Having
recently watched the 2011 film of Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (TTSS) it
was one of those occasions when I felt I wanted to go and read the
book, but Wikipedia told me this was one book mid way in a series of
novels by John le Carré
and so I decided I best
start at the beginning...
(I might in the
following recklessly drop spoilers – you have been warned)
So this is the first
novel, (at 170 pages perhaps it is a novella?), I read it in a single
sitting, on flight home from New York, and it felt faster paced that
the film which was my starting point. It will be interesting to see
if the books get longer as le
Carré reputation
built (which seems to be a fairly common contemporary feature).
There
are some standard devices that aid the story telling, George Smiley
the master spy is teamed up with an ordinary Policeman therefore
providing the excuse for Smiley to explain his craft, but these are
used skilfully, and while aware of them they do not detract from the
power of the narrative.
Although
a spy story and a murder mystery this is not a particularly dark
tale, and there is little of the soul searching that the film TTSS.
In
the film Smiley's
colleague Peter Guillam is in a gay relationship, in this story there
is no explicit reference to this – it was written a number of years
before decriminalisation – but there are some mannerisms given to
Guillam that once might read as suggestive of a leaning in that
direction – and so yet again I await with interest developments in
the later books.
Getting to read this
was a struggle, I requested it from the Library, it turned out to be
missing, I ordered from Amazon, it got lost in the post, I ordered it
again, it turned out the vendor had listed the wrong novel, but at
long last I got a copy...
In this one George
Smiley having retired is enlisted by another former Secret Service
Officer to help solve a murder. This is therefore not a Spy drama,
it plays with the masks and deceits that are worn in “ordinary”
life by those who wish to have status.
We gain a bit more
insight into the character to Smiley, and it builds a sense of a
wider canvas for the other dramas that will be told, but this is not
a particularly strong narrative, if I am honest I found it all a bit
“Midsomer Murders”...
This is the work
that made le Carré's
reputation, a return to the world of spies and agents.
I
think the success of the novel is that moral ambiguity that runs
through it. There is a gradual unveiling, within the twists and
turn, of the multiple layers of deceit. You are not given the status
of all knowing observer, at many points all you have are hints and
shadows. At the end you
assume that you know what has happened but still there is not
certainty.
There is perhaps a
feeling “the British” should be playing the game with a straight
bat – but it is clear that this is far from the case. The whole
story is the most outrageous double bluff, with the revelation that
the British were trying to frame their own agent being the guarantee
of his assumed innocence. It is the scheme's sheer preposterousness
that is key to its success.
But this is not
without cost, Leamas, the central character, is a broken man, already
worn down but “the game” but when it becomes clear to him the
level at which he has been coldly used he chooses to die alongside
the girl he has come to love, the girl who in the midst of all that
has happened is innocent, rather than escape back into the tainted
arms of the British Service.
One of the powerful
aspects of this novel is that Smiley and the Circus hardly feature,
and yet it becomes clear that they have shaped the entire cause of
events (or it is clear that they have shaped much of what has
happened, and therefore you tend to the view that even those aspects
that are not direct attributable to them were likely under their
influence). As is so often the case, the best way to deal with
opponents is to give them some rope and wait for them to hang
themselves.
It
is a tale of inter-departmental rivalry, and while set in the context
of Cold War counter-intelligence most of the behaviour is common to
all settings where there is an overlap of responsibilities – where
there is a desire to protect your organisation, to advance your
operation. This is part of the power, in showing that this world is
populated by ordinary human motivations allows you to imagine
yourself into the drama.
But
we are once again left with a question mark – for the Service to be
ruthless in its actions against the Communist Forces is one thing,
but for it to display the same level of ruthlessness against another
section of the British operations – is that also OK? These are our
Knights in Armour, but it is not more than a little tarnished...
A
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The
skill of this novel is that it turns not on grand conspiracy, it is
about the interact of the individual and the group. It relies on le
Carré's close observation of human nature – the way that
successful espionage is not so much about skill of the spy to deceive
as it is about the ease with which others around them delude
themselves.
Here
the character of Harting gains access because those around him didn't
really see him – he was in their eyes a nobody, unimportant, below
the radar. It is a razor sharp critique of the foolishness of the
“English” Establishment in much the way of “A Murder of
Quality”. The setting of Bonn and the enclave of England – a
kind of “Society” set where ones standing is measured in the
minutiae of differentiation. So obsessed with maintaining the
differentiation against their “peers” there was no room for
consideration of one who was and would remain unquestionably
inferior.
Just when you think
you have the measure of a writer and settle down for the usual spy
thriller le Carré decides
to go all Iris Murdoch on us...
According
to Wikipedia it is an autobiographical tale, it is about the
temptation to a life beyond the safe norms of respectability, where
love and lust play and it is far from clear where virtual lies. It is
an adventure that is probably best left as a vicarious pleasure. It
perhaps explores the contemporary privilege for “authenticity” -
do you live authentically
in the moment or do you live within your responsibilities?
It
was the film of this
novel which was the starting point, and it is hard to read the novel
without the film hanging close by.
There
is a closeness between the two, but there are differences, in
particular I commented
earlier on
Peter Guillam being
gay in the film. Guillam's love life plays in the book too, but his
interest seems firmly directed towards women. So I have to wonder
again at the hints about his sexuality I thought I saw in the earlier
books.
Although
Guillam turns out in this book to be straight there are others who
have are gay, or who have complex sexuality. This
is part of the mix of their character yet given the period of le
Carré's writings it
seems fairly matter of fact, there
is no parody or stereotyping,
and in so being enlightened. If we read The
Naive and Sentimental Lover as
autobiographical then we must understand le
Carré's own sexuality as
expansive which perhaps explains his easy treatment of the sexuality
of others.
The
Russia Spy Haydon says “The cold war began in 1917 but the
bitterest struggles lie ahead of us, as America's deathbed paranoia
drives her to greater excesses abroad...” in
one of those moments that has a resonance. How
much of the contemporary geopolitical situation is shaped by nations
playing out, or attempting to distract from, their domestic crises,
material or existential,
through assertive “foreign policy”?
I
remarked on le
Carré's first
novel being just 170 pages, well this one weighs in at 690 pages and
as such it forces a different encounter – rather than the single
sitting it is read over a few weeks and on more than one occasion
when faced with a mystery in the plot I found myself wondering if it
was because le
Carré had
chosen to impart only partial information to the reader or perhaps
the information was available but forgotten by this reader.
Clearly
this long form account of the story allows le
Carré to
explore details and flesh out the settings – something that he does
do with skill. The task within this of holding on to the critical
information perhaps takes you closer to the journey of the characters
trying to tease out what lies behind the events.
There
is a multi-levelled plot, as so often with le
Carré, the headline is
about the defection of a Chinese Official who had been working as a
Russian Agent, but perhaps the real story is the intrigue between the
intelligence agencies of the US and UK “allies”.
This
also very clearly has the feel of an episode – within the wider run
of novels this is the middle of a trilogy, begun by Tinker Tailor and
concluded by Smiley's People.
After
having got rather bogged down in the last novel (I am not sure how
much that was down to me, how much down to le Carré) this definitely
felt like a return to form.
There
was a crispness to the plot and a drive that took you ever forward. A
tension that remains until the final page or two – and then a very
deliberate anti-climax, for you feel with Smiley that in that moment
has life work is accomplished – and for a man so consumed by that
work for so long, when it is now done what is left for him.
I
think one of the well observed aspects is that le Carré often gives
such “small” motivations to many of the players. This is a drama
of the high political games on the Cold War, and yet it is not the
great ideals that make the individuals on the ground act. It is
boredom, petty desires for money or lust, for a sense of importance.
And in this ordinariness there is a sense of authenticity.
In
some ways this novel combines the medium of the Spy Thriller with
what I called the “Iris Murdoch” genre of The Naive and
Sentimental Lover.
Our
central character Charlie's is set in the midst of a complex web of
relationships – love, passion, lust, and multiple configurations of
the Stockholm Syndrome are at work in and on her. It creates an
intense and psychological plot – becoming increasingly
claustrophobic as she has to inhabit the layer of deceit for her own
survival.
It
is also a book with resonance to be reading at this moment – it is
not a “Cold War” drama, but about Israel and Palestine, and about
terrorist action in Europe. There is an exporting of conflict from
the Middle East to be played on by proxies on the streets of European
Capitals.
Also
I think it has one of the most clear political positioning of le
Carré novels – for me it reads as a critique of “heavy handed”
military action – in this instance by Israel beyond its borders
(wherever you choose to draw them) – but I think you could easily
read this logical across to other conflicts. Kurtz's incredible
scheme is an attempt to break the cycle, to use the intellect rather
that brute force – his plan is a success in all expect this
ambition. And it is a cycle that continues to this day. Some want
to attribute the status of victim and aggressor to one side and the
other – but like the chicken and the egg you will never answer that
paradox.
Once again this is a
novel more about the exploration of identity than about political
intrigue.
The central theme of the
novel is the playing with the quote “Love is whatever you can still
betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.” What are we to make
of this seeming paradox? That there has to be level of “love” in
order to make an act only of betrayal – when in war you act against
an enemy country, that is clearly not betrayal, it is only the act
against “your own” that can be seen as betrayal.
But the question
posed here is how you define “your own” - for the central
character Pym, not only do you have to ask whose side was he on, but
whose side did he belong to? So much of his identity had been a
fiction, part of the fronts developed by his con-man father, that
perhaps he was rootless and therefore there was no point of betrayal.
Yet is there an additional step for Pym, not just that you can only betray what you love, but you can only love what you betray - it is the betrayal that proves the love?
Also I think it
becomes clear that the success of his father Rick as a con-man was
that, in the moment, he believed the story just as much as the one
who was being con out of their savings. He was the kind of person who
would have passed the lie detector, because although it was a
fabrication it was one he was emotionally invested in – he was not
“lying” even though he was pedalling an untruth.
But I also found the
way that we also journey with Mary, Pym's wife, enriches the tale –
so many spy stories are about isolated individuals – either they
are completely alone or they, James Bond style, have merely
disposable relationships.
But there must always be a hinterland of
relationships, and the ripples, or tidal waves, of consequences that
go through the lives of those around the spy are worth exploration.
Within the geopolitical posturing there are these personal stories,
personal betrayals, and these are perhaps the most painful.
Published in 1989
this was a topical novel, set in the rapidly crumbling Soviet Union.
It revolves around the reactions of Western intelligence to the
unexpected disclosure of information which shows the Soviet Union's
nuclear capability is negligible compared with previous estimates.
The discrepancy has resulted from the West spying on the central
administration in Moscow, yet Moscow itself was being taken in by
falsified reports from its own manufacturers.
The West had
reliable sources in Moscow, the problem was Moscow didn't actually
have reliable sources on the ground within the Soviet Union. This is
typical le Carré playing
on the layers of deceit.
The news of the overwhelming superiority of
the West it not greeted with open arms – the vast military budgets
had been justified for years on the need to keep one step ahead of
the Russians, to now learn they were not even in the same race would
shake too many vested interests.
But this is also
another exploration of the smallness of motivations, le
Carré in one passage has
a character reflect “The system will always win... It is a choice between dying of
obscurity or dying of compromise, since that is a choice between
death and death, we may as well choose the more comfortable
alternative.”
And when the British
agent ends up going over to the Soviet side, it doesn't really seem
appropriate to call this “betrayal”, ideology plays no part in
it, thoughts of country or of honour are absent as well, he acts to
secure a future for a woman he has come to love, and her children –
not riches or a life of leisure just the holding off of vengeance.
He sold himself to save her from annihilation.
There is an echo of
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in both cases the act of
“betrayal” is the act of a man trying to remain a decent human
being, or maybe just trying to remain a human being, in the gap
between two systems neither of which has lived up to its claimed
values.
This book takes the
form of a memoir of an intelligence officer on the eve of retirement,
after a long and active operational career now confined to running
the service's training school.
This allows le
Carré to revisit
favourite old characters, especially George Smiley, and old stories
with a new angle with the advantage of an alternative story teller.
It is an engaging vehicle for what is effectively a collection of
short stories.
Enjoyable,
but without the power of full a narrative arc.
I didn't watch the
recent BBC Sunday evening hit adaptation of this novel, and other
that the fact that it provides the opportunity of a host of glamorous
locations (rather than le Carré
more usual darken
offices and rain soaked street with little to distinguish from one
side of the Iron Curtain to the other) I struggle to see why this
novel was seen to stand out as meriting adaptation.
I think the
difficulty is that I failed to buy into the central character of
Jonathan Pine – the orphan, military hero, polyglot charmer, high
end chief – he just didn't add up. One of the strengths of le
Carré's writing is the
authenticity of the characters – in the midst of all the drama the
people tend towards the ordinary, they might be doing some crazy
things but they themselves are folk you recognise from the bus.
Also
I found the ending a disappointment – we have all this set up to
catch the crook, and then at the last minute we let him walk freely
away – perhaps the weakness of the ending also in fact leant it to
television.
I
would mark this one down as an off day!
After
a couple of seemingly less successful novels this is a return to form
for le Carré.
It
is essentially a drama of the mind, there are moments of physical
danger but these are really only a backdrop to the real focus of
tension.
In
the aftermath of the Cold War old certainties have collapsed, the
binary of that conflict created a kind of order, in its absence that
are now multiple centres of potential loyalty. But as the story
unfolds it shows that comforting binary might always have been an
illusion. The double-agent may in fact have been playing both sides
off in favour of another loyalty altogether. We told ourselves that
we had “won” the Cold War, but seems an increasingly hollow sort
of victory...
Le
Carré often writes from the viewpoint of those on the threshold of
retirement (either about to cross it, or recently over it, or in the
case of his greatest agent Smiley endlessly dancing back and forth
across it). He writes men (and thus far I think all le Carré's
leads have been men) who are reflecting on a life given over to a
profession, to a career, who are now questioning what good this has
done either them or the world around them.
This
is a question, although asked in his novel in the niche context of
the secret service, that is familiar to the general experience. Maybe
it is a question with declining relevance as few of us now have a
“job for life”, few will retire after 30/40 years service to a
single career. However I think the question still comes to most,
just in other forms - as it comes when you face with not exactly
“voluntary” redundancy.
This
is what grips you in this novel, as the lead character Tim progresses
through it, like an onion he peals back layer upon layer of “truth”
and find it was in fact falsehood. It is a hypnotic if somewhat
horrific decent into nihilism, leading to the final words... “I
stood alone, converted to nothing, believing in nothing. I had no
world to go back to and nobody left to run expect myself.”
When
you have been making a career out of spy novels the end of the Cold
War did present a challenge, here Le Carré successfully finds
another context in which there are plenty of secrets to play with.
The
central character Harry Pendel is a prime candidate to become an
agent, as the most important thing an agent needs is “cover” and
Pendel has already been living in deep cover for many years, the
respectable tailor is a front to cover a rather less respectable
past.
This
is an example of Le Carré at his best, a strong character driven
narrative with a twist of dry humour.
This
is Le Carré crafting a tale at his best. The “drama” is really
just the backdrop for an exploration of a father / son relationship.
It is the ability to give authentic expression to relationships that
I feel really sets Le Carré apart.
Here
there is a certain Oedipus tendency to “kill” the father, in
metaphoric themes by undermining his business even if not in literal
terms. But arc of the story takes us on the emotional journey from
killing the omnipotent father to the revelation of his weakness, his
fraud, as a person.
As
so often this is a tale about personal relationships more than about
politics.
Sadly
it gets bogged down in the middle with the details of the medical
scandal – unlike the geopolitics of the cold war I guess Le Carré
felt he had to explain things to the reader.
Within
the usual petty bourgeois life of the embassy at its heart this is a
love story, Justin loved Tessa, loves Tessa, and all else fades away.
This
is a strong example of Le Carré's gift for writing people – the
interplay between Ted Mundy and Sasha is rich and authentic. As with
many of his novels it is written from the perspective of someone
reviewing their past – asking how much is the person we “are”
determined by our past. In an insightful moment, Sasha says “I am
interested only in your personal liberation. There comes a moment for
all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse....” In the
narrative of our own lives how much do we still rely on our childhood
as the get out clause for any failing?
The conclusion of
this novel is particularly bleak – in many of his novels “the
state” (on both sides) uses people up – but the manipulation of
the situation, the complete fabrication of the situation in this
instance is so stark that when the finale came I feel physically
winded by it.
Looking over what I
had written about Absolute Friends it would be a good summary for
this one as well. That is not a criticism, that I can say the same
things about two books is by no means to suggest that Le
Carré work is formulaic.
The plot’s of these two novels hardly overlap at all, and it is a
key part of Le Carré's
skill that he finds fresh
situations in which to place the drama.
Although
published in 2006, that it ends with someone being detained with a
view of deportation due to irregularities in their historic
documentation seemed very contemporary as I read it amidst the
unfolding of the Windrush scandal.
Le
Carré writing in 2008
explores the contemporary drivers to the secret world, terrorism or
perhaps the paranoia about terrorism. As always there is as much
subterfuge within the intelligence community as there is between them
and their enemy / opponents letting personal and organisational
ambition and egos play out. There are operations within operations.
Key
to the tale is the banker Tommy Brue, a man towards the end of his
career living under the shadow of his late and more successful father
in a loveless marriage. This is a character that returns time and
again within Le Carré.
However the interaction
between Brue and the young lawyer Annabel Richter seemed to give
fresh energy the story.
While there seem to
be plenty of positive reviews I personally found this a bit flat –
the characters felt a bit over the top / cardboard cut out and so I
didn’t warm to them in the way that I have with many others of
Le
Carré’s – even those
that are very flawed personalities. Also I found that there was a
lack of tension. The ending however is classic Le
Carré – as it leaves
you questioning who is responsible, essentially was it us or them?
While
much of this is solid Le Carré the attempt at engaging the post-
Iraq War dilemmas landed a little flat for me. While the heroes email
the story to the newspapers just before the net closes around them,
if those trying to protect their secrets retained that level of power
surely the papers would have been hit with injunctions and the story
never told? Maybe a cynical reading of the outcome – but I was left
without the sense of hope, most of Le Carré’s stories give, that
it will come right in the end, that the honourable will overcome the
dishonourable.
Le
Carré provides us with a “remix” of The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold published some 50+ years earlier. It is a good read, and it is
good to return to strong characters of the Smiley novels but one
feels it is a little lazy – driven by the knowledge that it would
be an easy best seller rather than a genuine creative urge as a story
teller.
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6
years after I began I come to this Le Carré’s last novel (assuming
there are no posthumous publications…). As in the interval between
it publication and my reading Le Carré has passed away I know this
is the last but I have no sense that Le Carré was writing this as a
finale, this is not a valedictorial message to us.
I
did enjoy reading it, but that doesn’t negate the “here we go
again” sense it gave me. Nat, like so many of Le Carré’s
characters, is a man in middle age, on the threshold between is
operational career and whatever the next chapter of life will hold –
we join him for, perhaps, the last throw of the dice when life has a
thrill, be for being reluctantly incorporated into domesticity. It is
interesting that it is this same moment in life’s journey that
remained the prime focus of Le Carré writing across 6 decades.
With
its references to Trump and Brexit (and unflattering views on the
then Foreign Secretary who is latterly our PM) it feels to be places
more firmly in a moment in time than most others – but that might
just be the effect of me reading this one much closer to its
publication than most of the others. However this contemporary
references act only as window dressing, the core essence of the story
could have been told across any point in the post-war era.
The
novel ends at a moment when it would appear that Nat has got one over
on the system – yet your feeling is that this will only be a brief
moment of victory – discovery, and the consequences that will
accompany it only moments beyond the final page…
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Having
thought I had read the last of Le Carré’s we have one more, a
manuscript that his son says he only lightly edited to bring to
publication. Unlike many “unreleased” tapes that you clearly see
why they were “unreleased” this is a pretty decent offering. The
plot is strong, and classic Le Carré, but the characters are not as
rounded as we would expect – there is also a lack of focus, I feel
that Proctor should be the central character and yet for large chunks
he is entirely absent. The relationship between Proctor and his Wife
is an unresolved aside – I feel that Le Carré would either have
worked that up into a key dynamic or deleted it.
To
be continued...
