Secret Agent Man
Essays
The nine intricate essays in Margot Singer’s collection Secret Agent Man braid investigations of womanhood, Jewishness, and family memory.
The sly title piece contrasts spy movie clichés with the reality of Singer’s Czech-born father’s work as an “engineer” and “independent consultant” with vague ties to Mossad. “God’s Eye” entwines the history of aerial photography with a New York City apartment view that entranced Singer after a painful breakup with a fellow graduate student. Elsewhere, an elegant multipart meditation that draws on the music of 1850s Germany is as revelatory about Singer’s own life as it is about Brahms and the Schumanns.
The complications of sex and motherhood are handled in an organic way. In one essay, a pregnancy loss requires an emergency-room stay; in another, an article of clothing stands in for determination to maintain a career after the birth of Singer’s daughter. “Call It Rape” is a gutsy exposé of how common sexual violence is: Several of Singer’s boarding-school classmates were raped; she was selected for jury duty on a case of marital rape; and she remembers her own near escape on a trip to New Zealand.
A move from Massachusetts to the Midwest is dramatized in an essay that emphasizes the outsider’s view while imitating tour-guide patter. Jews are rare in Ohio, the speaker reflects; later pieces reinforce a metaphorical connection between Jewishness and homelessness. “Afterimage” and “Counterclockwise,” in which Singer revisits her childhood home, interrogate the flow of history. Her parents’ house functions, she writes, as a literal and figurative “container of memory, a receptacle of time.” Watches, too, symbolize the passing of time. The final essay returns to Singer’s late father—a satisfying circular structure.
Secret Agent Man is an insightful essay collection that fuses nostalgia with bittersweet retrospection.
Reviewed by
Rebecca Foster
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
