Book Review: Max in the Land of Lies
Aug. 7th, 2025 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerEarlier this year, I read Max in the House of Spies, a novel about a twelve-year-old German Jewish refugee who escapes Germany on a kindertransport… then does everything in his power to get sent back as a spy so he can try to save his parents.
I had a number of criticisms of Max in the House of Spies. (You can also readskygiants wrote a review here.) My biggest criticism was that it saddles Max with a dybbuk and a kobold on his shoulders, who serve no particular purpose but to Statler and Waldorf about how recruiting a twelve-year-old spy is in fact a terrible idea. Of course they have a point, but let’s be real, when I picked up a book about a twelve-year-old spy, I did it in the spirit of “Damn the realism! Full spy ahead!”
And when Max in the Land of Lies begins, we are indeed going full spy ahead!
Max seems determined to prove that indeed twelve-year-olds make terrible spies. He lands in Nazi Germany, gets “Heil Hitler”ed, and freezes, because he hasn’t made a plan for what he’s going to do when “Heil Hitler”ed. (Pro tip: when you are a spy in Nazi Germany and someone Heils you, you Heil back with gusto to protect your cover.) In order to find his parents, he goes to the central office which tracks where Jews live, and only realizes once he’s in the office that he needs a cover story, since he is obviously not a Jewish boy who is definitely not trying to track down his parents. He looks the wrong way when he crosses the road! (Fellow Code Name Verity fans will remember that this is how Julie gets caught.)
But then, all the characters in this book are frequently attacked with bouts of suicidal frankness. The owner of a radio store tells Max about his secret gay past. Hitler’s favorite intelligence officer Count Alexis von Roenne tells Max that he hates the Nazis even more than he hates democracy and will do anything in his power to ensure they lose the war. Max’s friend Freddy confesses that he’s known all along Max was a spy, on account of the whole looking-the-wrong-way-before-crossing-a-road thing. (You know it’s bad when another thirteen-year-old busts your cover!)
On the one hand, this seems like a pretty fatal flaw in a spy book, especially a spy book that has some pretensions towards being Le Carré for kids. (Gidwitz name-checks Le Carré in the afterwords of both books.) On the other hand, as the book went on, I cared less and less, because the spy story is really just Gidwitz’s vehicle for exploring why people collaborate with evil, chiefly in the form of Nazi Germany but also, a minor but insistently recurring theme, in the British Empire.
(Side note: apparently one of the Nazi propaganda lines for “why we’re fighting England” is “England wants to make us one of their colonies,” and they did it so artfully that Gidwitz notes, in his afterword, “I started wondering, after reading a few transcripts, if Hans Fritsche wasn’t correct in asserting that the Allies were… trying to subjugate Germany as just another colonial possession.” And so did I, just fleetingly, when Herr Fristche explains this to Max in such ringing authoritative tones that Max feels a shudder of doubt himself! I mean, let’s face it, although it wasn’t true in this case, it does kinda sound like something England would do.)
And why do people collaborate? Because they’re afraid Because it makes them feel powerful. Because they feel useful for the first time in their lives and everyone tells them what they’re doing is right, so it must be okay. Because sometimes Heiling Hitler is the only way to get deep enough into the belly of the beast that you can do it some real damage; or at least that’s what you tell yourself. There are as many reasons for collaboration, Max explains to his British spymasters, as there are people in Germany.
As a spy story, everyone’s crushing lack of tradecraft might just drive you up the wall. But as an examination of the myriad causes of human evil, it’s a triumph.
…I still think the duology might have been better without the dybbuk and the kobold, though. Sorry, Stein and Berg!
I had a number of criticisms of Max in the House of Spies. (You can also read
skygiants wrote a review here.) My biggest criticism was that it saddles Max with a dybbuk and a kobold on his shoulders, who serve no particular purpose but to Statler and Waldorf about how recruiting a twelve-year-old spy is in fact a terrible idea. Of course they have a point, but let’s be real, when I picked up a book about a twelve-year-old spy, I did it in the spirit of “Damn the realism! Full spy ahead!” And when Max in the Land of Lies begins, we are indeed going full spy ahead!
Max seems determined to prove that indeed twelve-year-olds make terrible spies. He lands in Nazi Germany, gets “Heil Hitler”ed, and freezes, because he hasn’t made a plan for what he’s going to do when “Heil Hitler”ed. (Pro tip: when you are a spy in Nazi Germany and someone Heils you, you Heil back with gusto to protect your cover.) In order to find his parents, he goes to the central office which tracks where Jews live, and only realizes once he’s in the office that he needs a cover story, since he is obviously not a Jewish boy who is definitely not trying to track down his parents. He looks the wrong way when he crosses the road! (Fellow Code Name Verity fans will remember that this is how Julie gets caught.)
But then, all the characters in this book are frequently attacked with bouts of suicidal frankness. The owner of a radio store tells Max about his secret gay past. Hitler’s favorite intelligence officer Count Alexis von Roenne tells Max that he hates the Nazis even more than he hates democracy and will do anything in his power to ensure they lose the war. Max’s friend Freddy confesses that he’s known all along Max was a spy, on account of the whole looking-the-wrong-way-before-crossing-a-road thing. (You know it’s bad when another thirteen-year-old busts your cover!)
On the one hand, this seems like a pretty fatal flaw in a spy book, especially a spy book that has some pretensions towards being Le Carré for kids. (Gidwitz name-checks Le Carré in the afterwords of both books.) On the other hand, as the book went on, I cared less and less, because the spy story is really just Gidwitz’s vehicle for exploring why people collaborate with evil, chiefly in the form of Nazi Germany but also, a minor but insistently recurring theme, in the British Empire.
(Side note: apparently one of the Nazi propaganda lines for “why we’re fighting England” is “England wants to make us one of their colonies,” and they did it so artfully that Gidwitz notes, in his afterword, “I started wondering, after reading a few transcripts, if Hans Fritsche wasn’t correct in asserting that the Allies were… trying to subjugate Germany as just another colonial possession.” And so did I, just fleetingly, when Herr Fristche explains this to Max in such ringing authoritative tones that Max feels a shudder of doubt himself! I mean, let’s face it, although it wasn’t true in this case, it does kinda sound like something England would do.)
And why do people collaborate? Because they’re afraid Because it makes them feel powerful. Because they feel useful for the first time in their lives and everyone tells them what they’re doing is right, so it must be okay. Because sometimes Heiling Hitler is the only way to get deep enough into the belly of the beast that you can do it some real damage; or at least that’s what you tell yourself. There are as many reasons for collaboration, Max explains to his British spymasters, as there are people in Germany.
As a spy story, everyone’s crushing lack of tradecraft might just drive you up the wall. But as an examination of the myriad causes of human evil, it’s a triumph.
…I still think the duology might have been better without the dybbuk and the kobold, though. Sorry, Stein and Berg!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:16 pm (UTC)Clearly Freddy is the prototype of which Smiley is the final form!
no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:25 pm (UTC)There may not be: it may be that the book wants simply to show the myriad causes and let the readers muse on them unmediated.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 07:40 pm (UTC)Sounds like a good book.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 08:39 pm (UTC)(It does sound like that kind of look at why people do evil would be really eye-opening for kids.)
no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 02:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-07 09:37 pm (UTC)That's incredibly valuable and I don't understand why it happens in the form of a twelve-year-old spy story with a dybbuk and kobold yet as opposed to any other format of story about Nazi Germany (and the British Empire).
no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 02:12 am (UTC)Would love to know more about the drafting process, though. At what point did the books become about The Nature of Human Evil?
no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 03:35 am (UTC)That part's nice!
Would love to know more about the drafting process, though. At what point did the books become about The Nature of Human Evil?
If you find any hints from the author, I'd love to hear about them. (It might just have been current events.)
no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 10:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-09 10:50 pm (UTC)Just a tick.