The Secret Pilgrim (Mortalis)
by John Le Carre
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Book Summary Information
Author: John Le CarreEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-29
ISBN: 0345504429
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of The Secret Pilgrim (Mortalis)
Book Review: A Magisterial View of a Secret War
Summary: 4 Stars
The infamous Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989, and the thirty year long undeclared cold war declared at an end. A year later, in 1990, "The Secret Pilgrim," British spy master John Le Carre's thirteenth book, was published. LeCarre, with his first-hand spy experience, had penned the cold war masterpieces "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," and the Smiley-Karla trilogy "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," "The Honourable Schoolboy," and "Smileys People;" he used this book, basically a collection of short stories that opens as the Berlin Wall has been up only two years, to look back. It was his first published post-cold war novel, and a magisterial summing-up of the secret war that was. Le Carre, had been, of course, an actual British spy, for five years, under his birth name, David Cornwell. According to internet biographers, he was, in fact, embedded in Soviet territory when he was blown by Kim Philby, most celebrated of real-life British secret-service traitors. Being unmasked was not fatal to Le Carre, as it had been to others, but it was certainly fatal to his ability to work in the field.
The author sets much of "The Secret Pilgrim," as is his custom, in his German-speaking comfort zone. Particularly in Berlin, "the spy's eternal city," he calls it. He uses as his narrator "Ned," a shrewd, loyal, long-term employee of Le Carre's fictional intelligence service, modeled on the real one. Here, as elsewhere in his writings, the writer calls this service the circus, from its London digs. Ned is currently teaching new recruits at Sarratt, its spy school, on his way to retirement; he's thinking about the secret pilgrimage of his life, spent in the service, wondering whether it's done him, or the world, any good. He invites George Smiley, the heart of the circus, to speak to his students.
The book is certainly episodic; that may annoy some readers. But it has the author's usual virtues, unbeaten spy craft, strong descriptive and narrative writing, complex, if brief, plots. Resonant characters, given good dialogue, a sturdy moral context. As it's told in third person flashback, the action may be a bit anemic for some. But it gives an informative summation of the exciting Smiley-Karla years, when Smiley was chasing the unknown traitor in the circus's ranks, the "mole," as Le Carre termed the man, a usage that stuck. The author gives us "before the fall," as the circus called it, and offers new views of the circus's great knights of old: Smiley and his ever-unfaithful wife Ann; Bill Haydon, whom Smiley unmasked as the black knight; Peter Guillam, Tobe Esterhase. And "after the fall," picking up the pieces, we get precious new nuggets from the author's world. Ned is apparently the desk jockey who ran Barley Blair, central figure of the novel "Russia House." Ned tells us "we were trying to do a deal on him, but Barley wouldn't go along with us. He'd done his own deal already. He wanted his girl, not us."
Several of the component short stories stand out. An early one about Ben Cavendish, the narrator's oldest friend, who joins the circus with him, makes a small,silly mistake, and runs away from its awful consequences. A later one about the Lithuanian Captain Brandt and his beautiful girlfriend Bella, whom Ned eventually shares. The high-ranking Polish Colonel Jerzy, who finds his own way to the service. And Hansen, big, fair Scandinavian, active in Indochina during the Vietnam War; Ned calls Hansen, deep in the Cambodian jungle, his own Kurz, communicating from his own heart of darkness, as in Joseph Conrad's memorable book of the same name. Finally, there's poor Frewin, lonely Foreign Office cypher clerk, with all security clearances, seduced into Russia's service by the early morning radio language lessons of Boris and Olga. And that was the war that was.
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