What do You think about A Perfect Spy (2003)?
Since the classic "The Day of the Jackal" -- the only spy/thriller-type book I've ever read -- is one of my all-time favorite vacation reads, I thought I'd pick up another in the same relatively light genre to tide me over while doing some recent traveling. Note: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR LIGHT READING, DO NOT CHOOSE "THE PERFECT SPY." At least early on, I found it so impenetrable that I almost made it the second book in my 37 years that I didn't finish. Actually, though, I'm glad I stuck with it; it IS a solid work of literature -- a tremendous feat of characterization, among other things. But due to the plot structure, the numerous exclusively British cultural references, and the odd and sometimes ridiculously obscure metaphors, light reading it is certainly not. *A great quote, from the last page: "A society that admires its shock troops better be bloody careful about where it is going...."
—Dan
I really enjoy le Carré's writing but I found the non-linear timeline a bit too distorted. I'm a fan of switching timelines if it facilitates the story well, but in this case, it was just a bit too cumbersome to read, and it didn't even lend any depth or rhythm to the lead character's thought processes. Also, I predicted the story line, which is never fun. The best takeaway from reading this book was the throwback you get to literary times where reading was actually enriching for the mind and not just some mindless pastime that satisfied a perversely shallow need like distraction. Carré's language and storytelling (barring the aforementioned convolution) leave little to be desired. For moderate, unseasoned readers like me, books like these prove to be difficult reads and even though trudging through them feels like an ordeal, I still want more. I guess that says something about writers like Carré.
—Swati
Let me start this review with these words; this book is devastating. It is the best writing John Le Carre has ever done, and will ever do.That's not to say that it's a better spy novel than Tinker Tailor or The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; it's not. If spycraft is what you crave, it's here, but it definitely takes a back seat to everything else. In A Perfect Spy, Le Carre's writing rises easily to the level of the 20th Century's greatest authors. After the death of his father, Magnus Pym, debonair, flawless British spy, has disappeared with the station’s burn box. His wife, his son, his handlers, and his friends have no idea where he is, due to the fact that he has doled each of them a different piece of the truth. In the meantime, he has checked himself into a safe house, where he is determined to write a book that will set everything straight. A Perfect Spy is largely autobiographical. Le Carre's mother vanished when he was three, in the same way that Pym loses his mother at an early age. Like Pym's father Rick, Le Carre’s father Ronnie Cornwell was a charismatic, larger-than-life con man who spent time in prison. When the young Le Carre wasn’t away at various boarding schools, (the tuition sometimes paid for with black market dried fruit), he was palling around with his father’s unsavory acquaintances. Like Pym, he worked for the British Secret Service in Switzerland and in Austria and attended Oxford. Pym is a gifted intelligence officer, but he tells everyone that what he really wants to do is write, and good God, how Le Carre writes. At its heart, this is a book about a boy's relationship with his father. As a parent, I am achingly aware of my responsibility; children are fragile little creatures whose fates depend completely on the mercy of the adults who take care of them. For better and for worse, it is we who teach them what is right, or wrong, or normal. It's we who teach them how to love, and who to trust, it's we who twist and shape their vulnerable little psyches. And it is we who are capable of damaging them the most. Rick loves his son, and his son loves him, and it is painfully clear how this criminally self-absorbed and self-deluding narcissist destroys "the natural humanity" in little Magnus, turning him into the perfect spy of the title. How Le Carre was able to write this stuff down without wetting every page of the manuscript with his tears is a mystery to me. With all that, the book is surprisingly funny, full of mocking self-deprecation and gorgeous British slang. The facts make wonderful fiction. There are hilarious letters from Rick to his son and lovingly recreated conversations between his father's business associates. It is also surprisingly sexy, as the young Pym navigates between lust and yearning, all things we don't expect from John Le Carre. A Perfect Spy is a breathtaking act of catharsis, warm and funny, wry and rueful, unexpectedly, nakedly human. Instead of burying his painful past, Mr. Le Carre illuminates it for us as a masterpiece of fiction. Happily, he has come to terms with his father, resurrecting him for us with humor and with love.
—Helen
