1. “The Girl Who fell
from the sky”
Name: Thomas Acebedo
Teacher: Ma’am Joan Torres
Subject: English
Philip Womack enjoys the seedy, smooth new novel from Simon Mawer, The Girl Who Fell
From The Sky.
2. This is Simon Mawer’s eighth novel, which follows his Booker shortlisted The Glass Room, and
it tracks the life of a young, upper-middle-class girl (her father worked for the League of
Nations) hand-picked from the Waaf to be trained up as a spy because of her bilingualism.
It’s the Second World War: Britain is dreary, but Occupied France is even more so, with the
added edge of fear and mistrust. And yet the prospect is attractive to her.
A key image comes at the very beginning of the book as our heroine, Marian Sutro (though she
changes her name as often as the weather), is about to plummet down into France to begin her
mission. She sees the dispatcher as “a kind of Charon”, guarding the entrance to the underworld.
And so it proves, as she must now live a strange half-life, in the shadows, as thin and
insubstantial as the hungry ghosts of Hades. Another important trope is Alice in Wonderland –
Sutro even takes the name Alice as one of her aliases – as she topples into a land where all sense
has disappeared, where she must live by codes and signs. Underlying everything are the motifs
of two games: piggy in the middle, with Sutro as the helpless “piggy”; and Kriegspiel, a form of
chess in which you can see only your own pieces. Everybody is fumbling in the dark – but at the
same time, it’s also just a game. It’s a sinister idea.
Mawer’s writing, as one would expect, is smoothly sophisticated. The qualities of a spy are not
necessarily those that you would find attractive in a protagonist, but Mawer gives us some
compelling insights into Sutro – above all, her bravery, and her almost elemental need for risk, as
when she jumps out of the plane, or when, later, she waits for a drop-off and wants to absorb the
power of the plane within herself: “What they were about to do defied all knowledge, all
common sense, and yet she felt only a great rush of excitement.”
She is also keenly aware of the absurdity of most situations, and can usually be found
suppressing laughter as she deals with yet another stuffed shirt official. Her blossoming from
awkward teenager into ruthless killer is beautifully done.
Mawer’s writing is full of well-observed phrases: after sleeping with someone, Marian feels
“soiled with guilt”. The imagery – Kriegspiel, the underworld – may hint at uncontrol, but the
plot is carefully wrought, rushing along as Sutro must revisit an old flame for the greater cause of
the war; there are many betrayals, setbacks and chases. “Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés” is
the motto of Sutro’s training – and it’s one she would do well to remember.
Mawer’s book is slick and thrilling and grown-up, like a slightly seedy uncle who smokes, drinks
whisky and is always off seeing a man about a dog. Like that uncle, it’s also ephemeral and
marginally unsatisfying: but don’t let that get in the way of what is an absorbing novel full of
treachery, twilight and terror..
