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Siro (1991)

by David Ignatius(Favorite Author)

3.82 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0393346307 (ISBN13: 9780393346305)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: This story follows Anna Barnes through her graduation from CIA training in a rundown motel room in Arlington where she'd been trained alone / a class-of-one; to her first assignment which begins with an informer claiming to have knowledge of an assignation plot against the President of the United States and leads her from her NOC (Non Official Cover) post in London to Turkey and then to Rockville MD, and eventually through Russia to the off-limit Armenian borderland near Mt Arat; and finally, her subsequent dismissal/resignation from the agency. This short-lived career of Anna Barnes is a study in where and how the "Old Gods" of the CIA go wrong and whether a new cohort can be persuaded to take another path, or whether they will as Anna does here emulate the old guard and... more burn out hard and fast. In this vein, the character of Anna's aunt/family friend Margaret Houghton is an effective character both being a seed in Anna's initial attraction to the agency - "her mysterious Aunt Margaret who worked up river and brought exotic gifts" - and also in a way a symbol of everything Anna's adult self entering the service doesn't want to be - a woman agent. Her aunt is described in these uncharitable terms: "Margaret was a trailblazer, yes. But she had worked mostly at headquarters, mostly in administration . . . When she finally made station chief, it was in one of those nondescript little countries of Western Europe where the biggest threat to national security was that somebody might steal the secret recipe for making the national brand of cheese." And with this characterization of Margaret, Anna blows off all of her advice on the strengths of women in service and how to play into those, as well as disregarding her warnings about the Old Gods and their dying empire: "But that is not the way the business works. Not unless you're a Nazi."I do really love that ultimately when Anna is deep doo-doo, it's Aunt Margaret who saves the day. And that when Anna has "gone to seed" back in the dead world that is academia, hiding from her recent tragic experience, it's Aunt Margaret who hunts her down and tries to get her to give it a go again, telling her that now she'd actually make a good agent, whereas before she was a disaster waiting to happen . . . Aunt Margaret reminds me of a Medical Anthropology Professor (she'd been a stand-in for Margaret Mead back in the day) I had as an undergraduate who lectured over at the medical school as well (and had for decades). One day she told our class that she'd devised a very simple solution to stop sexual harassment at the medical school. The female students had learned quickly that they could confide in her when the male professors were hitting on them and she'd take their wives aside at the next cocktail party she attended and tell them. The harassment would stop the very next day. No need for mock or real legal proceedings in or outside of the school. My younger self, thought this was anti-feminist somehow, and terrible - she should have had them take it to whatever committee dealt with that. My older self thinks it's gutsy and brilliant. For whatever reason, I couldn't stop picturing Anna's Aunt Margaret as some sort of sister-in-spirit to this other woman. Anna's sex life is also interesting to follow and mirrors the desires, tensions, and swings from one extreme to another, that this character is going through in her life at large. I'm not sure exactly how he does it, but in this book and the others of his I've read where there are sex scenes, Ignatius always manages to pull them off without irritating me, no matter how far the character's actions are from what I would like to happen in my own life. I'm not a total prude (I think, I hope), but sometimes male writers description of sexuality, and female sexuality in particular, bugs me a lot and I feel like "Yeah - you can tell a man wrote this. Grrr." So, even though I can't describe the hows or whys that make this book seems different to me, I think it's worth mentioning here anyway. Perhaps other female readers might feel the same way? [For a counter example, the sex scenes in Orhan Pamuk's Snow bothered me. And I thought, "Yes, you can tell a man wrote this. Grrr."] Having spent a fair bit of time in Turkey myself, the descriptions in this book were both accurate even given the passage of time since this narrative is playing out in 1979 and not the period I'm familiar with (2005-2014)[examples: "virginity" discussion, locations like Topkapi Palace and Polonezkoy ring true]; and enlightening ["the only Americans likely to be stumbling around Kadikoy on a weekday afternoon were drug dealers or spies." Might be true, but I had no idea! This line is especially funny for me since I had a friend who used to live in this neighborhood. Whoops. Haha.] In short, Ignatius knows his stuff. This book is a richly written thriller with enough characters and places to hold one's interest, but not so many that the narrative becomes confusing or shallow at any point. The book is also so well researched that there are enticing little gems of knowledge sprinkled throughout that made me want to look up some nonfiction books after I'd finished reading it. [For example, (1)the idea that Moscow is a vast Skinner box that is rigged to condition the behavior of foreigners and Soviet citizens alike; (2) that the KGB is running the mosques; (3) the network of the Young Turks; and (4) that Byzantium is the place where spying was practically invented and that at one time half the population was employed to spy on the other half. Overall a great read, I highly recommend it!As far as future work of his goes, I'd be really interested in seeing another novel with Margaret as a central character (or someone like her). Anna (poor Anna!) not sure, or not so much - felt like her story had concluded, though I suppose if we were to visit her 20 years later she might have by that time grappled with her big mistake and turned into another sort of interesting character with all kinds of other troubles to face . . . so maybe.
review 2: Story is not just action - full of the thinking that goes on in a spy vs spy setting, characters to love and some to hate, great descriptions of Turkey and former Soviet republics in a time when the cold war was still alive and well. Foreshadows some of today's issues in the region, including how the Afghanistan resistance could have been nurtured. Hard to believe it is fiction some times, due to the realism of the characters and settings and today's political scene in the region. less

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