Book Review Outside Reading: March 21

Book Review Outside Reading

“A Thriller Revisits the Cambridge Spies” by Jacob Heilbrunn

A review of The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming

The New York Times March 18, 2011

            In “A Thriller Revisits the Cambridge Spies,” Jacob Heilbrunn reviews the novel The Trinity Six by Charles Cumming.  In this work, Cumming suggests that there existed a sixth Cambridge spy that helped the five known spies who betrayed Britain during the Cold War.  Heilbrunn’s use of rhetoric allows him to offer an admiring, and yet somewhat skeptical, review of Cumming’s work.

            Heilbrunn’s diction suggests that Cumming’s novel is both praiseworthy and mediocre.  He employs words such as “lively,” “thriller,” and “notable” to describe The Trinity Six, but he also chooses words like “hallucinatory” and “slackens.”  The opposing nature of these words suggests that Heilbrunn does not admire nor mock Cumming’s novel; his diction functions to suggest that Cumming’s novel is praiseworthy in and of itself, but because there are so many novels similar to it, Heilbrunn also relays that the book is one-of-several “accounts of the Cambridge Spies” (Heilbrunn 3).  However, these contradictory portrayals of Cumming’s work are fairly discreet and thus serve as Heilbrunn’s weakness.  His weak and oxymoronic review hinders his ability to communicate how he actually views Cumming.

            However, Heilbrunn’s portrayal of The Trinity Six is not entirely contradictory.  He uses detail to commend Cumming for his work by stating that his “view acutely mirrors the sour mood in Britain” (Heilbrunn 3).  Heilbrunn then goes on to describe the historical events that Cumming correctly chronicles, and thus employs New Historicist criticism.  This emphasis on history reminds me of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in which understanding the history of antebellum America is vital to understanding the basic premise of the book.  Heilbrunn does summarize some of the basic history in his review as well, so those that are unfamiliar with the Cambridge spies can grasp the essential nature of their betrayal; this is his biggest strength.

            Heilbrunn’s syntax allows him to craft an academic voice that the reader can trust.  His use of complex sentence structures creates a formality that infuses his review with reliability.  This formality would be entirely appropriate for an AP essay; Heilbrunn completely deconstructs Cumming’s novel and thus can effectively communicate how he views it as a literary work.