Customer Reviews

Single & Single

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(21)

 

 

After the utter disappointment of The Tailor of Panama, Le Carre's latest novel harks back to his crafty old ways. His writing is superb, particularly in the treatment of the father-son relationship and he knows the way around scenes of physical and psychological tension better than any other author I know. The opening chapters are brilliant and his ability to put together a seemingly complex puzzle is still in top form, albeit with somewhat less shine than in his early masterpieces set during the Cold War. However, this outing is deceptively timid by comparison. The plot, when revealed, is simple and contains no surprises. We know who's the crook from the start, don't we? The approach to the climax is indeed rushed and the big bang one hopes for fails to materialise. Despite these flaws, it's still a very good read and I'm glad to see Le Carre regaining some of the lustre that made him, in my opinion, the best and classiest espionage author of his generation.

If you read this book expecting one of Le Carre's spy novels, you will be disappointed because although there are connections to the spy world this is not a spy novel. If you keep an open mind about what will emerge in Single & Single, you will enjoy an interesting tale of good and evil drawn through the detective genre. At its best, Single & Single is as gripping as any Le Carre book -- especially in the first few chapters. The downside is that the tawdriness of almost all the characters make the book a bit of a downer. The Cold War stories in Le Carre's earlier books had the redeeming (and sometimes inspiring) quality of addressing more kinds of potential nobility. The hero in Single & Single is a rewardingly complex figure, righteous yet not always strong enough and conflicted . . . and more than a little idealistic, reminding one of Don Quixote. If you like heros like that, you will very much enjoy the book. If you find small-minded crooks pursuing their ends in petty, immoral ways relatively uninteresting, you will meet a lot of them here. I found myself mixing the crooks up in many cases because they seemed so similar in motivation and characterization. Perhaps the best part of the book is the subtle exploration of a son's feelings for a father, even when that father doesn't really add up to a lot. Although far from his best work (probably because of the subject rather than his writing skill), this Le Carre will satisfy all but the most demanding fans. Those who will be disappointed will include those who want a startling revelation at the end. That's not the way this story is constructed. It would be a mistake not to read it, however, if you are a Le Carre fan or just like a good story.

John le Carre has produced another masterful novel. The basic theme is individual decency, loyalty and helplessness. Unlike his Cold War novels, the backdrop is capitalist Russia and international finance, instead of espionage.

This is the story of Oliver Single, apprentice at his father Tiger's financial empire, messenger between Single & Single and a Georgian/Russian family, the Orlovs. He falls in love with the Orlov family and their daughter Goya, but betrays both his father and the Orlovs by walking to the government to tell all. Sent into hiding by the government, he comes out again four years later, in search of his father Tiger Single, who has disappeared after Single & Single's top lawyer is executed on a Turkish hilltop.

Tortured by his betrayal and by his conscience, Oliver is the heart of the novel.

This is also the story of Alix Hoban, a Westernized Russian crook. Married to Goya Orlov but faithful only to himself, Alix makes ambitious plans for selling his peoples' blood to the West, but failing that, runs a drug trafficking business on a massive scale, from Istanbul and Vienna. He tries to take over both the Orlov and the Single empires, but his ruthlessness does not pay off in the end.

This is also the story of Brock, fighting corruption in British law enforcement and running undercover operations for evidence against Single & Single. (This part I found untenable. Aren't ruthless bloodthirsty financialists the engine of Anglo-American growth and imperialism? Why should the British government run operations against its finest wealth-creators? But, okay, fiction is fiction.)

And this novel is a story of ruthlessness, and a vision of how the rich & powerful actually run this world of ours.

But despite the dark backdrop, "Single & Single" is lighter and more hopeful than many of Mr. le Carre's earlier novels.

There is the portrayal of Goya, crying for all the victims of white powder (heroin?) traded by her family. And Aggie, a girl working for Brock, with morals far higher than you would imagine from your knowledge of the English.

And of course there's Oliver, and the little Oliver-Aggie love story.

In its hope and humanity, and with its little love stories, "Single & Single" is a bit like le Carre's "Russia House." A reviewer of "Russia House" said: "Fans of the George Smiley books may find themselves disappointed, but I think fans of Le Carre as the storyteller and writer will be very satisfied." I can say the same of "Single & Single."

As in other le Carre books, you have to get well into the book before you piece together what the story is about. I guess this is not news to le Carre fans, and I hope new readers are not put off by it.

As in the author's other novels, you get a sense of the research that went into the book, and the meticulous connection with reality. Like in le Carre's "Our Game", you get a human picture of peripheral pieces of the Russian empire. How does le Carre know people from so many different places, so well? The Russian murderer rings as true as the Turkish small-town police & mayor, as does the flowing emotions of the Georgian women, and the selfish Polish lawyer.

I also appreciated the smell of Istanbul coming out in the descriptions, soooo real. As well as the descriptions of traveling across Europe, Zurich to Vienna to Istanbul, and the feeling of displacement with too much traveling. Le Carre knows the continent well. I can't testify about the Georgia/Russia descriptions; I haven't been there yet.

The novel begins with the description of an execution, on a Turkish hilltop, carried out ceremonially by a rather international assortment of criminals. This description is masterful, done from the point of view of the condemned.

Well worth the read, and then (like much of le Carre) also worth a second read because you won't get everything the first time around.

In the battle between those who can't seem to comprehend the elliptical style perfected by Le Carre (who give it one star in their reviews) and those who claim that Single & Single is a masterpiece (five stars), I come out on the positive side, but with a few reservations. Yes, the first 125 pages are slow. Yes, the writing can be maddeningly obtuse at times. And yes, none of the characters are complete models of moral integrity. But, if you expected something else from Le Carre, you've clearly not read his prior work. His books always take a while to draw you in. His lack of clarity in individual scenes are like brushstokes--eventually leading to a picture that (even though impressionistic) stands beautifully by itself. And Le Carre remains the superstar portrayer of moral ambiguity. In my view, Single & Single is completely consistent with Le Carre's other work. It's a very good addition to his body of work and delivers in the end. On the other hand, it's not among his very best (the Karla trilogy, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold), but it's certainly better than The Tailor of Panama (a book that had me believing that Le Carre may have lost his way). Welcome back, John, and please write a few more. It's so nice to see a thoughtful, literate, and entertaining book on the best seller list (even if it's only for a few weeks).

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, John Le Carre wrote magnificent spy stories. Then the wall fell, and what was he to do? He takes up writing stories about international drug and arms dealers, and pharmaceutical cartels,and tricks them out with all the midnight meetings of the Home Office mandarins,and their ilk, that he previously wrote so well about, but in the case of international drug-arms smugglers, it's definitely the mountains laboring to bring forth a mouse.

Single and Single, unfortunately, follows the same pattern, though there's also some patter about smuggling blood, perhaps based in research. Her Majesty's Customs Service is all over the story, safe houses, hard men, smart beautiful talented women from Glasgow, and all. It's hard to believe in such a proactive bureacracy in hidebound Britain, aside, of course, from the fabled MI5 of LeCarre's good old days. The obligatory love interest strains credulity: I can't recall ever seeing such an extraordinary female customs employee at any British airport; and we're given precious little indication of what such a woman might see in Oliver Single. The book does begin, at least, with a bang,set on a mountainside in Turkey, it's one of LeCarre's more powerful openings. And the central conflict, between Oliver Single, and his rogue Dad, Tiger Single (thus Single and Single), has some credibility and resonance:Le Carre has let it be known that his own father was a rogue,and a con man.

Calling this book a "thriller" is a bit like calling English cooking "cuisine" (or that "not a cheap shot"). Countless digressions and flashbacks prevent the story from building up much tension. The opening chapter serves as a good case in point: When threatened with execution, Alfie Winser's life literally passes in front of his eyes. This seems witty at first, until it begins (and continues) to happen to people whose lives are not in similar jeopardy. In the final 75 pages or so the pot finally begins to boil, but we're left with such a waterlogged mess that the climax lacks any real punch.

The story revolves around Oliver Single, one half of the book's title and junior partner of the story's eponymous capital investment firm. After experiencing ethical business qualms he leaves the firm, revealing its secrets to and British Intelligence and allowing them to set him up with a new identity. Of course, that never goes to plan, and coincident with his cover getting blown, Winser is killed and his father disappears. There's nothing left to do but for Oliver to become a junior G-man, find his dad, thwart the villains, and save the day. Sure, that's a pretty simplistic overview; on the way he has to fool around with three or four women, too.

If you enjoy psychoanalyzing things, you'll get a kick out of this book. Everybody has issues. Everybody's in denial. From the obligatory psychopathy and transgenerational child abandonment to exhibitionism and German-engineered phallic symbols, this book has it all. If, on the other hand, you like a tale of espionage, cat and mouse, cross and double-cross ... well, there's always the Smiley books.

In the end, Single & Single is a love story between a son and his father, so perhaps it's only natural that there be an Oedipal angle to the whole thing. If you go into it aware of what you're getting yourself into, perhaps you'll enjoy it more than I did. At any rate, the scene where Yevgeny Orlov asks Oliver to hop on his motorcycle ("Ride it, Post Boy! Ride it!" (p. 179)) takes on a whole new meaning when looked at from a Freudian point of view.

Like all Le Carre novels, Single & Single can be read for the shear beauty of the style, each sentence neatly crafted with well placed and carefully selected words that just beg to be spoken aloud. But beyond that it has problems. Taking more time than usual to get his story going, Le Carre launches the reader into a muddy mix of high finance, secret intelligence, political connivance, treachery and deceit - just the stuff we expect of his fiction, but embodied in a plot that is so all over the place that it needs a map to follow it. Unlike the spare, dark constraints that made The Spy Who Came In From The Cold such a tight and tragic story, this story seems to have no constraints. The cast of characters is huge (something he handled well in Smiley's People because the focus of the story was clear) but their place in the action is not always apparent. The direction of the plot - while known on one level (locate the crooked banker Tiger Single, father of the magician ex-spy recruited to help find him, and answer certain questions about mysterious bank deposits and shodowy transactions in drugs, money laundering, Russian mafia, etc. - that's clear, isn't it?) has so many strands it's as though Le Carre took a full notebook of ideas and tried to use them all at once.

Ultimately it doesn't work. The plot is too convoluted and the conclusion achives neither the satisfactions of tragedy or melodrama. Further, the lead character, Oliver Single, is too weak and peculiar a figure to serve as the hero (even granting that Le Carre intends him to be flawed) of a story that hopes to achieve so much. His father, the corrupt and selfish Tiger Single is easily a more interesting character, but not enough is really done with him. He is, for too much of the book, offstage, while onstage the weaker characters stumble through one ambiguous situation after another.

I will read anything Le Carre writes and with a certain pleasure even when, as here, he doesn't achieve the narrative clarity that some of his books have. But I could hardly recommend this as an example of him at this best. Not even close.

Although the Cold War has long since faded into the history books, John Le Carre is still turning out good, well-written spy stories. You cannot use the term "potboiler" with a Le Carre book, although some of his more recent endeavors have come dangerously close to that level. Thankfully, "Single & Single" is not one of them.

Since the KGB doesn't exist anymore, Le Carre must look elsewhere for the kind of story he writes like nobody else. And he's found it in the story of Oliver Single, the son and junior partner of a banking house whose owner and senior partner is a greedy, corrupt, and probably amoral (business)man who has gotten in way over his head by getting involved in the drug trade with some - shall we say, less than reputable - gentlemen from the former Soviet Union.

As with most Le Carre novels, the story moves back, forth, and sideways between various parts of and characters within the same story. You have to flip back a few times to keep track of who's who and what's what, but that was part of the charm of the George Smiley/Karla series, and it's the same here.

Unfortunately this book does suffer from the one flaw that exists in most of Le Carre's books - and that's an uncanny ability to turn its so-called action sequences into the dullest parts of the story. I actually enjoyed the back-and-forth between the characters more than I enjoyed what they did. But if this "flaw" were corrected, I think I'd actually like Le Carre less than I do. Weird, isn't it?

LeCarre deals more in nuance, innuendo, facial expressions, glimpses of telltale movements, and dawning realizations than he does in other kinds of action. Just like a spy, one might say. This book is loaded with all of that, even with a bit more action than I'm used to seeing in his books.

This is not as bleak as some of LeCarre's writing. There is some fun and joy to it. There's a buffoonish magician who plays a surprisingly magical role (theatrical, not occult). There is also a wealth of the father-figures who haunt so many LeCarre stories. There is the kind of weighty ambivalence toward families, loyalties and ideals that many fans have come to know and love.

LeCarre's medium of exchange seems to be human spirit, motivation, interaction, doubt, ambivalence, regret. Sometimes we are left to see it only from a distance, just as in real life. At other times, when the story justifies it, those emotions will crawl right into your shirt and chew on you.

The writing has a bit of British idiom which seems only to add charm (for an American). None of it interferes with the story. Otherwise the dialogue and setting are simply wonderful, as engaging as any novel I know, and more detailed than most.

It may take just a bit of effort or concentration to follow and appreciate the characters. This is not grade-school writing. Nevertheless any such effort will be very richly rewarded.

John le Carre is a master of language, mood, and character. His subtlety is well-established, and I'm sure he feels the pressure to push the envelope, to better his last attempts. Usually, he succeeds, or at least satisfies.

Here, le Carre's subtlety is exchanged for a sock-it-to-'em opening. Gripping, captivating...all that jazz. From there, however, he slips deeper into his renowned subtlety than I've ever seen him do. In "The Night Manager," the innuendos and atmospheric textures were initially bewildering and finally mesmerizing. In "Single & Single," these attempts fall flat.

The threads of the first few chapters weave together, revealing the tapestry of Tiger Single's high-finace world--a world of shady dealings and shadier characters. Oliver, Tiger's son, becomes our eyes into this world. His sometimes childlike innocence is contrasted with his legal knowledge, and his conscience soon becomes weighted by the workings of Single & Single. This culminates in his betrayal of his own father.

The rest of the book pursues the redemption of father and son relations, the justice due a murderer, and the maturation of a boy grown up in his father's shadow.

Yes, le Carre carries out his task competently. No scene or character rings untrue. On the other hand, few of them are able to breathe life into this tired horse of a thriller. Aside from Oliver, it's the minor characters--his mother, his father's janitorial guardian, etc--that stick in the memory. Oliver's relationships with women seem two dimensional and lacking in depth or motivation, on the womens' parts anyway.

When we first meet Oliver Single, we meet him in his role of magician. As he steps out of his shell, as he pulls his own identity out of the hat, everything else in the book seems to pale. This novel, measured by le Carre's own standards, is a one-trick pony. A well-groomed creature, but short on magic.