{"product_id":"trapeze-isbn-9781635425079","title":"Trapeze","description":"\u003cb\u003eA propulsive novel of World War II espionage by the author of \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebest seller \u003ci\u003eThe Glass Room\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBarely out of school and doing her bit for the British war effort, Marian Sutro has one quality that makes her stand out—she is a native French speaker. It is this that attracts the attention of the SOE, the Special Operations Executive, which trains agents to operate in occupied Europe. Drawn into this strange, secret world at the age of nineteen, she finds herself undergoing commando training, attending a “school for spies,” and ultimately, one autumn night, parachuting into France from an RAF bomber to join the WORDSMITH resistance network.\u003cbr\u003e   But there’s more to Marian’s mission than meets the eye of her SOE controllers; her mission has been hijacked by another secret organization that wants her to go to Paris and persuade a friend—a research physicist—to join the Allied war effort. The outcome could affect the whole course of the war.\u003cbr\u003e   A fascinating blend of fact and fiction, \u003ci\u003eTrapeze \u003c\/i\u003eis both an old-fashioned adventure story and a modern exploration of a young woman’s growth into adulthood. There is violence, and there is love. There is death and betrayal, deception and revelation. But above all there is Marian Sutro, an ordinary young woman who, like her real-life counterparts in the SOE, did the most extraordinary things at a time when the ordinary was not enough.“The book is full of the fascinating minutiae of espionage–aircraft drops, code-cracking, double agents, scrambled radio messages. There’s a romance, too, though Mawer isn’t one to dwell on his characters’ inner lives, and Marian, who is ‘trained to keep secrets,’ remains frustratingly unknowable. Still, Mawer exhibits a great feeling for suspense, and produces memorable episodes in dark alleyways, deserted cafes, and shadowy corners of Père Lachaise.” —\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Trapeze\u003c\/i\u003e...is a stark, focused adventure...[a] skillfully and intelligently executed thriller.” —\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“There are many shades of Graham Greene here…[\u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e] delivers its story with the same delicate, stropped-razor deadliness that creeps up on you like Harry Lime in the shadows, nastily irresistible.” —\u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In a perfect combination of intrigue, romance, betrayal and incredible bravery, Mawer has, once again, as he did in \u003ci\u003eThe Glass Room\u003c\/i\u003e, told a story that is factual and fictional with the edges blurred just so.” —\u003ci\u003eSeattle Times\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \"\u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e…is a stark, focused adventure…Although narrower in scope than Mawer's earlier work, \u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e is no less rich and provocative. And in Marian he's created a marvelous heroine.”\u003ci\u003e —Newsday\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Much-lauded British author Mawer vividly describes the deprivations in a war occupied country and its once-vibrant capital and provides testimony to the courage of countless members of the French Resistance. But this is primarily a masterfully crafted homage to the 53 extraordinary women of the French section of the SOE on whose actual exploits the novel is based.  With its lyrical yet spare prose and heart-pounding climax, this is a compelling historical thriller of the highest order.” —\u003ci\u003eBooklist \u003c\/i\u003e(starred review) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Like the best historical fiction, the book is very much of its intended time, full of clandestine tidbits and Churchillian attitude, but not to the exclusion of the human elements that are required of any compelling story.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Daily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this literary thriller, inspired by real female agents during WWII, an Englishwoman is recruited into a dangerous espionage mission.” —Karen Holt, \u003ci\u003eO Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “A fascinating WWII novel based in fact…Coming-of-age story meets old-fashioned tale of adventure.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Where his last Booker-shortlisted novel,\u003ci\u003e The Glass Room\u003c\/i\u003e, gave an expansive overview of a whole country over the course of 50 years, Mawer’s latest is a more intense and tightly-focused story. Radiating an atmosphere of tense suspicion and claustrophobia, it is utterly gripping from start to finish.” —\u003ci\u003eDaily Mail\u003c\/i\u003e (UK)\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Simon Mawer is an elegant writer and a meticulous researcher…[\u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e] combines a stirring adventure with a potent reflection on the allure of desire, duty and danger.” —\u003ci\u003eLondon Evening Standard \u003c\/i\u003e(UK)\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Mawer’s crisp prose, erudite science and subtle bilingual details raise \u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e above the genre riff-raff.” —\u003ci\u003eShelf Awareness\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Incorporating many of the finest elements of spy thrillers and even romance novels, \u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e is a fascinating tale of and homage to the resistance fighters and members of the SOE.” —\u003ci\u003eNew York Journal of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Readers will be stunned as they read the final pages of this fast-paced and exhilarating historical novel about a young woman’s path to maturity.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Columbus Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “\u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e sets a thriller-like pace, and Mawer writes compellingly about the deprivations of wartime France as well as the everyday dangers of occupied Paris…Though very much a story about the intricacies of the spy network, \u003ci\u003eTrapeze\u003c\/i\u003e is also about a young woman who is called upon to do something extraordinary and is thus forever changed.” —\u003ci\u003eBookpage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Mawer’s representations of England and France—both rural and urban—are at once eerily quiet and bustling with confusion, as he illustrates the fateful moments in a war and in a young woman’s life.” —\u003ci\u003eHistorical Novel Society\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A brilliant and engaging blend of fact and fiction, this novel will hook readers from the start and amaze them with a story of adventure, betrayal, growing into adulthood and love.” —\u003ci\u003eKSL\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eSimon Mawer \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebest-selling novel \u003ci\u003eThe Glass Room \u003c\/i\u003e(Other Press), which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. His previous novels\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003einclude \u003ci\u003eThe Fall \u003c\/i\u003e(winner of the Boardman Tasker Prize), \u003ci\u003eThe Gospel of Judas, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Mendel’s Dwarf \u003c\/i\u003e(long-listed for the Man Booker Prize). English by birth, he has made\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eItaly his home for more than thirty years. www.simonmawer.comThe plane tilts, turning in a wide circle, engines roaring. Up in the cockpit she can imagine the pilot searching, searching, straining to see the tiny glimmers of torchlight, which means that they are expected down there in the moonlight. A light comes on in the roof of the fuselage, a single, unblinking red eye. The dispatcher gives the thumbs up. “HE’S FOUND IT!”\u003cbr\u003e   There’s a note of admiration and triumph in his shout, as though this proves what wonders his crew are able to perform, to come all this way in the darkness, eight hundred miles from home, and find a pinprick of light in a blackened world. He attaches the static line from their parachutes to the rail on the roof of the fuselage and double checks the buckles of their harnesses. The aircraft makes one pass over the dropping zone and she can hear the sound of the containers leaving the bomb bay and see them flash beneath, their canopies billowing open. Then the machine banks and turns and steadies for the second run. “YOUR TURN NOW!” the dispatcher yells at the pair of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e   “Merde, alors!” \u003c\/i\u003eBenoit mouths to Marian, and grins. He looks infuriatingly unconcerned, as though this is all in the normal run of things, as though as a matter of course people throw themselves out of aircraft over unknown countryside in the middle of the night.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e   Merde alors!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe sits with her feet out through the hole, in the slipstream, like sitting on a rock with your feet in the water, the current pulling at them. Benoit is right behind her. She can feel him against the bulk of her parachute pack, as though the pack has become a sensitive extension of her own body. She says a prayer, a baby prayer pulled out of childhood memory, but nevertheless a prayer and therefore a sign of weakness: God, please look after me. Which means, perhaps, Father look after me, or Maman look after me, but whatever it means she doesn’t want any sign of weakness now, not at this moment of deliverance with the slipstream rushing past her and the void beneath, while the dispatcher gives her a nod that’s meant to inspire confidence but only brings with it the horror of superstition, that you must never congratulate yourself, never applaud, never even wish anyone good luck. \u003ci\u003eMerde alors!\u003c\/i\u003e That was all you ever said. \u003ci\u003eMerde alors! \u003c\/i\u003eShe thinks, a prayer of a kind, as the red light blinks off and the green light comes on and the dispatcher shouts “GO!” and there’s his hand on her back and she lets go, plunging from the rough comfort of the fuselage into the raging darkness over France.","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304391528677,"sku":"NP9781635425079","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781635425079.jpg?v=1767742913","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/trapeze-isbn-9781635425079","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}