(Extract from the Guardian review, Sept 2018)
Transcription explores the lies and inventions that make up a life, particularly during a time of war when all prior certainties – including identity – have been upended. Juliet Armstrong has more than her share of such lies. Recruited to the Secret Service at the beginning of the war, she has learned to shift between various names and personae. “And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the ‘real’ Juliet. But then what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?” The inventions she inhabits are created for her by others, mostly her male handlers at MI5, all of whom appear to be living fiendishly complex double or triple lives themselves. In the aftermath of war, trying to locate the source of an anonymous threat, Juliet finds the multiple deceptions she has practised, and had practised upon her, accumulate to create a creeping paranoia in which “things are seldom what they seem’.
In 1940, Juliet is employed by MI5 to transcribe recordings of meetings in a bugged flat between a group of fascist sympathisers and a man named Godfrey Toby, whom the fifth columnists believe is a Gestapo agent but is actually a British spy monitoring his informers. Toby (who is based on a historical character) is a shadowy figure whose fate becomes entangled with Juliet’s through unexpected tragedy.
The second strand of the narrative, set in 1950, begins when Juliet – now working for the BBC – encounters Toby again, and his reappearance seems to trigger a series of reckonings for the lies she told during the war, and is possibly still telling.
This idea of consequences, and of every choice exacting a price later, runs through Transcription. Juliet’s inner commentary channels a British stoical humour, finding the absurd in the tragic even as she upbraids herself for being too “flippant”.
The main story is sandwiched between two short sections set in 1981, as Juliet lies dying she thinks back over her life. The year is significant; a royal wedding is imminent, and with it a new groundswell of patriotism: “... a sacrificial virgin was being prepared somewhere up the road, to satisfy the need for pomp and circumstance. Union Jacks draped everywhere.”
The question of sacrifice in the name of patriotism is one every character has to face, even as they must also define – then as now – what “England” and its values mean to them.
Minster Readers’ comments
We found this a complicated book to follow, set as it was in 3 different periods of time. It was difficult to keep track of the different men and their secret roles. It was also tricky to fathom which of them Juliet actually worked for. Although believable as a character, she too was a complex character: naïve, husband hunter or idealistic patriot? By the end of the book we wondered how reliable a narrator she had been throughout the story: she certainly by her own admission made up some of the transcriptions. She had, however, played her part in breaking up a group of Nazi sympathisers even at the cost of lives – one of them innocent.
Opinions varied on whether it was a complete page- turner or totally unmemorable. We agreed that there were some very amusing parts – especially in Juliet’s asides.
Scores : Average – 6 Range: 4-8
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