Tag: John le Carre

It’s a sequel to “Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy”, set around Hong Kong and South East Asia. Mostly retold as memoirs: “Afterwards, in the dusty little corners where London’s secret servants drink together, there was argument about where the Dolphin case history should really begin.”
The plot revolves around a journalist/spy, Westerby, that on behalf of British Secret Services tries to shake a Hong Kong millionaire that allies with the Russians to extract his brother from Communist China.
One point that bothered me is that Westerby is obsessed with Lizzie, the millionaire mistress, as he travels along Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. All that despite having a single dinner with her. A bit creepy, I’d say.
As someone wrote in a review I read, the whole story though feels very inconsequental. The whole operation is set as if to somehow uncover the Russian head of spies. But in the end, it’s like Le Carre forgot about the goal, along his characters, as Westerby is obsesses with buying off Lizzie (which by that point he met twice), while all Smiley gets is some secrets about Chinese submarine program?

This is almost a satire. Instead of the almost omnipotent Circus from the previous books, the story focuses on another bureau, which is a complete opposite. Where agents carry their real documents with them on a mission, tell state secrets to their families, forget important backstory facts and mostly worry if they’ll be reimbursed for the taxi they took to the office.
Also, this may be a critique to British methods do act as if it’s still WWII, including using outdated and complicated WWII communication devices, because “people are used to them”.
As usual with Le Carre, the preparation to the operation is eighty percent of the book, while the operation itself, if it can be called it, is maybe ten percent.
The book is even more vague what is fact and what is fiction than some other novels, which is interesting. It is never clearly explained who killed Taylor, was the film real or just a setup. And probably that was never the point. As there are also no significant outcomes either, despite the obvious setup by the Circus to the Department, the later seem to continue functioning.

“It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realized that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity.”

Second Le Carre book, after “Call for the Dead”. This one is a disappointment, because it’s not a spy novel at all. Just quite a regular mystery novel with Smiley as the protagonist. But other than a reference to a middle-class woman as “she was red brick” and a description of the local chief of police in his office as a “water rat on a raft, his hair all wet”, there isn’t much I could get out of it.

Finished listening to Call for the Dead. This is the first Le Carre novel, and for a first one, it’s written pretty well. It was obviously influenced by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg couple.
Listening to it after “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” is interesting, because you can see how Mundt was retrofitted to be a double agent later on. There’s very little wiggle room for that in the original novel.
Also interesting that Dieter, Smiley’s pupil that switched to work for East Germany after the war, is confirmed dead by the end of the novel. I’d thought author would leave it hanging.

Started listening and quickly understood that it’s a radionovel, or radiodrama, or whatever it’s called when instead of a book simply read to you, you have different actors, but just the dialogues.
When I switched to a proper audio book I quickly noticed that those that worked on dramatising it, had quite a few liberties with the original book. They added themes, such as the circus theme. In the original book, the Circus is what’s MI6 headquarters is called. But in the drama, Alec is also making a joke about “traveling with a circus and doing a bear act” or something like that, which refers to him spying on the Russians in East Berlin. Or the starting scene, when I spy tries to cross a checkpoint between East and West Berlin. In the drama, there’s a CIA agent that watches it through binoculars and describes everything to Alec. In the book, the CIA agent went to sleep, and Alec even makes a joke about how soft they are.

‘She comes from an old family with a strong political tradition. With time it’s rather spread.’
‘The tradition?’ – Lacon loved to nail an ambiguity.
‘The family.’

Если к Little Drummer Girl у меня почти не было нареканий, то тут сразу “не верю”. Ну не станет русская шпионка писать дневник, и все тут.