A very, very short story that is a parable for the cold war. Of course, the race continues and the results are much the same as when the story was wriA very, very short story that is a parable for the cold war. Of course, the race continues and the results are much the same as when the story was written....more
Having just completed my reading of The Siege, I decided to read this second novel while all the details of the first were fresh in my mind. So, I picHaving just completed my reading of The Siege, I decided to read this second novel while all the details of the first were fresh in my mind. So, I picked up Anna and Andrei’s story, finding them well-settled with Kolya in Leningrad, Anna at the nursery school and Andrei working at the hospital. The starving days of the Siege are over, but that tragedy is just around the corner for anyone in Stalin’s Russia is no surprise. It comes for Anna and Andrei, in the form of a highly placed political figure's sick child that Andrei is forced to treat.
This family sees the danger ahead of them, but in a society that fosters nothing but fear, there is no place to hide. You can walk the line carefully, but the danger is real and about you always.
There’s no protection in making yourself small and hoping to become invisible. All you do is make yourself small.
Having survived the Siege, the war, the starvation and the specter of death on every park bench, the world they now inhabit might be even more threatening and frightening. At least when the Germans were attacking the city, the enemy was known, identifiable. In post-war Leningrad the enemy could be a neighbor who wants your larger apartment, a colleague who wants to escape scrutiny himself, or someone you don't know who simply takes notice of you and learns your name.
Why do we think that the present is stronger than the past? They are not even separate. The past is alive, waiting. She and Andrei turned away from it because they had to, but it only grew more powerful. Part of her will never leave that frozen room.
Anna is living in a world that expects, in truth, demands, that she bury her past in a fictional account that is rosier; that she deny her hardships and the struggles of those she loved, because to acknowledge them is seen as casting an aspersion on the government or the system. The horror of the past seems to be over, but horror is horror in whatever form it takes. Life is a tight wire, balanced above a precipice, and all it takes to make the walker fall is a gentle wind.
What they face and how they struggle to survive is laid out in the starkest prose, with a fear that is palpable. I not only felt the fear, but the helplessness, the inability to know who to trust, the need for everyone to say and do only that which would save themselves, if they could even decipher what that might be. There is no rhyme or reason, and a lie that is an impossibility can convict you as easily as a truth. This is an entire country of citizens living with the peril of betrayal, with such an uncertainty that it is miraculous that anyone dreamed to survive it.
In everyone’s life there is only one person whose name can be cried out in the moment of death.
This is my first experience of Magda Szabo, a HungaIn everyone’s life there is only one person whose name can be cried out in the moment of death.
This is my first experience of Magda Szabo, a Hungarian writer, whose work is making its way into English translation, one book at a time. This was not the book I requested, but it was the one the library gave me, so I decided to just dig in and I’m pleased I did.
Szabo follows four major characters: Balint, Iren, Blanka and Henriette, four childhood friends caught in the upheaval and dangers that beset Hungary from the beginning of World War II until 1969. As we watch the changes of war and the subsequent restructuring of life in Budapest, we also watch the disintegration of the lives of the four friends.
“It’s so sad. You never could grasp the simplest facts,� he said. “Life. Death. Clean water. Life isn’t a schoolroom, Iren. There aren’t any rules.�
No rules. Nothing about their lives is as it was before, and the contrast between life as it should have been and life as it has become is unbearable. What each of them has to cling to is the relationship they shared with one another, and that thread is very thin and stretched.
The story is not written in a linear timeline, so it took a bit to adjust to the time movements; there is a dead character who persists beyond the grave and interacts with the living characters. Both of these devices might indicate trouble for me, but Szabo makes them work perfectly and the “ghost� character adds a level of understanding that would be quite impossible without her.
It was the first time in my life that I had an inkling that the dead are not dead but continue living in this world, in one form or another, indestructibly.
Perhaps Szabo is trying to tell us that when your world is destroyed, the dead become more alive to you than the living. Perhaps she wants us to see that trauma, once inflicted, never disappears entirely. Perhaps she wishes us to examine what constitutes family, the fragility of love, and the nature of betrayal. Or, perhaps she is just putting a mirror up to life and inviting us to see how little of it is really within our control.
I'm unsure how to feel about the ending. It seemed abrupt, but then what else could be said? Still, it kept this from being the full 5-stars for me. 4.5, rounded down....more
The Door is a fictionalized account of two Hungarian women, one an intellectual, a writer, and the other an uneducated woman whom the first takes on tThe Door is a fictionalized account of two Hungarian women, one an intellectual, a writer, and the other an uneducated woman whom the first takes on to be her housekeeper. The story spans years, and as the two women grapple with their relationship, it grows into one that can only be described as love. Ah, but love comes in so many guises, and love is a complicated emotion.
She didn’t understand that it was because of our mutual love that she went on stabbing me til I fell to my knees, that she did it because I loved her, and she loved me. Only people truly close to me can cause me real pain.
Magda Szabo has written a completely unforgettable character in Emerence; an enigmatic soul; one for whom you cannot help feeling an affinity but for whom you never really come to feel any affection. In the beginning, Emerence seems mostly unlikeable and stubborn, and thoroughly unreasonable, but as the story progresses, we are shown bits and pieces of what has shaped her and what drives her, and feelings begin to turn. At the outset, it is “the lady writer�, our narrator, a person of some importance, that appears to be at the center of this story, but along the way it becomes evident that this is really Emerence’s story.
She was the Snow Queen. She stood for certainty--in summer the first ripening cherry, in autumn the thud of falling chestnuts, the golden roast pumpkin of winter, and, in spring, the first bud on the hedgerow.
In addition to the desire to unravel Emerence’s strange personality, there is the added element of mystery surrounding Emerence’s home. What is behind the door? What is she hiding? She will not allow anyone to come into her apartment or even have a glimpse of what lies behind her door. What is there in her past that might explain why she is the most generous and caring when someone is in need and yet she, herself, can never accept the slightest gift or gesture of generosity from another? The symbolism of the closed door of her house and the closed door to her life is evident.
As this novel progressed, I became obsessed with the psychological complexities of this character. I could barely set the book aside for a moment and turn my attention to anything else. I found myself thinking about it incessantly until I could return and pick it up again. The ending took me by surprise as well. Like everything else about the novel, it was not so simple as it might have seemed it should be to decide what was right or wrong, who was most to blame, and what I felt I might have done, myself, in a similar circumstance.
There is a pervasive sense of darkness in Szabo’s writing. This is my third of her novels, and I find that same ominous aura hangs about them all. Her characters have endured wars and upheaval, and their lives reflect the chaos, even those characters who seem normal or appear to have moved on. Her writing is powerful; her prose is stark; her world is murky, but she is a remarkable dream weaver and well worth exploring. ...more
On November 16, 1989 six Jesuit priests were murdered in their living quarters at the Catholic University in El Salvador. They were murdered by the goOn November 16, 1989 six Jesuit priests were murdered in their living quarters at the Catholic University in El Salvador. They were murdered by the government army during a civil war that waged; they were murdered because they supported the population of poor Salvadorians and called for peace between the warring factions.
In a novel that reads like a memoir, we are introduced to Father Ignacio Ellacuria, a seeker of peace and a man whose bravery and courage is almost incomprehensible. He was aware of the threat to his life, and he could easily have left the country and its people to their fate, but he chose to stay and fight for what he believed in. Few of us could ever claim to know what we would do in a similar situation, but we could hope we would have a small portion of Ellacuria’s character within us.
Who that man was, I cannot say. Just as I cannot say when he knew that he had to stay or what made him take that decision, whether naivety or love or the revelation of a divine mission. It doesn’t matter. The fact is, whatever it was that made him take that decision, he had the faith and the courage to do what he thought was the right thing. And he did it until he paid the ultimate price.
El Salvador had not always been this hotbed of civil war. In fact, it sounds almost idyllic in the years before the rise of the rebellion.
Life revolved around the downtown area, home to the post office, the few hotels, the cafes and the larger parks in whose bandstands, always situated in the middle of the park, orchestras played pieces from Vivaldi or Strauss as the sun set. Everything happened with a slowness that has been lost forever…and you could have lunch at a market stall or walk at ten at night or stay and study in the parks, guarded by owls that flew down from the mountains or volcanoes. And nothing happened.
All of the events described in the book are true, all of the people are real. What makes it a novel, instead of a history, is the occasional attempt to look inside the thoughts and feelings of the participants and the outer story that has been set up to allow the looking back to have a reference point. It is one of those instances when the United States, under the Carter Administration, was on the wrong side, although either side would have been the “wrong� one. We were backing the government and sending one million dollars per day to them, making a continuation of the war a desirable thing for the military elite. This story is not about the US, but our role in the events that occurred could not be ignored and made me shudder.
The fight for truth was a hard one for those left behind, as both governments attempted to hide the facts and blame the guerrillas. In fact, as is so often the case, there was no justice for the priests, with the decision makers skating responsibility. However, the murders did succeed in raising attention to American involvement and forced a withdrawal of support of the corrupt government.
When the case of the assassination of the Jesuits came up the six actual perpetrators were judged and condemned meaning Colonel Benavides and the members of the Atlacatl Battalion who took part in the assault, but not the brains behind them, nor those in the high command who were believed to have given the orders.
This is the story of one atrocity, but there were clearly many, including massacres of peaceful citizens who gathered just to bury the dead and unprecedented and wide-spread savagery on both sides of the war. 80,000 people died in the war, many of them not soldiers but old men, women, children and the poor and helpless population.
This war ravaged this country and the recovery has been spotty, at best. I was drawn back to the initial quotation in this review. That kind of serenity and peace is an elusive commodity. ...more
”I like you to have doubts,� he said. “It tells me where you stand. But don’t make a cult of them or you’ll be a bore.�
Impossible to think how any”I like you to have doubts,� he said. “It tells me where you stand. But don’t make a cult of them or you’ll be a bore.�
Impossible to think how anyone could live the life of one of John le Carre’s cold war spies and not be assaulted by doubt day and night. Still, they must all be entertaining just the right amount, because none of these characters is a bore. Nobody does spy thriller quite as well as John le Carre, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is John le Carre at his best.
Of course, there are the usual elements of a spy novel. The Russians are pitted against the Western world and, in this particular case, there is a mole within the Circus that is wreaking havoc on the entire system. Although he has been ousted from the service, George Smiley is called in to sort through the detritus and unravel the gordian knot, and the strands seem to run in all directions right up to the end. Ah, but there is so much more than that.
George Smiley is such a unique character. Like Sherlock Holmes, he has a personae all his own; unlike Holmes, he is an unassuming, all too human, observer of humanity. While most people, particularly those at the Circus, are scrambling to reach the top and be in control, Smiley seems to accept the role of power thrust upon him rather reluctantly.
He was aware of a modest sense of approaching conquest. He had been driven a long way, he had sailed backwards and forwards. Tomorrow, if he was lucky, he might spot land; a peaceful little desert island, for instance. Somewhere Karla had never heard of. Just for him and Ann.
I believe it makes him more likeable that his dreams are as unlikely to come true as any we might dream ourselves. He sees into the hearts of other people, a deft listener who understands what is going on beneath the surface; but he is often blind to himself, and aren’t we all.
This is a novel about spies, but it is also a novel about intrigue, friendship, deception, idol worship, and betrayal. Betrayal in all its forms, betrayal of country, of friendship, of love, of innocence, and of trust. Perhaps men in this line of work should not expect better, but we come to understand that these men are the “lovely boys� who came into this darkness after fighting a war on the side of morality and when still charged with the ideals of that war and their youth. The men they become bear almost no resemblance to the boys they were, and the reality of what they have become is heartbreaking.
This was not my first reading of this remarkable book, and I find it lost none of its luster during all those years it was collecting dust on my bookshelf. ...more
Update: When I finished reading this the first time around, I was seized with a desire to go back in time and revisit all the George Smiley novels. I Update: When I finished reading this the first time around, I was seized with a desire to go back in time and revisit all the George Smiley novels. I am happy to say that is exactly what I have done. I started with A Call for the Dead, the first instance of George in print, and have made my way through to this marvelous (so far) final appearance.
It was even more satisfying this go around, and a feeling enhanced by having read with a tremendous group of women who appreciate John le Carre much as I do. He wrote this book at the age of 85 and it is proof positive that he has not lost a step mentally. He is able to recall his characters with clarity and weave a plot that is as intricate and pleasing as his first efforts. What a writer, and how very grateful I feel to him.
Final food for thought: how much of our human feeling can we dispense with in the name of freedom, would you say, before we cease to feel either human or free? Or were we simply suffering from the incurable English disease of needing to play the world's game when we weren't world players any more?
*** My original review: I discovered the best spy thriller writer of all time (and yes, I include Ian Fleming in that group) in the mid 1960s when I stumbled across a copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I have since read many, but sadly not all, of John le Carre’s novels, but certainly ALL of his Smiley books. Imagine my joy to find George Smiley, Alec Leamas, and Peter Guillam could reappear and that John le Carre had one more bit of behind the iron curtain story to tell us.
Le Carre does what few can do...he picks up the past, plops it into the present, and makes it work. I loved this old spy, called to account for a past that can barely be explained to the little snot-noses who now run the Circus, as much as I loved his younger version. And, to think that these characters could be revived 25 years later and still have the same effect is amazing. Proof, as if any was needed, that John le Carre is the BEST.
Did I enjoy it? You bet. The effect it had on me was to make me want to sit right down and read all my Smiley books over again. I had truly forgotten how much fun it could be to read such an intelligent and twisty story. Who knew we would someday miss the Cold War? Who knew George Smiley wasn’t dead to us after all, just sitting in seclusion waiting for us to need him again?
I was planning to give this 4-stars. It isn’t profound in the way that a classic is or life-altering the way some books are. However, I think it gets an extra point for just the sheer joy it brought me...and hey, these stars are mine to give...so a big, fat 5-stars to you sir, and hopes that this will not be the last wonder that falls from your mind onto paper....more
The real significance of this novel lies in its exposure of the political system that fostered and supported the gulags of Soviet Russia. The writing The real significance of this novel lies in its exposure of the political system that fostered and supported the gulags of Soviet Russia. The writing is stark and matter-of-fact, just like the life of the gulag. It is weighty and yet there is no despair in the character of Shukhov. He brims with hope and appreciation. He is grateful when the weather is warm enough that the mortar doesn’t freeze. “It is a good day for bricklaying� he says.
What offence lands a man in such a prison? Very small infractions or none at all can draw a ten years sentence, and frequently that is extended, again without any explanation or reason. The injustice of the system is paled against the suffering inflicted in the camp, being worked at hard labor in freezing conditions, without proper clothing, with little food, and without any possibility of escape or rescue.
Perhaps the saddest thing is that prisoners become used to this life and come to value the small bits of joy they can squeeze from a crust of bread or a tobacco butt passed to them by a more fortunate inmate. And yet, that is what speaks to the spark of humanity that even these kinds of conditions cannot stifle...where there is hope there is life, without it how could any of them endure even a "good" day. ...more
You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us....But if you're interested in life, it never lets you down.
Graham Greene’s almoYou are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us....But if you're interested in life, it never lets you down.
Graham Greene’s almost farcical take on international spying, Our Man in Havana is mostly a humorous look at a vacuum cleaner salesman, who is pressed into service by M16. Jim Wormold is out of his depth from the beginning, and not being a real spy, he does what makes the most sense to him, he manufactures information and pockets money. What ensues is nearly pure humor, (I know, not what one expects when opening up a Graham Greene novel, but the events themselves might well be harrowing if treated in a different fashion, and I suspect Greene wants us to peek beneath the veil and see the true face if we can.
This little novel is marvelously done. Jim Wormold is not in control of the events that unfold, but he has to play his part, take his chances, and sometimes face danger head-on. He seems to waver between being innately crafty and bungling but lucky. He has a spoiled and conveniently religious daughter and an interesting friend, Doctor Hasselbacher, who somewhat steals the show for me.
Written during the cold war, this is both a spoof of spying and perhaps a commentary on the way secret dealings create, rather than help, in the presence of that situation. Greene had done a stint as a M16 agent himself, so he probably understood the amount of disinformation there was floating about, the competitiveness, even between allies, that kept them from sharing real information, and the dangers that were inherent to the common practices in an atomic age.
A lot of fun and a big surprise. Graham Greene had a sense of humor--who would have guessed?
John le Carré’s first Smiley novel, Call for the Dead, is an old-fashioned, but well-written, cold war novel, with a spy with a heart at its core. GeoJohn le Carré’s first Smiley novel, Call for the Dead, is an old-fashioned, but well-written, cold war novel, with a spy with a heart at its core. George Smiley is not dashing or cosmopolitan, he is solid and intelligent and feeling; he sees both sides of the picture, but he never wonders which side he is on. He is the man you would wish to have in control of your government, but of course, he is not in control, he is just a factor, one man who tries to do things right and often has to fight the bureaucracy.
We know nothing of one another, nothing, Smiley mused. However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing.
In so many ways this is true of all of us, and in so many ways it is a necessity for the men who do the kind of work Smiley undertakes. How could you live in the shadows, keep the secrets, and still be open to anyone? And yet, we feel we do know Smiley, because we recognize his loneliness and his decency, and we see him struggle to understand even his adversaries.
I loved Smiley when I first read these stories, what seems like a million years ago. I did not remember any of the content of the story, but found I did remember him, perfectly. I shall love him again, of this I am sure, because he represents what is the finest in the men who put their lives on the line and do abominable jobs to keep the rest of us safe and free.
I have made a start, and I am looking forward to spending a year with Mr. Smiley, the old dear, again....more
Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
In many ways, this is a book about betrayal. How time betrays us, howDo you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
In many ways, this is a book about betrayal. How time betrays us, how men betrays us, how our memory betrays us, how our hubris and ambition betray us, and, yes, how love betrays us.
The world of espionage is a filthy business and not for the faint of heart. He who controls the secrets wields power, and men want power; bad men want it, of course, but all too often it is basically good men who give in to the worst sides of themselves in reaching for it. There is a price to be paid, but no worries if that price is paid by someone else.
The ordinary people recognize that there is little difference between the sides that pull at them. When Leiser is told to go away by an old man who serves him beer, the old man says,
You are either good or bad, and both are dangerous. Go away.
Indeed, both are dangerous and sometimes which you are is hard to distinguish.
I found this fourth novel in the Smiley series to be even more cynical and tragic than The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. I wondered why “Looking Glass� war, and I thought perhaps because it held a mirror up to what truly transpires behind the curtains and, like a mirror image, everything it reflects is the reverse of what it should be.
There is agony at moments in this novel, as we watch the innocent and easily duped taken in by the experienced and callous. John le Carre’s descriptions are riveting and tense. His heroes are ordinary, and the men in control are seldom heroic at all.
The next novel in the series is the inimitable Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In my opinion, these books are only getting better as we go....more
The second in John le Carre’s Smiley series is more a good murder mystery than a spy thriller. Smiley is quite retired and he is asked by Mrs. BrimleyThe second in John le Carre’s Smiley series is more a good murder mystery than a spy thriller. Smiley is quite retired and he is asked by Mrs. Brimley from his spying days to help respond to a mysterious letter she has received from a woman who has subsequently been murdered.
I hardly missed the intrigue of the Circus, since this mystery was almost as complicated and entangled as the spy craft. I changed my mind repeatedly about who did it and I kept feeling something minor was significant but failing to recognize what, right up to the end. I think John le Carre is a marvelous storyteller and rivals the best at this kind of fiction. However, this still pales next to his extraordinary later fictions.
Of course, part of what makes this work is the constant knowledge of Smiley’s real occupation, the reason he is so aptly suited to work this out.
The by-ways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man, who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed.
Worth remembering going forward. This is espionage as it was, as it is, with real lives at risk.
Next up, The Spy Came in From the Cold, and I will have Smiley in his element. I am almost atingle. ...more
I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden
What if you devoted your entire life to soI and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. - W.H. Auden
What if you devoted your entire life to something because you thought it was the right thing, the good thing, the moral thing, and then you ended your life wondering if you had been completely wrong? It happens to a lot of people, particularly because things shift on us as the years go by and change in ways we do not notice or acknowledge, and because with age comes wisdom, or if not wisdom, perhaps just clearer vision.
MacArthur famously said, “Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away.� Perhaps the same can be said of old spies, cold wars, and people who live on the fringe of society, just clambering for survival. And, if they have not died, but are only faded, can they be restored?
These were some of the thoughts I had while reading this novel, because John le Carre is one of those who sees the underbelly of life, and the betrayals it contains, and does not flinch. The time is 1974-75, Vietnam is falling from the hands of the Americans, Southeast Asia is a hotbed of activity, legal and illegal, the British still exercise control of a sort over Hong Kong, and all the major powers are jockeying for power. The Russians are actively working the Asian world for intelligence, and Karla, Smiley’s nemesis is playing cards that the British and Americans don’t even know he is holding.
Enter George Smiley, an aging British spy, who still carries the moral code and convictions of World War II, but must try to fit that image of the world into a more cynical, less forgiving, reality. He releases into this malestrom a seasoned operative by the name of Jerry Westerby, a man who seems so isolated and lonely that he made me ache, another man who has given his life to an occupation that breeds doubt and insecurity in men who are so seemingly strong and fearless. And, another man who is questioning what it has all been about.
Peter Guilliam sums it up rather well, I thought, and in doing so lays out the basic premise of the entire book:
One day, thought Guillam, as he continued listening, one of two things will happen to George. He’ll cease to care or the paradox will kill him. If he ceases to care, he’ll be half the operator he is. If he doesn’t, that little chest will blow up from the struggle of trying to find the explanation for what we do.
This is the sixth book in the Smiley series, and the second in the Karla Trilogy, and what I have observed in reading them is that George Smiley’s struggle to reconcile the job he does--the terrible consequences that often go with it, the deception and the sacrifices--is constant, never-ending, and personally costly. That he survives at all is miraculous, but he does, because he is the heart and conscience of the Circus, and eventually the heart is needed or the body dies.
One last thought, if anyone can write a more complex, intricate, entangled plot without failing to leave even the slightest element dangling, I have never encountered them. This is a spy novel, of course, but it is oh so much more. When you close the book, you will not leave the characters or the story behind, and you will see parallels all around you in our own society, in the duplicitousness of government, in the way some people play chess with other people’s lives, in the way sometimes everyone loses. ...more
Magnus Pym is a perfect spy. He is groomed for it from birth by his wretched and criminal father, Rick. He has learned to lie, to pretend, and to betrMagnus Pym is a perfect spy. He is groomed for it from birth by his wretched and criminal father, Rick. He has learned to lie, to pretend, and to betray, but he has never learned who he truly is. He is a man caught between worlds and putting on a different face for everyone he knows, so that his controller, his wife, his best friend, his father and even his son, all know a different man and none of them is the real man, the Pym who talks to himself when alone.
John le Carre is, IMHO, one of the best writers who ever took pen to hand. He never writes anything simple or easy. His books are as complex as his characters, as complex as the world of espionage itself, and they always reveal something of ourselves that we hate to look into the mirror and see but that we absolutely know is there.
Love is whatever you can still betray, he thought. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
Pym loves well and deeply, often in the wrong places, and Pym betrays everything and everyone, including himself. One of the characters refers to a spy as a “licensed criminal� and I believe that is one of the major points le Carre means to make. Just because a political entity endorses it, just because the law of man condones it, does not make it right. If an act is immoral, it is immoral. And, if a man has no moral compass, what does he have?
On the surface, this is a cold war spy tale, but this is not a surface book. This book is about people-- what makes them who they are, how they are shaped into their best or worst selves, how love and betrayal can rip a man’s soul, and perhaps how little chance one has against a deck that is stacked from birth or against a man who can charm your soul and then leave you as parched as a desert.
But at the last moment, I stopped to re-evaluate my view of Magnus Pym and discovered that perhaps, as a reader, I had also been betrayed. Perhaps he is never the man I thought or wanted him to be. Perhaps he doesn't deserve my pity or my understanding or even my heartfelt consideration. Perhaps I have been conned.
In my attempt to read or reread all of John Le Carre's novels, I am struck by how even he seems not to know how deeply the depths of a man can be plumbed. When you think "that is as far as introspection can go," he manages to delve just a little deeper. There is no multi-tasking when reading this novel, either...give it full concentration, or risk losing the thread completely. On the other hand, you get back what you give in spades....more
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold has the distinction of being the first universally lauded novel by John le Carre and the one that cemented his reputThe Spy Who Came in From the Cold has the distinction of being the first universally lauded novel by John le Carre and the one that cemented his reputation as a serious writer of Cold War fiction. As the story opens, Alec Leamas, a British operative who has been running the Berlin office of the British Intelligence Service, watches as his informant attempts an escape from East Berlin and is killed. With his network blown and his main informant dead, Leamas is asked to undertake a mission of his own, going into deep cover and putting his own life on the line.
If you are old enough to remember a divided Berlin and the tensions that swirled around the Berlin Wall, this book will feel almost nostalgic. In some ways, the times were simpler; we supposed we knew who the enemy was, and it seemed clear to us what was right and what was wrong. Of course, it wasn’t that simple at all, and John le Carre, a man who served in the intelligence services himself, is in a position to remind us of that.
At one point in the book, a spy from the other side say, “We’re all the same, you know, that’s the joke.� And, perhaps, there is more that is the same about us, regardless of our political or social views, than there is that is different.
And, there is a cynicism that runs through the novel that questions the very premises upon which the system is built. There is no absolute truth and no absolute solution, and many of the players are not even sure of the roles they are playing.
Sometimes she thought Alec was right--you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function. What did he say? “A dog scratches where it itches. Different dogs itch in different places.�
The major questions I was left pondering after finishing were “When do the ends justify the means, or do they ever?� and “Should the individual matter as much as the collective and who decides when the individual should be sacrificed for the good of the society?�
Didn’t see much of Smiley in this novel, but it certainly sets the mood and the understanding him in those left to come. ...more
Some faces, as Villem had suggested this morning, are known to us before we see them; others we see once and remember all our lives; others we see
Some faces, as Villem had suggested this morning, are known to us before we see them; others we see once and remember all our lives; others we see every day and never remember at all.
And, so it is with literary characters, some are so like us that we know them instinctively; some are not like us at all but completely unforgettable; and others are forgotten the moment we close the pages of the book. George Smiley is of the second sort, he wiggles his way into your sensibilities and lodges himself in your mind and heart, and while you might forget the details of the book over, say, the course of 39 years, you do not forget George...you never forget George.
Perhaps one reason for this is that Smiley is the moral man, the man with a conscience in the midst of all the greed and corruption and self-interests. Smiley was in all the other novels up to Smiley’s People, he led the charge in most of them, but they were just as centered around other characters: Bill Haydon, Jim Prideaux, Jerry Westerby. He isn’t in this novel, he is this novel, and John le Carre performs open heart surgery on him, and we see his bones and blood. While reading this, it seemed to me that every word written before it was just preamble to this, just groundwork to knowing and understanding the cost to a man’s life if he stands outside the group and does what he believes to be the moral thing.
Here we see the toll that this Cold War (how aptly named!) has had on both Smiley and his counterpart, Karla. We watch them perform the last steps in the last dance and marvel that they have survived so long in a world that kills off and uses up men as if they were straw dogs. If we could not see before how perverse this world is, we can see it clearly here, for both men have a weakness and that weakness is love.
This is the saddest and most despondent I have felt reading a Smiley book. I think le Carre has posed the age old questions: Who can you trust? Can lies and deceit ever be the right thing? Are there ever winners in international intrigues? Why do men do it; what motivates them? What is the personal cost when you do the wrong thing, even for the right reason? And, in the end, what difference does one man make; are we all just disposable? As a society, we might not like the answers.
Written in 1990, when the world found itself at the close of the Cold War and uncertain of the future, The Secret Pilgrim finds Ned, an aging spy, putWritten in 1990, when the world found itself at the close of the Cold War and uncertain of the future, The Secret Pilgrim finds Ned, an aging spy, put out to pasture to teach the new recruits at Sarratt how to spy in a world where spying just might now be a second-rate trade. He invites our old friend Smiley to talk to his class, and as Smiley talks, Ned revisits his life as a spy.
As Debra, one of the astute members of our reading group, observed, “this is a spy coming-of-age story.� It is indeed, just that. It traces the decline in innocence of one spy, and in doing so, highlights the deterioration of a system that I believe began in decency and hope and ended in futility and sometimes corruption.
In the words of Smiley, "We concealed the very things that made us right. Our respect for the individual, our love of variety and argument, our belief that you can only govern fairly with the consent of the governed, our capacity to see the other fellow's view--most notably in the countries we exploited, almost to death, for our own ends. In our supposed ideological rectitude, we sacrificed our compassion to the great god of indifference. We protected the strong against the weak, and we perfected the art of the public lie. We made enemies of decent reformers and friends of the most disgusting potentates. And we scarcely paused to ask ourselves how much longer we could defend our society by these means and remain a society worth defending.�
I think these might be observations and questions just as worthwhile asking in 2019 as they were in 1990--perhaps more so.
I believe this was meant to be Smiley’s last appearance in print at the time it was written, although in 2017 John le Carre decided to visit him once again. Had this been Smiley’s last words on the subject of his life, they would have been profound ones. And yet, I wondered as I closed the book what Smiley would have done differently, given the same set of circumstances, and I decided the answer would have been, “nothing�. For Smiley did his best in a world that contained more evil and duplicity than he could ever have imagined--and what more can a person do? ...more
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