Customer Reviews

A Perfect Spy

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

This book is so much more than just another espionage thriller. It is really a character study of the central figure and a very satisfying psychological investigation into the anticedents of a spy's character. Magnus Pym was the perfect spy because of the way he was raised; specifically, the way he learned to perceive the world as he came to understand his father - a con man of great charm (based on Le Carre's own father) who always acted as though truth was whatever he wanted it to be at the moment. Maybe the title actually refers to the father and not to Pym. Perhaps?

Le Carre's use of language is always a pleasure, and here it is put to excellent use in recreating the world of Pym's past. The main plot of finding the missing Pym becomes less important than the subplots - often involving past events - and the overall structure of the novel is less driven by unknown outcomes than is a typical 'spy' story.

One is left with a great sense of sadness after finishing this book but no disappointment. Very original and very satisfying.

Whew. It literally took me three years to read this book. I would start the book and quit reading by page 80, 90, sometimes 100. I never had the resolve to get past those first few chapters.

"A Perfect Spy" is as close to an autobiography as I think we'll get from LeCarre. While his later "Single and Single" touched on the same things, I greatly preferred "A Perfect Spy". It's a much darker, much more emotionally draining novel than "Single".

What a sad, disappointing, mesmerizing, depressing, ultimately satisfying novel LeCarre has written for us.

It's too tough to talk about the book without giving some spoilers, so all I'll say is that the story picks up gradually. The first bit is a bit tough, in my opinion, because of the flashbacks to the Magnus's childhood. Keep reading. It becomes clear later why you are spending time there.

What a story. I had a previously enjoyed "Tinker, Tailor" the most of his books, but I think "A Perfect Spy" might replace that. I'm off to finish the rest of the Karla trilogy now, but I'll always be thinking of Magnus, and how wonderfully he was written.

It seems that nary a used book sale is complete without a copy of A Perfect Spy holding court on crowded shelves with works of obscure fiction. Having often come across it during my own browsing, I finally picked up a copy (for free) to see if I had been missing out. I intend no harm with the statement, but the book was worth the price. I now see a measure of reason behind the myriad discarded copies.

One might call this work a genre-bender as it is less a work of fictive espionage than it is a psychological profile of the protagonist, Magnus Pym. It is, at its core, an extended work in character development. At the beginning of the novel, spy Pym takes up residence in a seaside home to write his memoirs, and his disappearance causes a flurry of panic within the American and British intelligence communities. The grand majority of "the action" has already taken place, however, and is cryptically recounted in hindsight as Pym explores the influence of his father's business shenanigans upon his own character, chosen vocation, and penchant for deception. His style is so cryptic at times, and clarification from le Carre so wanting, that the reader can easily be left behind searching for clues as to time and context. It is a task to keep one's bearings as the narrative often shifts from past to present with little warning, while minor characters not seen for chapters surface suddenly with little hint as to where they were last seen. The name Wentworth, for example, surfaces within the first 100 pages then largely disappears for the rest of the novel until assuming a major role at the very end. There are some 150 to 160 major and minor characters in this book, some of which appear in both Pym's reminiscing and in the narrative present. The story is an unusual one as Pym's reminiscing seems to be preparing the reader for a more dynamic present. But by the time the reminiscing and the present intersect, the novel has ended.

John le Carre is a gifted writer and story teller, but it seems this story has proven too difficult even for even him to tell, at least in the way he has chosen to tell it. A Perfect Spy is not a poorly written book, but it can be a bewildering one -- and one which seems to end just as it is getting started.

This is the finest book I have ever read. I first read it about 8 years ago, and read it again a few years later. Nothing else he has written comes close to eclipsing the brilliance of this work. What is the secret of this masterpiece? The secret is... almost every sentence written has greater meaning and greater significance than the simple words that form them. The text is oozing with innuendo, suggestion and ambiguity. The characters are vivid and almost walk of the pages. This book induced one of my favourite quotes, ascribed to Ricky: "Ideals are like the stars. We cannot reach them, but we are enriched by their presence" Well, I was enriched by this masterpiece.

Speaking as someone who enjoys classic literature written in styles that force you to think, I hate to admit that LeCarre's "A Perfect Spy" is far more work to read than it is worth.

A good part of the reason is more than just LeCarre's use (or abuse) of "linguistic artistry," which often comes across as an over-indulgent exercise in making things metaphorically obscure. More to the point is the fact that in "A Perfect Spy," LeCarre has made several critical mistakes that can easily kill a reader's interest.

For one, the beginning portions of the book read as something of a "Table of Contents," where glimpses of events are subtly telegraphed ahead of their recounting. This recounting is then accomplished through a haphazard, non-chronological use of flashbacks that are sometimes communicated in a straightforward narrative, and at other times through the gimmick of the main character's - Magnus Pym's - writing of a book or letters. It is extremely confusing at times to tell which, with LeCarre's willy-nilly use of first and third person, and addresses to "Tom" (Pym's son) and "Jack" (one of Pym's mentors) arbitrarily tossed in here and there. Anyway, it soon becomes obvious that the reader will then have to wade through the various topics in that "Table of Contents" until the book comes to its inevitable, very predictable conclusion.

Another aspect that makes this book tedious is that LeCarre once again has created a world of characters who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, unless you consider the sexual appetites of alley cats redeeming: "He slapped her once, then he slapped her again and on a clear day he would have taken her straight to bed." I kid you not, that is not from a cheesey Mickey Spillane novel, that is straight out of this book. At any rate, the reader is then required to examine the lives of all these charming characters, past and present, knowing full well that critical moments in their lives, which have been alluded to earlier, have yet to be gone over in excruciating detail. Normally, a good amount of descriptive detail is desirable to flesh out a character, to make a character believable so you care what happens to him or her. But in this case, all the main characters are so unappealing, why should we care to wade through it all?

The use of stereotype, especially toward the American characters, is a further irritant. Consider, from the last third of the book: "Gary was your typical Kentuckian-tall, spare and amusing." It makes one wonder if the full extent of LeCarre's exposure to Kentuckians has been a fleeting glimpse at a bio of Abraham Lincoln.

Strip the book of its flashbacks and other narrative gimmicks, and you end up with a boring tale of an unlikable character who has betrayed his country in uninteresting ways, and the parade of unlikable, uninteresting people that helped shape his uninteresting life.

A predictable, relentlessly dark and bleak story, made even more difficult to read in both style and method.

The first and most important thing to remember about this book is that it is a semi-autobiography. The background, schooling and parents of the main character of this book are all Le Carré's own, with just the slightest veneer placed over them, and I do mean the slightest. Like Magnus Pym, the main character in this book, Le Carré, for example did have a father who was a crook; his father did fight a by-election in Norfolk under the Liberal colours and was, during it, exposed by an elderly Irishwoman; he did have to leave Eton when his father could no longer afford the fees.

And like Magnus Pym, Le Carré was recruited into MI6 and probably, like Pym, was recruited while studying in Bern, although unlike Pym he left after five years to write novels. However, for anyone who knows a little of Le Carré's life story, an added frisson is added by the questions that inevitably provokes - did Le Carré get up to anything naughty with Eastern Bloc intelligence services?

However, the spy stuff, as beautifully crafted as it always is, is only a backdrop for the real theme of the book - Le Carré's relationship with himself, his father and his country.

Yes, his country; this is as much an elegy for the English upper-middle class as anything else. A melancholy, fatalistic patriotism seeps through every page of the book, as Le Carré writes an elegy for his people - perhaps patriotism isn't quite the write word; he has no feeling for nor interest in the St. George's flag waving, football supporting masses. It's an elegy not for England, but for his England, of `sound' men in tweeds and pipes emerging from Southern country towns to rule colonies; of the respectable sadism of the public school; of the sense of duty of a military class that has all but disappeared. The theme of fallen empire runs through all Le Carré's works, but nowhere more strongly than through this one and does so with characteristic brilliance.

With regards to his father and himself, he says what he may not have been able to say for decades, even to himself, before, and his writing bursts forth in great, emotional, torrents. Some of it moving and powerful; some of it is unnecessary but quirkily interesting; and some of it, frankly, is twaddle that needed a good editor to batter into shape. But this was Le Carré's magnum opus, and bestselling authors are allowed a little latitude in their magna opera. That's a pity, because this could have been a great book; but at times it takes a chapter to say what a sentence should have; and at times it is so hopelessly self-indulgent that it sends one to sleep.

This book is not only the best of many fine efforts by LeCarre, but one of the best novels in our language in the latter half of the 20th century. It is as smoothly and perfectly made as LeCarre could have made it, but it is not "an easy read." For one thing, I do not know what a "read" is, except that it is a bizarre term that came into vogue about 20-25 years ago along with the "minimalist" school of American fiction, "micro stories," the decline of independent booksellers, the "nobody reads anymore" mantra, etc. Its use implies that a book ought to be something easy enough for time between planes, otherwise it's too difficult for attention. If the lack of ease or difficulty of a first reading of major literary fiction has become a factor, this is unfortunate for those plagued by it. Time was, the reader might be expected to put in some effort too, although this is doubtless a surprise to many who, by no fault of their own, had a bad generation of English teachers who, like their students, had their brain synapses deadened by visual media since babyhood.

Having made the claim for this book's greatness, it is admittedly almost as difficult to defend this position straightforwardly as to locate the essential story in this dense and backward winding plot. The main constraint is this: I respect amazon.com's guide rule about writing a review that does not give the plot away. And the primary rich experience for the reader here, on first reading, is digging out the essence of the plot and meaning as the narration of father and son winds forth and back. And the great meanings here do not become apparent until the end. Admitedly for us Americanos, there is some thick Brit slang to slog through here, too.

However, I can straightforwordly set forth some things that the reader's serious effort will return, in this tale of "the perfect spy" Magnus Pym trying to justify his turbulent life: (1) a major character type of the modern beaurocratic/corporate world in the west, a real addition to the major paradigms of human character in English speaking literature; there is no character quite like Magnus Pym ever set forth previously -- he might be considered a new species -- the 100% self-invented man; (2) a tortuous meditation on parenting amidst the modern house of mirrors; (3) grand comedy on the level of the world's finest comic writers; (4) a bitter summa from LeCarre on his entire spy world, doubtless heartfelt, sincere and accurate; (5) the usual first-rate LeCarre ear for the human voice, diction, and accent; (6) the experience of being forced, by the book's very complexity, to think one's way out of the very deepest and murkiest of modern dilemmas -- in other words a little boot camp that will toughen your mind and soul for life in this era, no matter what you do.

There are many other issues, for instance there are questions about the title itself in this book where little can be trusted. Is it ironic? What sort of "perfection" is this? Is there any relationship including marriage and friendship not poisoned here? Is Magnus a prisoner because of nature's double-edged gift of his con man father, or was his course determined by his own personal choices? And yes, as in much great literature, the answers are not easy and debates may rage forever. But this may be said -- they are real debates about subjects of the greatest importance, both for individuals and societies. They are not presented for the sake of being tricky or clever. Indeed the book's tone of anquish is its seal of authenticity. LeCarre generously gave his heart and soul to his public in writing this book -- a gesture that puts him among the best of the moderns in every sense of the word.

Certainly it would be useful to read some other LeCarre fiction before coming to this book. Perhaps the reader may never "get" the significance of Magnus when all is said and done; he may slip away like Gatsby for some, whose appellation "the Great" is also simultaneously defensible as both true and ironic. But my guess is that as time passes, Magnus will come to stand for our era as Gatsby does for the roaring 20s, or as Ahab does for 19th century America. The reader should not be discouraged or angry if he misses that point. Both of those books basically failed in their own day too, and required decades for proper understanding. This is a funny quality that really great literature concerning contemporary matters often has. It finds us too thick in the same forest to necessarily get it. But for whatever effort you give it, The Perfect Spy will return on that deal.

Definitely agree with the below review and the character development angle. Usually a book like this would take me 3-4 days to finish, "A Perfect Spy" took me three months! Putting it down for weeks and then I would pick it up and get right back into where Magnus was - whether in his past in dealings with his Foreign Service controller Brotherhood; his Berne flatmate controller Axel; or even his distant father Rick. Pym was his own person probably never, he was manufactured by all the people around him. He was the perfect spy but did not know exactly where his loyalty lie, so he was loyal to everyone, whenever it suited them. It could only end in one way. Classic le Carre -- the king of writing around the bush. A study in English literature.

For those who still wonder about Le Carré's past and secret life, "A Perfect Spy" unveils lots of small mysteries. But besides the fact this book tells us a lot about the author's childhood, it remains a fascinating trip in the depths of the diplomatic society, the beautiful people, misery in the darkest places of England and dozens of small unreachable worlds. Once again but better than ever Le Carré takes you to a mystery tour that change your looking at your own world. Pym becomes your closest friend, his wife the one you'd like to tell everything, the other caracters become your foes... This time you learn everything , bit by bit, but you still remain helpless, you can't do anything but keeping going deeper and deeper through the complexity of one's life and feelings. Turning the last page is like being knocked out, but guess what ? You want more of it ! Satisfaction guaranteed...

This is a spy novel focused primarily on the development of characters--primarily two college-aged students who later become spies and the father of one. If you are expecting an engaging novel with lots of intrigue and interesting twists, this is not that kind of novel. There are less than a handful of books that I have started and not completed, yet by page 175, I was seriously considering abadoning it entirely as my interest had not been engaged. The author does a good job of character development, demonstrating some of the complexities in actions and feelings that those employed in the spy trade might encounter. The writing jumps regularly between different narrators, locations, and time periods with, as you might expect from spies, characters have multiple names. Thus, it can be challenging to follow the story. There also seems to be a lot of unnecessary descriptions. While clearly other reviewers liked this book, I read a lot and would say this was one of the least enjoyable books I've read in a while.