Intrigue, Intense character development, Spies as they are meant to be John Le Carre can put into a 223 page book what some authors today need 600 pages to tell. He is not just a master with the dialogue, but with the mood, setting and gives you a complete rundown of the politics in that small number of pages. There is no need for me to give you a rundown of the storyline; many have done that before me. What I'm here to say is that even after 45 years, this book is still relevant and although some might say it is dated, it gives us an accurate appraisal of the 1960's in Europe - something our current history books can't do.
Loving a good spy novel, I began to read Le Carre, starting with "Our Game" because I bought it at a library book sale. It was just okay at best - very rambling and with no real focus, it seemed. What was I missing? So I read "Single and Single" because I bought it at a church book sale. It was really bad. This just seemed like drivel from an author that had no idea where the story was going. But I knew that Le Carre was the primo spy writer, but nothing I was reading was showing me any of it. So I didn't panic, but instead read all of the reviews on Le Carre's other books. Then I started at the beginning of his success with "The Spy Who..." Wow!! Now this is a master spy writer at his best. The characters were intense and their sweat came through to the reader and I was sweating with them. The Cold War seems so long ago, but this book brought it back to me like I was again living it. The historic information of this type of book is long forgotten and our younger, Nintendo/ PlayStation playing, non-readers should pick up this book and see what they may have missed the first time around, but might not during what may be coming next in the world as Russia is making its comeback.
I will now go back and read the two earlier works and then progress through the best of the rest. If anyone has started reading Le Carre during the last several books, like me, it would be well worth their time to start here and then begin the series when the master storyteller was in his heyday.
Great Spy Novel Well if you never read a spy novel like myself then this would be a perfect entry point. First the positives the book was great because it was not so long the book was 224 pages so if you have a couple of hours to kill or on an airplane then this would be a perfect book to read and it was great because it dealt with the cold war era which is pretty interesting stuff.
The negative would be is that it is an old book but a good book certain british lingo such as macintosh meaning raincoat is something we americans would not understand but overall it was a great book and the lingo was not too bad that it confused anyone that read it. I was hoping for a happier ending but I was bitterly disappointed with what did transpired at the end but the book did keep me interested so overall I was happy.
The perfect novel for a 3 day weekend Recommended by a Washington Post article, this book does not disappoint. It starts off with action in Berlin then spins a web of deceit and lies that keep the reader engrossed. We follow our main character through twists and turns and in different countries. The climax? Completely out of left-field. Shocking. As I finished the book, I sat and started at the ending for a good five minutes.
Buy this book! A great summer read. A great weekend read. Worthy of a space on your bookshelf.
Very clever, equally dated There is no question that Le Carre casts a unique plot with this book, and he keeps his spies very much on the human side. He lets us into his characters' thoughts without giving anything away and they are not cartoonish. Although it is complelling, it becomes more of a puzzle and a history lesson about the cold war in the 60s than a genuine work of lasting literary value. Le Carre can write an amazing sentence now and then, but a story so locked into the circumstances of the day it was written in creaks with a bit of rust after 44 years. There are certain scenes and certain turns of phrase that put me off just a dash with their aged presentation, but I am old enough to remember the Berlin Wall and the machinations of both sides of the conflict, and it is a bit nostalgic to remember what things were like in the spy game before computers, satellites and cell phones. Le Carre doesn't put his heroes through the ringer the way his contemporary Alistair MacLean did, but he can write suspensefully, and ultimately this novel satisfies the need for a good yarn, as well as challenging the reader to figure out what's going on before the book's hero does. The anticommunist preachiness that creeps in is also a bit much in light of the time that has passed and what has happened in the meantime, but that goes by fairly quickly. It borders on melodrama without taking that final leap, but some of the dialog suffers all the same. It's a great taste of a bygone era of history, and of writing, and should be read as that. If you're looking for the cutting edge of spy fiction, this book lies at the other end of the scale. Anyone who writes a spy story owes Le Carre a debt for being one of the progenitors, but he didn't quite cross into literature territory the way Maughm did with the Ashendon stories.
Anything Goes Trivia
Megaton Man
Trevor
