
Arggghhhhh!!!!!!!!! This seems to be the 21st century literary disease. Endless beautifully rendered portraiture but no story, no real message. When will novelists stop drifting about in this comatose post-modernist daze. Such a shame because I really enjoyed the writing.
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