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Loading... Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)by John le Carré
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What a cracking read! A really engrossing plot, and George Smiley is such a great character. I like the way that Le Carré tosses in little details or bits of argot that you're not really sure if you should know or not, and let them develop or not. It keeps you slightly off-balance in a way that feels highly appropriate here. The plot is deceptively simple - I often felt that not much was happening, or things were being advanced by exposition, but actually it's all constructed beautifully. It doesn't have the same squalid feeling as the last couple of Smiley novels, and I actually missed that a little. I guess you could grumble that one or two of the other lead characters could have been better defined, but I think Le Carré likes to keep his novels sparse where possible. Worried about the film now - everyone seems too young and good looking. Ah well.
10 of the Greatest Cold War Spy Novels “Like Fleming, Le Carré (real name: David John Moore Cornwall) worked for British intelligence. But where Fleming used his WW 2 experiences as a springboard for fantasy, Le Carre turned his Cold War service into grimly realistic novels. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) trumped Deighton as a response to James Bond’s glamourous world of espionage, and he continues to turn out fine work to this day. Tinker charts the search for a Soviet mole in the upper echelons of British intelligence, providing Le Carré’s signature character – the low-key professional George Smiley – with a late-in-the-game chance to reclaim his standing in the Circus (MI6), made bittersweet by betrayal. A fine BBC serialization in 1974 was followed by an equally well-received feature-film version in 2011.” Karla is finally lured across a Berlin bridge and into the West. But, again, what figure is cut by the evil mastermind when he appears? “He wore a grimy shirt and a black tie: he looked like a poor man going to the funeral of a friend.” Le Carré has never written a better sentence, one so impatient of ideology and so attentive to what he, following W. H. Auden, describes plainly as “the human situation.” The television series of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” has lost none of its grip, and the new film will recruit new friends to the cause; but if we seek George Smiley and his people, with their full complement of terrors, illusions, and shames, we should follow the example of the ever-retiring Smiley, and go back to our books. That’s the truth The power of the novel is that le Carré transfigured espionage – its techniques, failures and deceptions – into a rich metaphor combining national decay, the disintegration of certainties with advancing age, the impossibility of knowing another human being's mind, the fragility of all trust and loyalty. "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is fluently written; it is full of vivid character sketches of secret agents and bureaucrats from all levels of British society , and the dialogue catches their voices well. The social and physical details of English life and the day to day activities of the intelligence service at home and abroad are convincing. Unlike many writers Le Carré is at his best showing men hard at work; he is fascinated by the office politics of the agency since the war.
British agent George Smiley hunts for a mole in the Secret Service and begins his epic game of international chess with his Soviet counterpart, an agent named Karla. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.914Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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lots of coded spy dialogue (which I found confusing, which I guess is the point?) and men being arrogant and acting superior, but otherwise interesting atmospheric prose descriptions of mood/place, whenever actual story is allowed to take place. This is not a plot-driven novel so much as a confusing whodunnit where you can't really trust anyone to tell the truth and every piece of the mystery takes pages of oblique dialogue to uncover. You'd have to be really into the genre to enjoy it, I think.
picked up from Little Free Library, author I've not read before, 2024 reading challenge: book to movie/adapted for screen. ( )