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The Sandpit
'A remarkable contemporary thriller – with shades of Graham Greene and Le Carré about it – but also a profound and compelling investigation of a hugely complex human predicament. Brilliantly observed, captivatingly written, grippingly narrated – a triumph' William Boyd
When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn't expect to find them both in danger. Every day is the same. He drops Leandro at his smart prep school and walks to the library to research his new book. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent in Rio is over.
But the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas. Leandro’s schoolmates are the children of influential people, among them an international banker, a Russian oligarch, an American CIA operative and a British spook. As they congregate round the sports field for the weekly football matches, the network of alliances and covert interests that spreads between these power brokers soon becomes clear to Dyer,. But it is a chance conversation with an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, father of a friend of Leandro, that sets him onto a truly precarious path.
When Marvar and his son disappear, several sinister factions seem acutely interested in Marvar’s groundbreaking research at the Physics Faculty, and what he might have told Dyer about it, given Dyer was the last person to see Marvar alive.
When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, he doesn't expect to find them both in danger. Every day is the same. He drops Leandro at his smart prep school and walks to the library to research his new book. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent in Rio is over.
But the rainy streets of this English city turn out to be just as treacherous as those he used to walk in the favelas. Leandro’s schoolmates are the children of influential people, among them an international banker, a Russian oligarch, an American CIA operative and a British spook. As they congregate round the sports field for the weekly football matches, the network of alliances and covert interests that spreads between these power brokers soon becomes clear to Dyer,. But it is a chance conversation with an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, father of a friend of Leandro, that sets him onto a truly precarious path.
When Marvar and his son disappear, several sinister factions seem acutely interested in Marvar’s groundbreaking research at the Physics Faculty, and what he might have told Dyer about it, given Dyer was the last person to see Marvar alive.
304 pages, Paperback
Published July 9, 2020
86 people are currently reading
299 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Shakespeare
38 books110 followersNicholas William Richmond Shakespeare is a English novelist and biographer.
Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school in Oxford, then at Winchester College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC television and then on The Times as assistant arts and literary editor. From 1988 to 1991 he was literary editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.
Born to a diplomat, Nicholas Shakespeare grew up in the Far East and in South America. He was educated at the Dragon School preparatory school in Oxford, then at Winchester College and at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He worked as a journalist for BBC television and then on The Times as assistant arts and literary editor. From 1988 to 1991 he was literary editor of The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.
Since 2000, Shakespeare has been Patron of the Anita Goulden Trust, helping children in the Peruvian city of Piura. The UK-based charity was set up following an article that Shakespeare wrote for the Daily Telegraph magazine, which raised more than £350,000.
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is married with two small boys and currently lives in Oxford.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
May 30, 2020
Nicholas Shakespeare's fascinating literary espionage thriller is reminiscent of the classic espionage literature, and draws on issues facing our contemporary world. With the collapse of his marriage, former foreign correspondent, John Dyer has returned to Oxford with his 11 year old son, Leandro, from Brazil. Spending his time doing research in the library on the Tupi, an obscure indigenous Brazilian tribe, John is struggling to find his feet in his new life after years spent abroad, he is a man riddled with doubts and indecision. He finds himself on the edges of the kind of influential social circles that would normally have been beyond his sphere, lacking the equivalent financial resources, through Leandro's private prep school, the Phoenix, a school he himself attended as a child. The school's intake is now distinctly international, with parents from a wide ranging set of backgrounds, including hedge fund managers, Russian oligarchs and the intelligence services.
Leandro and his friend, Samir, are being bullied which leads to John meeting the groundbreaking Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, working at Oxford University, and having discussions with him on issues such as social class. A disturbed and worried Marvar finds himself confiding his concerns and breakthrough with John, prior to him and his son vanishing. John suddenly finds him under strong and intense pressure, interrogated, under the spotlight, finding himself a person of interest to various parties as the last person to have seen Marvar. He tries to protect his son, whilst mulling ove his moral dilemma that is weighing him down, whilst being surrounded by danger, intrigue and the murky world of espionage.
Shakespeare's storytelling is compulsive, if overly wordy in a manner which may put off some readers, and I very much liked the ongoing theme of the sandpit in the past and what it might signify in the present. The novel covers issues of social class, global politics and conflict, power, money, espionage agencies and amorality through its disparate cast of characters. This is an engaging read, intricately plotted, inhabited by complicated characters, that skilfully resonates with the complexities of our contemporary world today. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.
Leandro and his friend, Samir, are being bullied which leads to John meeting the groundbreaking Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, working at Oxford University, and having discussions with him on issues such as social class. A disturbed and worried Marvar finds himself confiding his concerns and breakthrough with John, prior to him and his son vanishing. John suddenly finds him under strong and intense pressure, interrogated, under the spotlight, finding himself a person of interest to various parties as the last person to have seen Marvar. He tries to protect his son, whilst mulling ove his moral dilemma that is weighing him down, whilst being surrounded by danger, intrigue and the murky world of espionage.
Shakespeare's storytelling is compulsive, if overly wordy in a manner which may put off some readers, and I very much liked the ongoing theme of the sandpit in the past and what it might signify in the present. The novel covers issues of social class, global politics and conflict, power, money, espionage agencies and amorality through its disparate cast of characters. This is an engaging read, intricately plotted, inhabited by complicated characters, that skilfully resonates with the complexities of our contemporary world today. Many thanks to Random House Vintage for an ARC.
April 12, 2024
In present day Oxford, ex-foreign correspondent John Dyer is undertaking research for a new book he’s writing on the Tupi people, one of the more numerous groups indigenous to Brazil. He spends much of his time at the Taylorian Institution Library, associated to Oxford University, where he reads obscure volumes and takes notes. But today, he has an engagement at his old prep school, the Phoenix, where his eleven year old son Leandro is currently a pupil. It appears that Leandro and another boy, Samir, have been the victims of bullying, and he has been summoned to the school where the physical education teacher is to address the issue.
It seems that it’s all linked to Leandro and Samir’s recent promotion to the school’s first XI football team in that Vasily’s resultant demotion from the team led to him acting out some revengeful retribution. Whilst awaiting the outcome of the school hearing, Dyer meets and chats to Samir’s father, Rustrom Marvar, an Iranian physicist who has been granted temporary release by his government to work with a team at the university. We’re also introduced to a number of other parents who have children at the school: Vasily’s Russian mother (who Dyer has a fancy for), a man who works for the Diplomatic Service who was at the prep school himself at the same time as Dyer, a rich French-Canadian hedge-fund manager with a finger in a lot of pies and an American nuclear scientist who works at the same lab as Marvar.
What plays out here is, in part, the story of how Dyer struggles to find his new identity: back in Oxford after a long stay in South America and lacking the financial clout of other parents with children at this exclusive school. But to a larger extent it’s a tale of intrigue as the cast of characters get caught up rumours surrounding the holy grail of nuclear fusion, mysterious comings and goings, and political shenanigans aplenty. There’s a moral conundrum for Dyer, too, as he tries to decide how best to play his particular hand.
It’s all very well executed by the author, and if the language is a little highfalutin, then it does at least fit with the somewhat pompous circle of characters he’s created here. My well thumbed dictionary was put to use more than once, but even that failed me when lines of Latin, Portuguese, and even Tupi were woven into the text. But at least I did recognise the line from a Ray LaMontagne song, dropped in at one point. Overall it’s book that made me think a little more about my own life and about wider geopolitical issues, too, and all this wrapped up in a pretty good yarn. Can’t really argue with that.
My thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing, and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
It seems that it’s all linked to Leandro and Samir’s recent promotion to the school’s first XI football team in that Vasily’s resultant demotion from the team led to him acting out some revengeful retribution. Whilst awaiting the outcome of the school hearing, Dyer meets and chats to Samir’s father, Rustrom Marvar, an Iranian physicist who has been granted temporary release by his government to work with a team at the university. We’re also introduced to a number of other parents who have children at the school: Vasily’s Russian mother (who Dyer has a fancy for), a man who works for the Diplomatic Service who was at the prep school himself at the same time as Dyer, a rich French-Canadian hedge-fund manager with a finger in a lot of pies and an American nuclear scientist who works at the same lab as Marvar.
What plays out here is, in part, the story of how Dyer struggles to find his new identity: back in Oxford after a long stay in South America and lacking the financial clout of other parents with children at this exclusive school. But to a larger extent it’s a tale of intrigue as the cast of characters get caught up rumours surrounding the holy grail of nuclear fusion, mysterious comings and goings, and political shenanigans aplenty. There’s a moral conundrum for Dyer, too, as he tries to decide how best to play his particular hand.
It’s all very well executed by the author, and if the language is a little highfalutin, then it does at least fit with the somewhat pompous circle of characters he’s created here. My well thumbed dictionary was put to use more than once, but even that failed me when lines of Latin, Portuguese, and even Tupi were woven into the text. But at least I did recognise the line from a Ray LaMontagne song, dropped in at one point. Overall it’s book that made me think a little more about my own life and about wider geopolitical issues, too, and all this wrapped up in a pretty good yarn. Can’t really argue with that.
My thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing, and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
May 30, 2020
DNF at 10%
Terrible writing and a prose style so irritating that it completely detracted from the story: for example, on learning that his son is being bullied: 'Dyer had a vision of his son like a prisoner of the Tupi Indians, suffering in silence the punishment that they reserved for their bitterest enemies, wrapped in a writhing coil of poisonous toads which had started to shrink around his neck.'
I mean, how did that ever get past an editor?
Crazily stretched metaphors abound: ' the remark detonated something in Marvar', a woman has 'a deranged eye' for no discernible reason as she asks a perfectly normal question (or, rather, 'swivelling to peck him with tiny questions about South America'), another woman is 'wild-looking' as she hands her daughter her cello from the car, an idea is 'stuck, impossible to pour back into a frosted glass', a prospectus is 'woollier than one of Vivien's tea cosies'... I could go on and bear in mind I couldn't bear to read beyond 10% with this lurid, over-reaching writing. The story might have been brilliant but the prose had me gritting my teeth...
Terrible writing and a prose style so irritating that it completely detracted from the story: for example, on learning that his son is being bullied: 'Dyer had a vision of his son like a prisoner of the Tupi Indians, suffering in silence the punishment that they reserved for their bitterest enemies, wrapped in a writhing coil of poisonous toads which had started to shrink around his neck.'
I mean, how did that ever get past an editor?
Crazily stretched metaphors abound: ' the remark detonated something in Marvar', a woman has 'a deranged eye' for no discernible reason as she asks a perfectly normal question (or, rather, 'swivelling to peck him with tiny questions about South America'), another woman is 'wild-looking' as she hands her daughter her cello from the car, an idea is 'stuck, impossible to pour back into a frosted glass', a prospectus is 'woollier than one of Vivien's tea cosies'... I could go on and bear in mind I couldn't bear to read beyond 10% with this lurid, over-reaching writing. The story might have been brilliant but the prose had me gritting my teeth...
June 17, 2020
I haven’t read a lot of books in the espionage genre but I have read Le Carre , so I thought I’d give it a go. I wasn’t overly taken with the story but what threw me was the horrible writing style which consistently bumped me out of the story. Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.
May 21, 2020
I began by liking this character-study/thriller a lot, but it began to pall quite badly in the second half.
The story is of John Dyer, an ex-journalist now divorced and living in Oxford where his son attends the private school where Dyer himself went. The opening is a slow revelation of Dyer’s circumstances and mental state which I found very well done. Then, Dyer finds himself in possession of some potentially world-changing information which a lot of people in governments and big, powerful international businesses are very keen to get their hands on. It becomes a sort of espionage novel, with Dyer’s great moral dilemma about what to do at its heart.
Much of the book is taken up with Dyer’s life and character, plus that of those around him – wealthy, rather self-obsessed people, some of whom have rather sinister backgrounds of one sort or another. The thriller part is rather less than thrilling a lot of the time, with Dyer being infuriatingly indecisive and rather pusillanimous in the guise of weighing up moral matters, and the denouement doesn’t help this. Also, Nicholas Shakespeare’s style becomes a bit wearisome. He is a very good writer in many ways, but especially after about half way I found the prose becoming a little show-offy and mannered.
As an example, every so often he slips from a normal narrative past-tense to present tense for a few sentences and then back again, like this:
“He dashed into the Dragon Cinema, and bought a ticket to a film that had already begun. He fell asleep after ten minutes, and when he wakes up the three people in the cinema are leaving. It’s the middle of the day as he emerges. He has no memory of what he’s watched. He feels in another time zone, another country. In slow steps, he headed back towards the town centre, plunged into a canal of images.”
Now, perhaps I just haven’t studied English Literature to a sufficiently advanced level to appreciate some subtle emotional intensity in this technique, but to me it was just extremely irritating – and it got more frequent and more irritating the longer the book went on. It kept throwing me out of the narrative, leaving me trying to re-orientate myself and wrestle with the prose and I eventually got very grumpy about it. (And “a canal of images”? Seriously?)
There are also rather over-long episodes seemingly designed to show us how much Shakespeare knows about academic Oxford, fly-fishing and other subjects, at least one monumentally convenient coincidence and so on.
I was disappointed overall. I expected a thoughtful, insightful, well-constructed and involving book from such a respected author, but I didn’t really get it in the end and was left feeling that there is less here than meets the eye. It’s by no means a bad book, but it’s not all that good either.
(My thanks to Vintage Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.)
The story is of John Dyer, an ex-journalist now divorced and living in Oxford where his son attends the private school where Dyer himself went. The opening is a slow revelation of Dyer’s circumstances and mental state which I found very well done. Then, Dyer finds himself in possession of some potentially world-changing information which a lot of people in governments and big, powerful international businesses are very keen to get their hands on. It becomes a sort of espionage novel, with Dyer’s great moral dilemma about what to do at its heart.
Much of the book is taken up with Dyer’s life and character, plus that of those around him – wealthy, rather self-obsessed people, some of whom have rather sinister backgrounds of one sort or another. The thriller part is rather less than thrilling a lot of the time, with Dyer being infuriatingly indecisive and rather pusillanimous in the guise of weighing up moral matters, and the denouement doesn’t help this. Also, Nicholas Shakespeare’s style becomes a bit wearisome. He is a very good writer in many ways, but especially after about half way I found the prose becoming a little show-offy and mannered.
As an example, every so often he slips from a normal narrative past-tense to present tense for a few sentences and then back again, like this:
“He dashed into the Dragon Cinema, and bought a ticket to a film that had already begun. He fell asleep after ten minutes, and when he wakes up the three people in the cinema are leaving. It’s the middle of the day as he emerges. He has no memory of what he’s watched. He feels in another time zone, another country. In slow steps, he headed back towards the town centre, plunged into a canal of images.”
Now, perhaps I just haven’t studied English Literature to a sufficiently advanced level to appreciate some subtle emotional intensity in this technique, but to me it was just extremely irritating – and it got more frequent and more irritating the longer the book went on. It kept throwing me out of the narrative, leaving me trying to re-orientate myself and wrestle with the prose and I eventually got very grumpy about it. (And “a canal of images”? Seriously?)
There are also rather over-long episodes seemingly designed to show us how much Shakespeare knows about academic Oxford, fly-fishing and other subjects, at least one monumentally convenient coincidence and so on.
I was disappointed overall. I expected a thoughtful, insightful, well-constructed and involving book from such a respected author, but I didn’t really get it in the end and was left feeling that there is less here than meets the eye. It’s by no means a bad book, but it’s not all that good either.
(My thanks to Vintage Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.)
July 5, 2020
The Sandpit is a low key intelligent thriller about a missing person. The writing is terrific, with particular attention paid to the differences between the parents of the schoolchildren. It also keeps the reader guessing as to the motives of each individual.
May 26, 2020
THE SANDPIT
by
Nicholas Shakespeare
John Dyer moves back to Oxford, his childhood home with his son Leandro who is enrolled at his father’s old school, the Phoenix. Dyer spends much of his time in the library researching a book he is writing having retired from his post as a renowned journalist. But when Leandro and his new friend, an Iranian boy are both badly bullied by Vasily, a Russian child, Dyer and the boy’s father, Marvar, form a loose friendship.
Standing on the touchline at sports events Dyer absorbs the conversations of other parents, a Russian Oligarch, a spy, a physicist, a CIA officer and the odd entrepreneur. He is familiar with a few and is invited to dine with them where his journalist ear picks up on sinister undercurrents.
This is a literary thriller that covers espionage, international tensions and politics, peppered with social climbing and greed. The story is very up to the minute and is intricately compiled and most interesting.
Marvar arrives at Dyer’s shaking with fear, convinced his wife and baby are under arrest in Iran because of a discovery he has made regarding fusion. Dyer and go for a walk and a drink and Marvar in Dyer. When Marvar and his son disappear without trace, Dyer comes under severe scrutiny and interrogation from the Secret Service as they are certain Marvar has confided in him. Dyer is now a target with a moral dilemma regarding Marvar’s trust in him.
A tense slow burning book that builds to a superb crescendo, this is a different style of thriller and a superb read. Much of the focus is on politics and men in powerful positions with a strong grain of truth within as tensions of which we are familiar are explored. A quote that made me smile was ‘the present incumbent in the White House may have earned the right to be considered the biggest spurt of piss ever to be let out’. Who could that be?
This is a gripping and fascinating thriller, totally different to any thriller I have ever read. A finely crafted novel.
.
by
Nicholas Shakespeare
John Dyer moves back to Oxford, his childhood home with his son Leandro who is enrolled at his father’s old school, the Phoenix. Dyer spends much of his time in the library researching a book he is writing having retired from his post as a renowned journalist. But when Leandro and his new friend, an Iranian boy are both badly bullied by Vasily, a Russian child, Dyer and the boy’s father, Marvar, form a loose friendship.
Standing on the touchline at sports events Dyer absorbs the conversations of other parents, a Russian Oligarch, a spy, a physicist, a CIA officer and the odd entrepreneur. He is familiar with a few and is invited to dine with them where his journalist ear picks up on sinister undercurrents.
This is a literary thriller that covers espionage, international tensions and politics, peppered with social climbing and greed. The story is very up to the minute and is intricately compiled and most interesting.
Marvar arrives at Dyer’s shaking with fear, convinced his wife and baby are under arrest in Iran because of a discovery he has made regarding fusion. Dyer and go for a walk and a drink and Marvar in Dyer. When Marvar and his son disappear without trace, Dyer comes under severe scrutiny and interrogation from the Secret Service as they are certain Marvar has confided in him. Dyer is now a target with a moral dilemma regarding Marvar’s trust in him.
A tense slow burning book that builds to a superb crescendo, this is a different style of thriller and a superb read. Much of the focus is on politics and men in powerful positions with a strong grain of truth within as tensions of which we are familiar are explored. A quote that made me smile was ‘the present incumbent in the White House may have earned the right to be considered the biggest spurt of piss ever to be let out’. Who could that be?
This is a gripping and fascinating thriller, totally different to any thriller I have ever read. A finely crafted novel.
.
April 1, 2022
John Dyer is a former foreign correspondent who returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son to carry out research about a little-known Brazilian indigenous tribe. He meets and befriends an Iranian nuclear scientist, Rustum Marvar, whose son is at the same prep school as Dyer's (Dyer was also once a pupil there). Marvar and his son then mysteriously go missing.
Dyer becomes a person of interest as he was possibly the last person to see Marvar before he disappeared. The scientist had made a potentially world-changing discovery and he entrusted the secret and details of this to Dyer.
The sandpit of the title is a location that proves central to the plot. It can also be viewed in a metaphorical sense, as a lot of things are buried beneath the surface in this story and not just physically.
I found this an absorbing and well-written story, weaving espionage, counter-intelligence, and internal psychology with international affairs, as Dyer found inventive ways of keeping the various people who wanted Marvar's discovery off the scent.
The people who want the knowledge that Dyer has acquired are playing their own games, desirous of getting to the truth as they perceive it and all convinced in one way or another that Dyer is the key to solving the riddle of what Marvar was working on. In an intricately plotted game of cat and mouse, Dyer's journalistic ability to read people's intentions and body language work in his favour.
I particularly enjoyed the ending, which very neatly tied up many of the loose ends and still managed to leave something hanging in the ether that might form the basis for a further story.
Nicholas Shakespeare isn't an author I had come across before, but I enjoyed his writing style and use of language and will certainly be reading more of his books.
I was sent an advance review copy of this book by Vintage Publishing, in return for an honest appraisal.
Dyer becomes a person of interest as he was possibly the last person to see Marvar before he disappeared. The scientist had made a potentially world-changing discovery and he entrusted the secret and details of this to Dyer.
The sandpit of the title is a location that proves central to the plot. It can also be viewed in a metaphorical sense, as a lot of things are buried beneath the surface in this story and not just physically.
I found this an absorbing and well-written story, weaving espionage, counter-intelligence, and internal psychology with international affairs, as Dyer found inventive ways of keeping the various people who wanted Marvar's discovery off the scent.
The people who want the knowledge that Dyer has acquired are playing their own games, desirous of getting to the truth as they perceive it and all convinced in one way or another that Dyer is the key to solving the riddle of what Marvar was working on. In an intricately plotted game of cat and mouse, Dyer's journalistic ability to read people's intentions and body language work in his favour.
I particularly enjoyed the ending, which very neatly tied up many of the loose ends and still managed to leave something hanging in the ether that might form the basis for a further story.
Nicholas Shakespeare isn't an author I had come across before, but I enjoyed his writing style and use of language and will certainly be reading more of his books.
I was sent an advance review copy of this book by Vintage Publishing, in return for an honest appraisal.
June 23, 2020
Interesting book of the spy genre. I didn’t find it especially easy to get into finding the lead character somewhat reflective and sedentary.
I’m not that well read in this genre so perhaps it is better for those who are. Well written with characters of depth.
I’m not that well read in this genre so perhaps it is better for those who are. Well written with characters of depth.
May 24, 2020
Thanks to Random House UK, Vintage Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
'The Sandpit' is an enormously difficult novel to review, and I find my observations mixed. More Le Carre than Fleming, an espionage thriller with a certain cerebral edge is usually my preferred interpretation of the genre. But Nicholas Shakespeare's novel is not quite in the vein of Le Carre, either. There are commonalities: the ordinary man placed in an extraordinary situation is a classic trope of Le Carre's novels, and this jumping off point for Shakespeare's incarnation, too. Men - as is usual in this genre, guided by an unerring morality free of the tribal, morality-free loyalties of the professional spy. This is the central artery of this book, too, distilled in the figure of the journalist John Dyer, a man whose expertise extends to obscure Brazilian tribes, not the warring tribes of nuclear nations. There is the chance encounter with an Iranian nuclear physicist, a precipitating event for Dyer's decent down the rabbit-hole of the smoke and mirrors world of modern-day espionage. This is quite Le Carre-esque, too. Shakespeare, however, manages to deploy these classic tropes in new and innovative ways, giving his own inimitable take on the genre, which was, at times, both intriguing and compelling. But, there is an element of style triumphing over substance in Shakespeare's novel that became increasingly irksome. Shakespeare has a prodigious vocabulary; at times, a poets turn of phrase. A master wordsmith? Sure, this view is not without validity, but it has its place in a novel of this type. Too much and it diminishes the intricacy of the careful, nuanced plotting of the author. In the world of literary espionage, where opacity is the central theme, sometimes simplicity and clarity in exposition is the greatest tool in the author's armoury. Sadly, this is a little lacking in this book, and it detracts from a potentially engrossing read.
Recommended with some reservations.
'The Sandpit' is an enormously difficult novel to review, and I find my observations mixed. More Le Carre than Fleming, an espionage thriller with a certain cerebral edge is usually my preferred interpretation of the genre. But Nicholas Shakespeare's novel is not quite in the vein of Le Carre, either. There are commonalities: the ordinary man placed in an extraordinary situation is a classic trope of Le Carre's novels, and this jumping off point for Shakespeare's incarnation, too. Men - as is usual in this genre, guided by an unerring morality free of the tribal, morality-free loyalties of the professional spy. This is the central artery of this book, too, distilled in the figure of the journalist John Dyer, a man whose expertise extends to obscure Brazilian tribes, not the warring tribes of nuclear nations. There is the chance encounter with an Iranian nuclear physicist, a precipitating event for Dyer's decent down the rabbit-hole of the smoke and mirrors world of modern-day espionage. This is quite Le Carre-esque, too. Shakespeare, however, manages to deploy these classic tropes in new and innovative ways, giving his own inimitable take on the genre, which was, at times, both intriguing and compelling. But, there is an element of style triumphing over substance in Shakespeare's novel that became increasingly irksome. Shakespeare has a prodigious vocabulary; at times, a poets turn of phrase. A master wordsmith? Sure, this view is not without validity, but it has its place in a novel of this type. Too much and it diminishes the intricacy of the careful, nuanced plotting of the author. In the world of literary espionage, where opacity is the central theme, sometimes simplicity and clarity in exposition is the greatest tool in the author's armoury. Sadly, this is a little lacking in this book, and it detracts from a potentially engrossing read.
Recommended with some reservations.
July 16, 2020
Once the initial plot had been laid out this book had me hanging on every word and on the edge of my seat right until the end. If you're not looking over your own shoulder when you've finished this then you're of a stronger build than I am. Absolutely brilliant. A great spy thriller without the spies.
August 6, 2020
A mixed bag for me, this one. To begin with I struggled with the clunky prose, which is truly dreadful at times, but the more I read, the more the story began to capture me, and I started reading huge chunks at a time. I found it increasingly easier to ignore my misgivings over the style, and indeed over the daftness of the whole setup (it’s an espionage story involving at least four different countries chasing the MacGuffin, and yet every single character involved in this chase is connected to the same school in Oxford). So it became a pacy and engrossing read, and then I hit the ending. On a narrative level, it’s deeply unsatisfying, but I reckon you could make a case for it being a political allegory, an illustration of the way strife rolls down from the rich and powerful to those less able to deal with it. Maybe, maybe not.
Essentially what we have here is a thriller with pretensions. Those pretensions don’t always convince, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t keep me turning the pages.
Essentially what we have here is a thriller with pretensions. Those pretensions don’t always convince, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t keep me turning the pages.
December 11, 2021
I have no idea when or how this ended up on my Kindle. I'm guessing it was free at the time. Anyway, i thought I'd give a whirl without having any expectation about it.
All in all, it was a pretty good contemporary espionage thriller, of a sort, built around the parents of pupils at a private school in Oxford. I say 'of a sort' because there are clandestine intelligence forces from various nations at work all trying to get their hands on what they suspect (quite rightly) to be a highly valuable secret algorithm that our main character (Dyer) has in his possession. They are after the code and after its discoverer, an Iranian fellow parent (Marvar) that has befriended John and who has suddenly disappeared leaving John with the secret information. So they are after Dyer and his son as well.
It is pretty tense and exciting, and complicated scientifically and politically. But, like many spy stories, if you stop to think about it for terribly long, it's all a little silly. Overall, I enjoyed it but found the last 40% or so a little plodding. And, somewhat frustratingly, it kind of fizzles out. We never find out what happened to Marvar. We never find out what actually happens to Dyer and the code either, although he reaches some sort of personal revelation. Of sorts. Thanks to a childhood friend who appears right at the end. As a Deus Ex Machina. Of sorts.
I don't read this type of book often enough (or at all) to judge it fairly against others in the genre.
All in all, it was a pretty good contemporary espionage thriller, of a sort, built around the parents of pupils at a private school in Oxford. I say 'of a sort' because there are clandestine intelligence forces from various nations at work all trying to get their hands on what they suspect (quite rightly) to be a highly valuable secret algorithm that our main character (Dyer) has in his possession. They are after the code and after its discoverer, an Iranian fellow parent (Marvar) that has befriended John and who has suddenly disappeared leaving John with the secret information. So they are after Dyer and his son as well.
It is pretty tense and exciting, and complicated scientifically and politically. But, like many spy stories, if you stop to think about it for terribly long, it's all a little silly. Overall, I enjoyed it but found the last 40% or so a little plodding. And, somewhat frustratingly, it kind of fizzles out. We never find out what happened to Marvar. We never find out what actually happens to Dyer and the code either, although he reaches some sort of personal revelation. Of sorts. Thanks to a childhood friend who appears right at the end. As a Deus Ex Machina. Of sorts.
I don't read this type of book often enough (or at all) to judge it fairly against others in the genre.
February 27, 2025
Fabulous. It was a pleasure to get reacquainted with John Dyer, from 'The Dancer Upstairs', in a rather wintery Oxford. The plot involves an Iranian scientist, Marvan, who seems to have worked out the solution to nuclear fusion and all the consequences that flow from this discovery. Russian oligarchs, Secret Service agents, and Dyer's son are all caught up in Marvin's disappearance. It falls to Dyer to find a way out of a moral dilemma and to save Marvan. Beautiful story-telling.
September 25, 2020
I found this a difficult read. The story (after a meandering but necessary scene setting start) wants to race but the prose doesn’t. A good plot and very contemporary. The South American material seemed a bit less than realistic. I much preferred Secrets of the Sea. Worth reading for the story and some great thoughtful parts.
July 3, 2020
John Dyer, is a journalist, recently returned to Oxford from Brazil, after killing a story that could have made his name (these are related to the events portrayed in Shakespeare's book The Dancer Upstairs). He now leads a quiet life researching a new book and looking after his young son – who he has sent to his old school in Oxford. His days revolve around supporting his son's interest in football and interacting with the fellow parents – rich Americans , Russsians, and Iranians. One such is Rustum Marvar, an Iranian scientist, who goes missing along with his son after confiding to Dyer that, through football, he's cracked the mystery of nuclear fusion.
Suddenly, everyone want to be Dyer's best friend, including old school friends .
This is a well-constructed and enjoyable cat and mouse style thriller, but it doesn't linger in the mind once you've closed the book after the final page. Would have been ideal to read on the plane and on the beach.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book.
Suddenly, everyone want to be Dyer's best friend, including old school friends .
This is a well-constructed and enjoyable cat and mouse style thriller, but it doesn't linger in the mind once you've closed the book after the final page. Would have been ideal to read on the plane and on the beach.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book.
May 24, 2020
This a terrific book examining the nature of friendship, relationships and dealing with moral dilemmas.
John Dyer is an ex-journalist living in Oxford with his son Leandro, following a period where he was married to a Brazilian woman and lived in Rio. During his time in Brazil Dyer worked as a special correspondent for a British newspaper and investigated political scandals, One of those stories haunts him to the present day, partly because of the decision he made not to publish it to protect some of the people involved. Had he been right to allow crimes to go unpunished or was the moral high ground worth giving up his ‘scoop’ for?
After a divorce and custody battle, Dyer retreats to a small house in Oxford ; he finds himself in reduced circumstances coping with life as a single father and writer. Leandro attends Dyer’s childhood Prep school and they become embroiled in a heady social circle which encompasses Russian oligarchs, intelligence officers, hedge fund managers and scientists. Basically he is an outsider in the orbit of wealthy and powerful people. After discovering that Leandro and another boy, Samir, are being bullied by the son of one of these people he meets. Samir’s father, Rustam Marvar., a nuclear physicist on academic exchange at Oxford University. Marvar is sitting in the school sandpit making marks which he hastily rubs out as Dyer approaches him. Dyer is intrigued by the man and tells him a story about the sandpit’s significance in his (Dyer’s) young life. The sandpit becomes an integral part of many aspects of the story, for good and for bad.
When Dyer comes across Marvar in the city in an agitated and fearful state he invites the scientist home for food and a drink. During the ensuing few hours Marvar unburdens himself and in the process Dyer becomes the possessor of revolutionary, potentially world-changing scientific knowledge which, when Marvar disappears, subsequently puts him in the centre of a political manhunt and a personal moral dilemma. As his fears mount and his inability to make a decision on what to do with Marvar’s confession spirals out of control, Dyer’s memories of school life and the friendship of one boy in particular influence some of his thinking as do his doubts about the wisdom of his decision not to publish his Brazilian scoop.His need to protect Leandro clashes with the knowledge that Marvar’s discoveries could both enhance and damage the world. He has to hand the knowledge to the right country, one which will use the discovery for the good of mankind. But is that possible?
The eventual resolution of Dyer’s dilemma is both surprising and clever. I didn’t see it coming but felt it was a satisfying answer to the problem. The aftermath of his decision was less believable. The notion that people who had been relentlessly pursuing Dyer, attacking him, searching his house, spying on him , interrogating him etc would just melt away in meek acceptance of a race lost seemed a little weak to me. My other slight criticism is that all of the major characters were men; women, for the most part, were sidelined as glamorous wives, mothers at the school gate, neighbours, waitresses, dodgy librarians. Having said that I think this novel deserves success and I think it would make a terrific book group choice.
The book is very well written and well paced. I was eager to keep reading and get to the denouement. This is the first time I have read any of this author’s work and I shall certainly seek out his other books.
Thanks to NetGalley and to Random House UK for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for a review.
John Dyer is an ex-journalist living in Oxford with his son Leandro, following a period where he was married to a Brazilian woman and lived in Rio. During his time in Brazil Dyer worked as a special correspondent for a British newspaper and investigated political scandals, One of those stories haunts him to the present day, partly because of the decision he made not to publish it to protect some of the people involved. Had he been right to allow crimes to go unpunished or was the moral high ground worth giving up his ‘scoop’ for?
After a divorce and custody battle, Dyer retreats to a small house in Oxford ; he finds himself in reduced circumstances coping with life as a single father and writer. Leandro attends Dyer’s childhood Prep school and they become embroiled in a heady social circle which encompasses Russian oligarchs, intelligence officers, hedge fund managers and scientists. Basically he is an outsider in the orbit of wealthy and powerful people. After discovering that Leandro and another boy, Samir, are being bullied by the son of one of these people he meets. Samir’s father, Rustam Marvar., a nuclear physicist on academic exchange at Oxford University. Marvar is sitting in the school sandpit making marks which he hastily rubs out as Dyer approaches him. Dyer is intrigued by the man and tells him a story about the sandpit’s significance in his (Dyer’s) young life. The sandpit becomes an integral part of many aspects of the story, for good and for bad.
When Dyer comes across Marvar in the city in an agitated and fearful state he invites the scientist home for food and a drink. During the ensuing few hours Marvar unburdens himself and in the process Dyer becomes the possessor of revolutionary, potentially world-changing scientific knowledge which, when Marvar disappears, subsequently puts him in the centre of a political manhunt and a personal moral dilemma. As his fears mount and his inability to make a decision on what to do with Marvar’s confession spirals out of control, Dyer’s memories of school life and the friendship of one boy in particular influence some of his thinking as do his doubts about the wisdom of his decision not to publish his Brazilian scoop.His need to protect Leandro clashes with the knowledge that Marvar’s discoveries could both enhance and damage the world. He has to hand the knowledge to the right country, one which will use the discovery for the good of mankind. But is that possible?
The eventual resolution of Dyer’s dilemma is both surprising and clever. I didn’t see it coming but felt it was a satisfying answer to the problem. The aftermath of his decision was less believable. The notion that people who had been relentlessly pursuing Dyer, attacking him, searching his house, spying on him , interrogating him etc would just melt away in meek acceptance of a race lost seemed a little weak to me. My other slight criticism is that all of the major characters were men; women, for the most part, were sidelined as glamorous wives, mothers at the school gate, neighbours, waitresses, dodgy librarians. Having said that I think this novel deserves success and I think it would make a terrific book group choice.
The book is very well written and well paced. I was eager to keep reading and get to the denouement. This is the first time I have read any of this author’s work and I shall certainly seek out his other books.
Thanks to NetGalley and to Random House UK for the chance to read this ARC in exchange for a review.
June 30, 2020
I have enjoyed previous books by this talented author but this was a thriller that just dod not thrill me too much.
Well written, impeccably researched and with interesting characters, the plot just did not do it for me and I found my attention wandering at times.
A shame but there was still much to enjoy in the author's technique.
Well written, impeccably researched and with interesting characters, the plot just did not do it for me and I found my attention wandering at times.
A shame but there was still much to enjoy in the author's technique.
June 25, 2020
The Sandpit by Nicholas Shakespeare is a bit of a slow burner but well worth persevering with.
John Dyer, an ex journalist, has returned from Brazil to Oxford with his son and enrolled him in the rep school that he had attended nearly 50 years ago. Life is dull and predictable in the middle class Oxford academic and school community until an Iranian, Rustum Marvar, parent entrusts John with the results of his research. When Marvar and his son disappear, the mystery unfolds at pace as different intelligence services and murky business interests encircle John and his son trying to find the potentially world changing secret.
The Sandpit is elegant, well observed and quite readable but overall a little unsatisfying.
John Dyer, an ex journalist, has returned from Brazil to Oxford with his son and enrolled him in the rep school that he had attended nearly 50 years ago. Life is dull and predictable in the middle class Oxford academic and school community until an Iranian, Rustum Marvar, parent entrusts John with the results of his research. When Marvar and his son disappear, the mystery unfolds at pace as different intelligence services and murky business interests encircle John and his son trying to find the potentially world changing secret.
The Sandpit is elegant, well observed and quite readable but overall a little unsatisfying.
June 18, 2020
I struggled to make a connection with The Sandpit. For me, it seemed somewhat disjointed and I could not get into it, though the espionage genre is one I most relish. It's easy to blame lockdown as my home-based activities have certainly ratcheted up so I have been distracted.
This was a slow build that just didn't hit me at the right time. A thoughtful, reflective novel we spend a lot of time with Dyer as he reflects on his past life as a married journalist in Brazil and his current state being a single parent to a boy in an expensive private school that may be beyond his means as he researches his next book. A case of bullying introduces him to the father of his son's classmate and that leads to more than expected. A good premise but one that I couldn't latch on to, sorry.
This was a slow build that just didn't hit me at the right time. A thoughtful, reflective novel we spend a lot of time with Dyer as he reflects on his past life as a married journalist in Brazil and his current state being a single parent to a boy in an expensive private school that may be beyond his means as he researches his next book. A case of bullying introduces him to the father of his son's classmate and that leads to more than expected. A good premise but one that I couldn't latch on to, sorry.
May 25, 2020
First-time reviewer for NetGalley, so please be gentle. I hovered between 3 and 4 stars for 'The Sandpit' by Nicholas Shakespeare. It took me a while to adjust to the author's pace and not until mid-way through did I really start to enjoy the plot. Unexpected observations, woven into rich and evocative memories, form the basis of this flowing, wraith-like narrative. John Dyer struggles to find himself as a single dad, recently settled back in the UK and watching his son battle with the same school-based issues as he did himself. Tense, curious relationships abound in this carefully crafted story and it's not until one of the parents discovers something earth-shatteringly important that we become engrossed in why and how John Dyer is faced with making difficult choices. The rich blend of nationalities, combined with John's own diverse upbringing and journalistic career, creates a beguiling menu of vocabulary and political literary references. Even at 95% I still wasn't sure which way it was going to go! Following some of the plot was a bit like grasping at smoke, and having to stop and look up words like 'bloviated' and 'maculate' I found a bit distracting. The writing is very professionally poised, although for me I found it a little over-wrought in places - one can only take so many comma-spliced sub-clauses before skipping over a sentence as not worth the trouble. Overall, I loved the central recurring metaphor of the sandpit of the title - a place to hide important things, somewhere to land softly and somewhere evocative of distant memories.
June 6, 2020
Nicholas Shakespeare's spy novel is both subtle & sophisticated but still packs a powerful punch. It has all the style & ellegance of vintage John le Carre & the evocative passion of a Graham Greene classic.
Imagine our world on the verge of extinction. Now the holy grail of challenges for scientists is to find out how to replicate the processes of the sun & stars on earth. It will solve our energy problems for ever.
Anyone who has read Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels will recognize the Jericho area of Oxford. Amidst the great libraries & places of learning a father must protect himself & his son, for he is the guardian of something every country in the world wants.
Although fear & tension permeates throughout the storytelling is singularly beautiful & moving.
Imagine our world on the verge of extinction. Now the holy grail of challenges for scientists is to find out how to replicate the processes of the sun & stars on earth. It will solve our energy problems for ever.
Anyone who has read Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels will recognize the Jericho area of Oxford. Amidst the great libraries & places of learning a father must protect himself & his son, for he is the guardian of something every country in the world wants.
Although fear & tension permeates throughout the storytelling is singularly beautiful & moving.
May 25, 2020
I didn’t really go for this book. It was full of stereotypes, the aloof Russian mother and her industrialist husband, the rather loud CIA agent and the hinted at stiff upper lip Spooks of the British Secret Service. Throw into this heady mix an Iranian nuclear scientist and an author writing about obscure Brazilian tribes, and you have this rather slow, meandering story about schoolboys being bullied, and a sandpit.
John Dyer is the author, divorced and living in Oxford with his son, Leandro. Rustum Marvar is the scientist, living with his son, Samir. His wife is being held captive in Iran, in order that any scientific discoveries, are reported back to the Iranians and not sold to the Americans. Both boys are being bullied, and their fathers form a friendship, in which they argue the rights and wrongs of the social classes, who has the right to nuclear power and is it right to give in to bullies.
I found the novel confusing. Most of the characters were male, the women were seen as decorous, haughty and cold. The sandpit is either for hiding secrets, or a approximation of an ostrich hiding its head in the sand in order not to deal with local problems instead of always wanting to put the world to rights. I didn’t like the conclusion, it wasn’t plausible, just conjecture. Not the authors best book.
John Dyer is the author, divorced and living in Oxford with his son, Leandro. Rustum Marvar is the scientist, living with his son, Samir. His wife is being held captive in Iran, in order that any scientific discoveries, are reported back to the Iranians and not sold to the Americans. Both boys are being bullied, and their fathers form a friendship, in which they argue the rights and wrongs of the social classes, who has the right to nuclear power and is it right to give in to bullies.
I found the novel confusing. Most of the characters were male, the women were seen as decorous, haughty and cold. The sandpit is either for hiding secrets, or a approximation of an ostrich hiding its head in the sand in order not to deal with local problems instead of always wanting to put the world to rights. I didn’t like the conclusion, it wasn’t plausible, just conjecture. Not the authors best book.
June 4, 2020
This novel is about a retired journalist who moves back to his hometown of Oxford having spent many years abroad and tries to make a new life for himself and his young son. I found the start painfully slow, though thankfully the pace picked up about a third of the way through when the main protagonist unwittingly finds himself caught up in a dangerous drama of espionage and suspicion. The premise is very interesting and there's insightful thinking about the surrounding politics, but unfortunately I didn’t really gel with the narrative style which I found overly tangential so I kept losing interest in what was otherwise a fascinating plot involving an Iranian nuclear physicist who may or may not have made a scientific breakthrough and the terrible dilemma faced by his involuntary ally.
May 21, 2020
This is a brilliant book. Shakespeare is a wordsmith, apparent in every carefully chosen word. The words paint a picture that start off gently, then pull you in to the tight plot. John Dyer, recently returned to Oxford from Brazil, leads a quiet life and looking after his young son. However, a supposedly chance meeting on the sidelines of a football pitch, drags him into a taut game of cat and mouse. Rustam Marvar, an Iranian scientist, tells Dyer about an earth shattering scientific discovery and then disappears. This leads to a story which intrigued and excites in breathtaking measure. The characters are complex and beautifully written, each with their own diverse personalities. I felt as if I knew them personally. In a couple of places there are some scientific explanations which could slow the plot down. However, these are handled well and were interesting. Would I read another book by this author? Very definitely. Would I recommend this one? Unreservedly. A beautifully written book which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book.
Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book.
May 14, 2020
A thriller set in Oxford with the former journalist John Dyer at the centre of the story.
Nicholas Shakespeare utilises his considerable lexicon and uses his word palette to construct numerous exquisite sentences. This is not a fast paced thriller with explosions left right and centre (there are none) but manages to convey a real world feel to a conundrum that has massive repercussions for the human race. Would you end up making the decision Dyer did?
The tale is not just confined to Oxford as a number of different countries are mentioned and some insightful social commentary. The use of an English public school to "launder" children from other shores is one that is indicative of a world that has undergone significant changes over the 30 years since Dyer was at the school his son Leandro ended up attending.
The book is unlike anything I have read for some time and is well worth your attention.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
Nicholas Shakespeare utilises his considerable lexicon and uses his word palette to construct numerous exquisite sentences. This is not a fast paced thriller with explosions left right and centre (there are none) but manages to convey a real world feel to a conundrum that has massive repercussions for the human race. Would you end up making the decision Dyer did?
The tale is not just confined to Oxford as a number of different countries are mentioned and some insightful social commentary. The use of an English public school to "launder" children from other shores is one that is indicative of a world that has undergone significant changes over the 30 years since Dyer was at the school his son Leandro ended up attending.
The book is unlike anything I have read for some time and is well worth your attention.
Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.
May 18, 2020
I have read a book by Nicholas Shakespeare before; and continue to be impressed with his writing. In this suspense thriller, John Dyer is an ex-Phoenix prep school pupil and ex-foreign correspondent journalist. He is now researching a book whilst having his son educated at the prep school. it has vastly changed since he was there: with most parents immensely rich.
When one of the other parents goes missing following a confession to Dyer, there begins a web of intrigues with Dyer being central to them.
The novel keeps you guessing and there is a glorious conclusion on the last page.
The characters are well constructed and I couldn't guess what was happening. A really good read.
Thank you to Netgalley for a pre-publication copy in exchange for a review.
When one of the other parents goes missing following a confession to Dyer, there begins a web of intrigues with Dyer being central to them.
The novel keeps you guessing and there is a glorious conclusion on the last page.
The characters are well constructed and I couldn't guess what was happening. A really good read.
Thank you to Netgalley for a pre-publication copy in exchange for a review.
June 1, 2020
Phew, I did persevere until the end in the hope that there would be some plot development, how wrong I was. It felt more like a history of privilege and public education in Oxford than “contemporary thriller”. In fact it wasn’t thrilling at all.
I did not realise who the author was until I googled the name. I think the style of writing is more in keeping with non-fiction than a mystery or thriller.
I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I did not realise who the author was until I googled the name. I think the style of writing is more in keeping with non-fiction than a mystery or thriller.
I received a free copy of this novel from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
November 12, 2023
How disappointing this book was in both content and writing style. It seems semi autobiographical and rather lazily put together. I would highly recommend any other book by Nicholas Shakespeare but, this was a COVID cobbled together effort, no doubt to pay the bills.
Don't judge him by this book, he normally writes a hugely well researched book that is written beautifully. Would highly recommend, his other books including, 'Six Minutes in May', 'Bruce Chatwin', 'Snowleg'.
We all have off days. Would definitely bin this in your mind and move on to another one.
Don't judge him by this book, he normally writes a hugely well researched book that is written beautifully. Would highly recommend, his other books including, 'Six Minutes in May', 'Bruce Chatwin', 'Snowleg'.
We all have off days. Would definitely bin this in your mind and move on to another one.
July 29, 2020
The Sandpit (2020)
Nicholas Shakespeare
Review copy supplied by PenguinRandomHouse
This elegant, intensely readable novel begins with Shula Marvar, an Iranian woman who with her baby daughter has been left behind in Tehran as a hostage when her physicist husband is working in Britain. She knows she’s under surveillance by the government -- “...even the most neutral gesture, like unpinning her hair, would become data.” Then a politically charged text from her husband brings the watchers to hammer on her door. One fears for her. One is meant to.
The story then moves to Oxford. John Dyer was the framing device allowing the long narrative of The Dancer Upstairs, to which The Sandpit is a kind of sequel – and it does help to have read the former book. Now, some years later, widowed then divorced, Dyer has left his job as the doyen of reporters on South American affairs. Family money, and having “saved for a rainy day, of which Oxford proved to be drearily full”, allows him to send his eleven-year-old son Leandro – a charming, lovingly drawn child – to Dyer’s now very expensive old prep school, The Phoenix. In Dyer’s day its pupils were the children of middle-class British professionals. Now it’s the ‛in’ place for the newly rich internationals, “the powerful and pervasive freemasonry [of] international finance, law and politics.” Russian and Chinese billionaires, hedge fund managers and so on rely on the Phoenix to ‛launder’ their children.
One of the Russian boys (whose mother Dyer rather fancies) has been bullying Leandro and his Iranian friend Samir because they are better at football than he is. Waiting for the outcome of the children’s meeting with the headmaster, Dyer meets Samir’s father, Rustum Marvar, at the sandpit that holds one of Dyer’s most lasting memories of his school days. Dyer and Marvar become friends, and soon Marvar reveals to Dyer that he has found the Holy Grail of physics, a usable form of nuclear fusion that will/can/should change, or in the wrong hands destroy, the world. But whose are the right or wrong hands? This is the dilemma at the heart of the novel, a dilemma fleshed out by an all too convincingly horrible description of the torture Shula may undergo/be undergoing. The novel is set in very recent times, after the Iran Nuclear Deal and with a bungling American president. Who can Marvar trust with his discovery? And anyway, is it a real discovery, or is Marvar delusional or simply mistaken? (And is the author pulling his readers’ legs?)
Then Marvar and his son disappear. Dyer is left with a scribbled algorithm explaining Marvar’s discovery. And now everyone is after Dyer – and it’s notable that although Marvar tells Dyer that no one knows of his work, the international spy/spook/political world, centred on Oxford and now on Dyer, all seem to have a fair idea of what’s at stake. In a very funny passage with Dyer’s old schoolmate the diplomat/spook Updark (the author has great fun with him, giving him that name, a habit of using irrelevant Latin tags, and a disfiguring facial rash), the latter’s associate spells out the whole Middle East situation and what the (unnamed but clearly Trump) American president might or might not do to make things worse. All Dyer can do is stonewall, deny all knowledge of Marvar’s work and present whereabouts, tease Updark and his CIA buddy, and try to work out what the hell he’s to do with that dangerous algorithm.
A kind of deus ex machina solves or postpones the dilemma. Or, put another way, Dyer passes the buck to a fairly unbelievable character, yet another old school chum who’s suddenly reappeared.
Without spoilers, that’s all that can be said of the plot of The Sandpit. The book has a Le Carre/Deighton feel – wet, rather miserable Oxford in winter, seductions, spying – but it is not a thriller. It leaves questions in the reader’s mind: why, other than for reasons of narrative causality, was Marvar, a rather second-rank physicist, allowed to go to Britain? Is he a spy, a jihadi, or is it just because he can leave wife and child as hostages, even though there is little for him to spy on and report back to Tehran? How seriously can everything be taken? The atmosphere, Dyer’s mundane private life, Oxford in winter, are all beautifully rendered. A long passage in which Dyer teaches his son fly-fishing (if that’s the right term) is superbly written but probably only of interest to its practitioners, unless it’s read as a metaphor for the people and events (some from The Dancer Upstairs) in Dyer’s life, and his present predicament with Marvar and the chance-met Miranda with whom he may be falling in love. (And who has some rather odd dialogue.)
Another question is, why there are so many abrupt changes from past to present tense, since the changes don’t help to differentiate a present situation from a memory or possible event? And how can Dyer hide a note between pages 223 and 224 of a book? Authorial slip of the pen, or – the spy-novel feel of the book brings on this kind of paranoia – a message not to take anything seriously?
Although I found Part 4 of the novel less cohesive than the rest, overall this is an excellent book that stands up well to re-reading and lingers in your mind. There is a lot of delightful imagery, some laugh-out-loud jokes, and beautifully drawn, convincing characters. And let’s believe in Dyer’s ending to the Marvars’ story.
Meredith Whitford
Nicholas Shakespeare
Review copy supplied by PenguinRandomHouse
This elegant, intensely readable novel begins with Shula Marvar, an Iranian woman who with her baby daughter has been left behind in Tehran as a hostage when her physicist husband is working in Britain. She knows she’s under surveillance by the government -- “...even the most neutral gesture, like unpinning her hair, would become data.” Then a politically charged text from her husband brings the watchers to hammer on her door. One fears for her. One is meant to.
The story then moves to Oxford. John Dyer was the framing device allowing the long narrative of The Dancer Upstairs, to which The Sandpit is a kind of sequel – and it does help to have read the former book. Now, some years later, widowed then divorced, Dyer has left his job as the doyen of reporters on South American affairs. Family money, and having “saved for a rainy day, of which Oxford proved to be drearily full”, allows him to send his eleven-year-old son Leandro – a charming, lovingly drawn child – to Dyer’s now very expensive old prep school, The Phoenix. In Dyer’s day its pupils were the children of middle-class British professionals. Now it’s the ‛in’ place for the newly rich internationals, “the powerful and pervasive freemasonry [of] international finance, law and politics.” Russian and Chinese billionaires, hedge fund managers and so on rely on the Phoenix to ‛launder’ their children.
One of the Russian boys (whose mother Dyer rather fancies) has been bullying Leandro and his Iranian friend Samir because they are better at football than he is. Waiting for the outcome of the children’s meeting with the headmaster, Dyer meets Samir’s father, Rustum Marvar, at the sandpit that holds one of Dyer’s most lasting memories of his school days. Dyer and Marvar become friends, and soon Marvar reveals to Dyer that he has found the Holy Grail of physics, a usable form of nuclear fusion that will/can/should change, or in the wrong hands destroy, the world. But whose are the right or wrong hands? This is the dilemma at the heart of the novel, a dilemma fleshed out by an all too convincingly horrible description of the torture Shula may undergo/be undergoing. The novel is set in very recent times, after the Iran Nuclear Deal and with a bungling American president. Who can Marvar trust with his discovery? And anyway, is it a real discovery, or is Marvar delusional or simply mistaken? (And is the author pulling his readers’ legs?)
Then Marvar and his son disappear. Dyer is left with a scribbled algorithm explaining Marvar’s discovery. And now everyone is after Dyer – and it’s notable that although Marvar tells Dyer that no one knows of his work, the international spy/spook/political world, centred on Oxford and now on Dyer, all seem to have a fair idea of what’s at stake. In a very funny passage with Dyer’s old schoolmate the diplomat/spook Updark (the author has great fun with him, giving him that name, a habit of using irrelevant Latin tags, and a disfiguring facial rash), the latter’s associate spells out the whole Middle East situation and what the (unnamed but clearly Trump) American president might or might not do to make things worse. All Dyer can do is stonewall, deny all knowledge of Marvar’s work and present whereabouts, tease Updark and his CIA buddy, and try to work out what the hell he’s to do with that dangerous algorithm.
A kind of deus ex machina solves or postpones the dilemma. Or, put another way, Dyer passes the buck to a fairly unbelievable character, yet another old school chum who’s suddenly reappeared.
Without spoilers, that’s all that can be said of the plot of The Sandpit. The book has a Le Carre/Deighton feel – wet, rather miserable Oxford in winter, seductions, spying – but it is not a thriller. It leaves questions in the reader’s mind: why, other than for reasons of narrative causality, was Marvar, a rather second-rank physicist, allowed to go to Britain? Is he a spy, a jihadi, or is it just because he can leave wife and child as hostages, even though there is little for him to spy on and report back to Tehran? How seriously can everything be taken? The atmosphere, Dyer’s mundane private life, Oxford in winter, are all beautifully rendered. A long passage in which Dyer teaches his son fly-fishing (if that’s the right term) is superbly written but probably only of interest to its practitioners, unless it’s read as a metaphor for the people and events (some from The Dancer Upstairs) in Dyer’s life, and his present predicament with Marvar and the chance-met Miranda with whom he may be falling in love. (And who has some rather odd dialogue.)
Another question is, why there are so many abrupt changes from past to present tense, since the changes don’t help to differentiate a present situation from a memory or possible event? And how can Dyer hide a note between pages 223 and 224 of a book? Authorial slip of the pen, or – the spy-novel feel of the book brings on this kind of paranoia – a message not to take anything seriously?
Although I found Part 4 of the novel less cohesive than the rest, overall this is an excellent book that stands up well to re-reading and lingers in your mind. There is a lot of delightful imagery, some laugh-out-loud jokes, and beautifully drawn, convincing characters. And let’s believe in Dyer’s ending to the Marvars’ story.
Meredith Whitford
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