Review: So funny I didn't think I could stop laughing long enough to write this review
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 15, 2012
I had to wait a whole day after reading this short story before I attempted to write a review because I couldn't stop giggling. The whole story is told through diary entries by Nigel, a British civil servant who has been tasked with maintaining false identities for use by British spies. The idea is that these false identities--or legends--used by spies are often real identities of real people who have died but whose death was covered up by the government so their identities could be put to further use. For instance, if a spy were to assume a false cover, he may need a birth certificate, a passport and a driver's license, but he'd also need a plausible life history including an apartment, a job, a history of bank transactions, etc. If no one is using these false identities at the moment, someone still has to keep them active so their existence and history can be verified. These "legends" still need to have someone pay rent, deposit and withdraw money from their bank accounts, turn lights on in their apartments, etc., so that if these IDs are used in the future it would be easy to verify that, yes, that is a real person.Enter Nigel. His job is to do some maintenance work on three legends: Alec, Sarah and Harold.  It should be easy. Just make sure their empty apartments look lived in, make a few phone calls from each of their apartments, deposit and withdraw money from their accounts. This was written in 1999 so he doesn't even need to worry about maintaining fake Facebook or Twitter accounts for them. He's given a budget of 500 per month.But to Nigel's credit--and detriment--he's very thorough. VERY thorough. First he notices that the closets in the fake apartments are all empty. He'll have to buy them clothes! From there he really takes off. He spends so much time creating fake lives for his legends that it takes over his own life and he starts to forget that these aren't real people. He stays up all night worrying about how Sarah is getting along with her neighbours or where Alec should go on vacation. He creates scenarios in which two of his legends meet each other and start a correspondence. He stays past 10 p.m. at Harold's flat in order to save money on long distance calls, not because he's trying to save money but because he imagines Harold is the sort who would. Meanwhile, his own budget is completely destroyed.Legends is laugh out loud funny. It reminds me a little of a cross between Will Wiles' novel Care of Wooden Floors, in which a hapless house sitter finds himself turning more and more into the fastidious homeowner the longer he spends in his obsessive friend's place, and a poem by Stephen King that I read as a child called "Paranoid: A Chant," in which a schizophrenic becomes convinced that it is unsafe for him to leave the house because of all of the people out to get him. Or, for fans of the TV show Archer, it's like if the character of Cyril Figgus was put in charge of spy secret identities. Hilarious!For more reviews, visit my book blog, Cozy Little Book Journal.Disclaimer: I received a free digital copy of this short story from the author in exchange for writing a review, though the review did not necessarily need to be favourable, just honest. I frequently read and review books for this reason, but I am always very truthful (and, I hope, fair) in my reviews. Therefore any opinions expressed are strictly my own.