A taut, contemporary spy thriller with a realistic feel (i.e., the central character isn't Bond or Bourne, and there aren't too many fantastic escapesA taut, contemporary spy thriller with a realistic feel (i.e., the central character isn't Bond or Bourne, and there aren't too many fantastic escapes). It's pacy, and doesn't overstay its welcome....more
An important and even-handed coda to Sisman's life of le Carré, as well as a fascinating insight into the somewhat tortured genesis of that book.
The dAn important and even-handed coda to Sisman's life of le Carré, as well as a fascinating insight into the somewhat tortured genesis of that book.
The digested read: David Cornwell was a deceitful "git", a serially unfaithful husband for practically his entire married life. But this book skilfully makes the point that through all the 'tradecraft' (after all, he did coin the term) he used to conceal these affairs - coded addresses, dead letter drops, false names - he was effectively running his mistresses as if they were agents, enabling him to persist in a simulacrum of the intelligence career he'd been compelled to give up because of the international success of his third novel.
In this way, each of his mistresses was a muse for his novel writing (some books had more than one) and the continuing infidelity was very much the engine of his creativity. Sisman even postulates that the age-related cessation of his extra-marital activities could have been responsible for the perceived drop in the quality of his writing towards the end of his years. It's certainly interesting to see my own low opinion of the book that would be posthumously published as Silverview confirmed by no less an authority than le Carré himself - on completion, he put it aside without ever showing it to a publisher.
If you enjoy le Carré's œuvre, and enjoyed Sisman's biography of him, you should certainly read this....more
**spoiler alert** I don't really fit neatly into either of the two groups Nick Harkaway enumerates in his prologue (view spoiler)[- people who are so **spoiler alert** I don't really fit neatly into either of the two groups Nick Harkaway enumerates in his prologue (view spoiler)[- people who are so attached to George Smiley that they will love this book "whatever it is", and people who refuse to read it for the same reason (hide spoiler)] - my love for John le Carré's oeuvre extends far beyond Smiley.
I wanted to read this because I've already consumed everything le Carré ever wrote, and since Graham Greene is dead there aren't many authors out there that can do what he did, i.e., write books that are notionally genre fiction but that are in fact simply good books that handily break out of the narrow confines of the espionage genre. Evidently the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree (author Nick Harkaway is John le Carré's son), because that's what Karla's Choice is.
The existing cast of characters Nick inherited, literally and metaphorically, are wonderfully evoked - the music of Toby Esterhase's Hungaro-English was a particular highlight for me - and his new creations are easily their peers. He does something good by rebalancing the gender inequality inherent to a cast of characters first dreamt up in the 1960s by filling out Connie Sachs' research team(view spoiler)[, the 'Bad Aunts'; I suspect we haven't seen the last of S(z)usanna Gero, either (hide spoiler)]. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with, e.g., the Bletchley Park codebreakers knows that women have always had a huge part to play in the secret world.
This is a more than worthy entry in the Smiley canon(view spoiler)[ - and, tantalisingly, perhaps the first of many (hide spoiler)]. In my opinion, not just a great novel about spies and spying, but a great book in its own right - as well as one that makes the other Smiley novels better for existing. (view spoiler)[For example, although Karla must be opaque and unknowable, we now have the reason why he thought that going after someone that was family to Smiley was not 'out of bounds' - Smiley had made the first move. (hide spoiler)] That's quite the trick to have pulled off.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher Penguin Random House via NetGalley, in exchange for a fair and unbiased review....more
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