The Long Room

Stephen lives a lonely and isolated life. Each day is very much like the last; work, eat, sleep; and yet, despite his insular little world, inside his head is full of excitement and adventure, and dreams. Stephen works for the Institute, sitting in the Long Room with his colleagues, each day is taken......more

It is not the intrigue of spying but the intimacy of it that Francesa Kay explores in her hauntingly beautiful novel The Long Room. Stephen Donaldson is a listener for the British government in 1981, which is to say that he spends the majority of his waking hours listening to the private lives of th......more

I very much enjoyed the premise of this novel, the set-up (a young man employed in surveillance falling for the wife of one of the subjects who he is monitoring), and the descriptive style was very effective in creating a complex and confusing atmosphere, dark, threatening, drawing in the reader com......more

I am so disappointed. I really want to give this well written book a higher score. Unfortunately about two-thirds of the way through the lead character fell out of character. After that, I no longer had sympathy or empathy for him. It was almost as if in plotting the story, the author boxed herself......more

A well-written, multi-layered story of a 1980's British intelligence officer, who listens to tape-recorded conversations of "ancient Communists and ineffectual revolutionaries." Assigned to a new case, the lonely and isolated Stephen falls in love with the wife of his contemporary target, who is sus......more