Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Book Review: Best Spy Story Ever?
Summary: 5 Stars
...Well I haven't yet read a better one. Here's why:
Every one of the key protagonists has a character fully fleshed out with weaknesses, foibles, ambitions and (at times) quiet brilliance. Control, in his last days as Chief of the Secret Service ("Circus"), desperately seeks an infiltrator at the very top of the service. The key players are progressively revealed as consummate technicians and politicians in a very unglamorous occupation. With each individual, you can see how they got where they are, despite their flaws. Further down the pecking order of traitors, cheats, losers and lost souls, the same richness of character prevails. Of George Smiley himself, set on course to uncover the "mole", enough has been written. For me, it's his humanity and vulnerability that raise this book into the stratosphere.
The storyline is dense and engaging. The structure of the deception, as Smiley peels away each layer, is elegant and convincing. The reactions of the characters as each of them is affected by the denouement, ranges from the tragic to the darkly comic. This vein of doleful humour makes this the very best of Le Carre's work (which is saying something...)
There are no whizz-bangs, little action beyond raised voices, and absolutely no glamour. However, there is intelligence, subtlety, searing emotion and a sprinkling of pathos. The balanced written style, sometimes taut and sparse, elsewhere reflective and melancholy, is in a class of its own. Enjoy (perhaps?) the best espionage book ever.
Book Review: Plus ca change
Summary: 5 Stars
I recall seeing the television series with incomparable Alec Guinness as George Smiley, now many years ago. Reading the book many years later, the text reveals just how well Alec Guinness rendered Le Carre's seemingly laconic, yet patient, fixated, yet brilliant spymaster. The world-weariness of the times, of the characters and the lugubrious routines of the Great Game are one suspects, rendered with a verisimilitude, that are born of first hand acquaintance with this looking glass world. One at once appreciates the extent to which perhaps all our fates, are in the hands of the Lacons of this world - and their masters, those whose over-riding concerns are expediency and the bottom line. In this sense there is a very contemporary feel to the undercurrents at work in the book, especially in the light of what we have learned following the military adventures in the Middle East. Plus ca change. This is gripping stuff, the writing is at once fluent yet subtle and utterly believable. If we nominated masters of their craft as "national living treasures" as the Japanese do, Le Carre would take the literary honours; he is incomparable.Book Review: Evocative humdrum makes for a bureaucractically authentic, plausibly romantic thiller
Summary: 5 Stars
Not much to add to the other reviews, except that le Carre's wonderful characters and descriptions have much deeper resonance than might be expected from the genre. No doubt MI6 has moved on since 1974, but anyone looking for a morality play to illustrate the mundanely fascinating complexities of intelligence work should start here. If you doubt that thrillers can be great literature, or that literary art can be thrilling (albeit in a bespectacled way) then think again. The Cold War may be history, but le Carre has something powerfully timeless to say.Book Review: Complex thoughtful and authentic
Summary: 4 Stars
John LeCarre has a reputation as a master of the spy novel and this is one of his great works. It draws on his experiences in the British Secret Service and tells the story of George Smiley and his search for a Russian mole. George Smiley is no Jason Bourne. The plot becomes complicated with many characters so a good level of concentration is required to follow it. The gritty nature of the story and LeCarre's writing skill make for a book which is not exciting but is authentic and convincing.Book Review: This is real, isn't it?
Summary: 5 Stars
Having seen this on TV/video/DVD enough times to mouth the script, I am embarrassed to admit that I have only just read this. Despite knowing the story inside out it gripped me from start to finish.
It is so overwhelmingly real that repeatedly you feel like you are reading a factual historical account. It is so exciting. It so typifies an end of an era. A world of dinosaurs, old-school, end of Empire, of those 'trained to rule but with nothing to run'.
Haydon is a much more rounded character in the book but Sir Alec Guinness just is Smiley. One tiny, tiny niggle is that I was always slightly disappointed with the Connie Sachs and Roy Bland characters in the film and, for me, this is actually re-emphasised in the book.
Even if you have seen the TV film buy this, settle down and drift away into a quite superb world.