I cannot recall the exact age I was when I read this minimalist piece perfectly executed by the talented le Carré, but whatever is was—and around 15 years old sounds about right—it served as effective an eye-opener to reality as a set of clamps fixed upon what were previously orbs dreaming away behind sealed lids. At that time, my fictional intake was comprised of a not inconsiderable proportion of espionage thrillers—the sprawling series by Ian Fleming and Robert Ludlum primarily, but sprinkled in were a few of Pendleton's Mack Bolan and textualizations of the Man From U.N.C.L.E. franchise. These were all, more-or-less, well-written and entertaining enough to have sufficed at that age, and while the exoticness of the locales, the menacingly debonair airs of the various protagonists, their victories over impossible odds, the cunning double- and triple-crosses put into effect by jousting opponents, were all at a level ramped-up sufficiently to telegraph their fictionality, the covert world of spies and secret agents was given a sense of inherent power and importance, competence and peril, technological marvels and physical derring-do, that grafted their way onto its existence in the real world. This was all there: at a more subdued level, carried out in a less explosive manner—but the stakes were high, the operators were top-notch professionals, and the agencies that employed them were sophisticated and ultra-competent, with their shadowy, subterranean tendrils spread dexterously about an unsuspecting world. Indeed, even today, decades after this world of ghosts and specters was delineated in modes and means far closer to the actual truth of things by such as le Carré, it is the preferred form for its treatment, whether on paper, television set, or cinematic screen: larger-than-life, physically perfect specimens perform acts of death-defying acrobatics and stunt-work while exhibiting a feral and unerring lethality, all in an effort to avert the apocalyptic outcomes of the fiendishly clever, logically precise, and temporally taut plots of whatever respective villainous mind has set out to assert their will upon the world they would rule.So it was that The Looking Glass War, this thin, unprepossessing book with its somewhat tacky, boxy red cover, struck me quite forcefully with the banality, the absurdity, the futility, and the morbidity that permeated nigh everything and everyone involved—with one centrally important exception—in its elegantly precise unwinding. Here was an intelligence agency—euphemized as The Department—peopled by creaking, ossified civil servants, pining nostalgically for the brief snatches of glory they had worked back in the old days of the Second World War and desperate to proclaim their collective relevance in the face of blatant Yankee superiority, rival institution triumphant supersession, and Warsaw Pact opacity. A lucky bit of informational unearthing—details of an alleged transfer of Soviet nuclear missiles to a secret East German military installation—seems to have given this British death-bed unit an opportunity to set their mark in confusing and confounding times; sparked these moribund fossils into energetic planning and plotting, in which a previously successful wartime operative, a Polish patriot named Leiser currently residing in England as a newly-married citizen, is brought out of mothballs and set through training procedures deemed sufficient to allow him to infiltrate the heavily guarded East German border and become their Johnny-on-the-Spot missile spotter. Alas, the acquired information appears to have been compromised right from the start, and Departmental cockups and bollixing unfold with enough depressing regularity to lead the reader to suspect the ailing, rusty intelligence agency running things of being a front for Ringling Brothers. In the face of accumulated failure—including the misfortune that forced Leiser to kill an East German border guard—George Smiley, a young turk serving a liason role between the agent-running anachronism and the freshly scrubbed, newly-minted Circus operating in the Big Time from London, convinces the former to pull the plug on the botched operation. Unfortunately, this news doesn't get through to the game but desperate Leiser, whose very transmissions allow the East Germans to pinpoint his location and bring their soldiers to bear on him with force. Worst of all? The missiles, in all likelihood, were never actually intended for that particular East German destination to begin with. It was all part of the cynical and ultimately pointless game-within a game-within a game that comprises the grim theatre of espionage in a world bifurcated between two ideologically-opposed nuclear powers.Whatever illusions are carried into this book by the reader will be hard pressed to survive through to the end. This is a bleakly cynical, unrelentingly depressing tale, the textual equivalent of a fortnight of drizzling rain, sullen cloud blankets, and empty, tipped-over gin bottles. Le Carré works quickly, almost effortlessly here, not without compassion, but never glossing things up to any degree; it's a spartan operation, the authorial blade gleaming with the wickedly sharp edges brought to bear upon this rotten object he intends to give form. The entirety of the Department's operation, while not without a few strained traces of important endeavor and heroic effort (especially on the part of the doomed-from-the-outset Leiser), is primarily conducted with an earnest energy not quite sufficient to overcome the creaking lethargy of redundancy and the ridiculousness of this agency's esteem-reclaiming theatrics. As anyone who has read such as Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes knows, well-meaning but compromised and ignorant operators like Frank Wisner ran several assets on fatal missions into communist Europe, unaware that his opponents knew more about the agent's whereabouts than he did; and in The Looking Glass War le Carré has crafted herein a British cadre equivalent to Wisner: well-intentioned but riddled with the failures gestated within by their wounded pride, their deflated egos, and their inability to admit their own limitations and outdatedness. Of course, it is Leiser who will pay the ultimate price for their incompetent hubris, leaving them the comparative benefaction of a retirement to their clubs, their culpability routinely assuaged by another round of drinks and further retreat into the glory days when the lads had the rotten old Nazis on the run. As le Carré saw it, espionage was just another realm of government bureaucracy, subject to all the absurd laws of such and tending to be populated by the usual proportion of time-servers, power-seekers, ego-strokers, and lifeline-cutters, while perhaps more prone than most to overreach, the corrupting influence of money, and the despair engendered by their competition's comparative advantages. There is nothing here that speaks of glamor or steeliness—but I'll be damned if it didn't make an impression to outlast that of all the thrill-rides.
The Looking Glass War was published shortly after perhaps Le Carre's most famous work The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and is every bit as murky, grim and depressing as the aforementioned (possibly even more so). The book starts brilliantly in a Finish airport where a British agent (Taylor) anticaptes the arrival of a pilot who, having undertaken a risky flyover, should have some vital information in his possession. From the moment the uneasily dialogue with the aiport barman begins you know this agents fate hangs in balance. And so sets forth a chain of events that culminates with four over-the-hill civil servants huddled together in a North German farmhouse hoping to recapture their WW2 glory days. No characters come out well in this tale. Using one as an example: Avery, Leclerc's personal assistant, is a hopelessly naive fish out of water and is left aghast when he's tasked with returning to Finland to piece together Taylor's demise. His section reads almost like a horror film when he's holed up in the airport hotel jumping out of his skin over the smallest of knocks at the door. Spare a thought though for poor, poor Leiser; our main character in the second act. The moment the department tracks down the Anglicized Pole, who once was a British agent in WW2, for a risky cross border operation into East Germany you know he's doomed. Like the department itself he jumps at the chance to recreate his war hero image even if its only shared by the misfits in British intelligence. Quite how Leiser trusts and adores the monstrously aloof Haldane so much is particularly puzzling to me. But there comes the crux of the matter. The elite have found their willing pleb to do their grubby work for them and if he fails so what? Who will miss a Pole working in a petrol station? Its scenarios like these that can make Le Carre particulary hard going at times; which is why he has to often rely on his most renowned creation George Smiley who seems to be the only character that possesses a moral compass.The Looking Glass War is undoubtedly one of Le Carre's finest amongst his illustrious array of works. Highly recommended.
What do You think about The Looking Glass War (2002)?
As always, le Carre’s writing is elegant, fluid, and measured, however I did not particularly enjoy this novel. Although George Smiley’s presence hovers over the narrative, he rarely manifests himself. For the most part, the reader follows the exploits of the Department men, whose glory days ended with the Second World War. Twenty years later, they have been sidelined by the Circus and jump at the chance to introduce an agent into East Germany. The narrative follows the genesis of this mission and the agent’s training in detail, giving the reader plenty of time to work up a profound sense of dread. For it is clear from the outset that the Department are hopelessly incompetent, out of date, and generally doomed. Their awkward pride and camaraderie are near-painful to witness. The reader is in much the position of Smiley and Control, who watch the proceedings with a distant sense of pity. That said, the reader is in no position to intervene or clear up the resulting mess, as the Circus is. It’s interesting to compare ‘The Looking Glass War’ to other George Smiley novels. In Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality, the narrative follows Smiley around and takes on his sardonic, deadpan humour. By contrast, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is not at all humorous and takes a bitter, cynical tone. Yet it is most definitely a spy thriller, in which the reader is gripped by suspense as the machinations of espionage unfold. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy creates a similarly tense atmosphere, tempered by Smiley’s point of view. ‘The Looking Glass War’ is not a thriller, as it is obvious where events are heading and only the deluded men of the Department seem unaware. There is no real suspense about it, only a tragic inevitability, and very little humour.
—Anna
John le Carré isn't for everyone and specifically, he's not for me. He describes a world that is as alien as it's uninteresting and absurd. I don't doubt it's realistic, but realism isn't always what makes an enjoyable reading experience.This is one of only a few books ever that I've decided to not read through. Mostly because I was uncertain whether I should ever start it, but decided to have a go hoping it would be different from the previous Carré book I read. It wasn't. Actually, considering the different setting, it was scarily similar.
—Daniel Bratell
While Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is often described as "anti-James Bond" spy fiction, I think this one has a better stab at that description. It's a book firmly within the same fictional universe as the others I've been reading by le Carre (George Smiley is a small character in it), but unlike the others the spies in question don't work for the Circus (ie, MI6) but a small somewhat defunct intelligence organization also working for the British government. The book is actually a bit hard to read all the way through, because the plot is based around the general lack of competence on the parts of everyone involved. An operation is mounted, but no information is retrieved as a result of an ambiguous death. The head of the organization (in what appears to be a fit of nostalgia for World War II) decides to mount another more dangerous under cover organization and outfits an ex-operative with old fashioned gear. But the agent is too old to make even the old fashioned gear work well, and makes a number of misjudgments. Eventually everyone except him (he is either captured or killed) flees back to London and the novel is over. It's all a bit dispiriting, and also embarassing-by-proxy (not for le Carre, but for all of the characters), so I couldn't tell if it was meant to be comic or ambiguously satiric.
—Mark
