Note: This is an older review to introduce Substackers to our house style (TCTIN). A majority of the books we review will be advanced review copies (ARCs) given to our parent companies, everafterbooks.uk and theubergroup.org.
The coolest thing I noticed about Patrick Worrall's 2022 debut novel The Partisan is the unhurried elegance of his prose. When an elderly Nazi is finally found and executed by a female assassin in the prologue, he simply says "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania." Worrall does not deign to over-explain the reference, and this expectation of literacy from his audience remains throughout. His prose is luxuriant, dense, and high-brow, which will be exceedingly enjoyable to a literary-fiction leaning audience.
Unfortunately, I believe Worrall was mis-marketed, at least for his US release. He was blurbed by and pitch for fans of Lee Child, whereas even the most cursory glance at the first few pages makes it clear he wants to be the new John le Carré. On the American version of both Amazon and Goodreads, he has very mixed reviews, and I tragically agree with both the good and bad ones.
Worrall is deeply in the stylistic camp of British 'espionage fiction' rather than American 'spy thriller.' He writes very good character work as well as the particular flavour of attention to human detail that Le Carré does - his prose is a great match - but he fails to have a single overarching hook, which holds all Le Carré novels together. There is always a core question established early in Le Carré novels that provides the bridging tension (the terminology coined by Donald Maass in 'Writing the Breakout Novel'). What makes Le Carré's long asides interesting is that the reader knows it's all relevant, if teasingly slow and luxuriant observant of the surroundings.
Worrall, unfortunately, provides no such hook. He starts two separate stories about two unrelated protagonists and fails to clearly establish their connection to each other, or any central plot hook. Each of their sections is a deep dive into their universe with a lot of nested flashbacks that aren't yet earned - the reader is not yet curious about their past - and Worrall switches abruptly back and forth without any sense of connection between the two.
If you've ever met a writer before, you'll know what he's trying to do (although this is more commonly a problem seen in high fantasy than spy thriller.) It's rude to suggest that he 'has no point' - of course he does. We know it's one of those 'sprawling' worlds that will surely come together after a David Eddings sized shelf of sequels. Surely, he will produce an eventual companion akin to "the Rivan Codex" documenting all 20 years worth of detailed Cold war research and planning notes. I'm absolutely certain he did it on purpose, but it's no fun. The Partisan does not tear along the way one tears along through a Le Carré novel because one is curious what will happen next. The reading experience feels like memorizing things for a test that you know are going to come up later. I find with every POV shift I have to google the plot summary again like a study guide to remind myself who the heck this is and why they're important and what they did last and what I'm supposed to be paying attention to. I know it will all be relevant eventually. If the teacher has been droning on for six months about something, you know it must surely be on the final exam.
Matt Parker and Trey Stone have an axiom: "it's not this happened, then that happened. It's because this happened, therefore that happened."
Le Carré does this every time. One character's established central question runs through the entirety of the novel, pulling us through every detour with interest. Worrall clearly wants to do this, but failed to put the connection and the question front and center, so instead it feels like wading through a lot of really well written backstory trying to help a promising author with their draft.
And his mixed reviews on Amazon and Goodreads basically say that. Either they LOVE it for the depth of research, the quality prose, the deep characters, the epic scope.... or they are bored senseless by how he seems to drone on about backstory with no central point. And it's tragic, with his drubbing of reviews on his debut, and his mis-marketing to fans of Lee Child instead of John Le Carré, how this may prevent him from truly catching on and becoming a cultural landmark. He is a good writer who was very, very close to becoming one of the greats.
As a minor detail, Worrall's prose has a heightened, stylized sense of being self-consciously a 'period drama.' Le Carré's work has a sense of era just because it's old - it was written more or less contemporary to itself, published just a few years after the era in question and it reads as genuine - Le Carré is going on about the mundane details in the typical world without thinking about the era because it's his present tense. Worrell, by contrast, is purposely putting on the historicity. Like a young actor learning to speak in a mid-Atlantic accent in order to sound like an old-timey radio commercial, it's well-executed, but will always sound like the grandson trying to impersonate his grandfather's dialect.
Do read it if you enjoy sprawling literary historical fiction. Just don't go in expecting a 'spy thriller.' Also, I suggest not re-reading any Le Carré within at least twelve months of reading The Partisan, as to not spoil the experience by comparison.
______________________________________________________________THE PARTISAN
It is the summer of 1961 and the brutal Cold War between East and West is becoming ever more perilous.
Two young prodigies from either side of the Iron Curtain, Yulia and Michael, meet at a chess tournament in London. They don't know it, but they are about to compete in the deadliest game ever played.
Shadowing them is Greta, a ruthless resistance fighter who grew up the hard way in the forests of Lithuania, but who is now hunting down some of the most dangerous men in the world.
Men who are also on the radar of Vassily, perhaps the Soviet Union's greatest spymaster. A man of cunning and influence, Vassily was Yulia's minder during her visit to the West, but even he could not foresee the consequences of her meeting Michael.
When the world is accelerating towards an inevitable and catastrophic conflict, what can just four people do to prevent it?
Epic in scope, The Partisan is a thrill ride like no other, taking you from the hallowed halls of Cambridge to the grimy depths of the Moscow underworld, from 1960s London to the Eastern Front in the Second World War.
Buy now