Customer Reviews

The Tailor of Panama

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

i think perhaps many of the reviews here miss the point of this novel. It is not, I agree, Le Carre's best thriller. It is instead a satire, not about Panama, but about the propensity we all have to believe our own lies, and those whose lies justify actions we want to take anyway. It has been said here that he misrepresents Panama while sparing the west(England), also that le Carre is tired and out of ideas since the cold war ended. Far from the truth. His writing style may be slow for those raised on TV, but it has a point. His last 3 novels(Our Game, The Night Manager, and this one) can be seen together as a manysided indictment of the West at the end of the Cold War. They are among his best novels as literature, and should be read not as thrillers, but as examinations of wasted lies, of the arrogance of the West and it's willingness to sacrifice innocents for political and economic conveniences, of the corruption of money at the center of our intitutions at the century's end. Thank you Mr. Le Carre, for doing more than sitting back and gloating on the so called victory of the West.

John le Carre is an honorable man. In his acknowledgements, he gives due credit to Graham Greene as follows: "Without GrahamGreene this book would never have come about. After Graham Greene's OUR MAN IN HAVANA the notion of ................ " With that out of the way, THE TAILOR OF PANAMA is pure John le Carre and is his alone. Like most of the better spy genre authors, le Carre had to make some adjustments in theme since the end of the Cold War. In my opinion, he again shows that he is up to the task in THE TAILOR OF PANAMA.

Andy Osnard, "young Mr. Osnard" to his rather pompous, conspiracy minded, Intelligence chief back in London, is posted to the Panamanian Embassy with the express objective of finding a plot to take over the canal when the Americans leave. He rightly understands that he is to find a plot even if none exists. "Young Mr. Osnard," has larceny in his heart and sees this posting as a golden opportunity to get rich.

As his man in Panama, he picks Harry Pendel, gentlemen's tailor to the rich and powerful. Harry is already living a double life. He is actually an ex-convict who learned tailoring in a British prison. He has come to Panama and invented a background for himself that has him being the junior partner of what was once London's finest tailor shop, and who relocated to Panama after the heart-wrenching death of his beloved partner. He has also gotten himself into serious financial difficulties in Panama.

Along comes "young Mr. Osnard" with threats to expose Harry if he refuses to spy on his important clientele. Along with the threats are promises of substantial monetary gain if he cooperates. Harry succumbs to the combination of the stick and the carrot.

In reality Harry is privy to nothing, but there's really nothing to be privy to anyway. This doesn't present much of a problem to a man with Harry's creative imagination. Before long there is a network of spies made up entirely of Harry and his creativity. There is "the silent opposition" and the "students" and the "fishermen" and the mysterious folk from "the other side of the bridge." There are clandestine meetings between high ranking Pandamanian officials and mysterious foreign delegations, and even a serious plot to build a bigger, better canal. And above all, there is the threat of rebellion and violence. Harry's information leaves no doubt that revolution is brewing.

As if this wasn't trouble enough, there is a real meeting of a small powerful group of millionaire power brokers and military opportunists back in Jolly Old England. These movers and shakers can make the unbelievable believable to the public in order to justify a military takeover of the canal. To top this off, a few highly placed British politicians need a boost in their popularity to keep their careers moving. The Panama plot is just what they need.

This tale of deviousness, incompetence, lies, ambitions run amok, and con artists conning other con artists keeps us chuckling until we realize its explosive nature. By the time Harry Pendel, the spy tailor, comes to the same realization it is too late. Way too late.

There is a moral to this tale: Only the innocent and naive shall be punished, the guilty shall be rewarded.

I read this book for the first time two months ago, and now I've read it again. My second reading was inspired by the fact that I was part way through the book the first time before I realized what an incredible book it was. So I wanted to read it again from the start with a proper sense of appreciation.

"The Tailor of Panama" is purportedly a spy thriller, but the spy story is actually just the framework on which John le Carré weaves his amazing study of human nature. And the human characteristics which are dominant are not ones that the human race should be proud of. We are presented with large amounts of greed, dishonesty, jealousy, cruelty, selfish lust, corruption, apathy, frailty and stupidity. On top of that we are presented with some of the less attractive conditions for human existence: poverty, suffering, guilt and sickness.

But the amazing thing is that John le Carré writes about these human characteristics and conditions with a great deal of humor and understanding. And he does provide a few glimpses of love, altruism and generosity.

So even though the story ends tragically it is for the most part a funny and touching story, and this makes the book very readable.

Another strength of the book is John le Carré's masterful command of the English language. He writes beautiful descriptions, and has a surprising and inventive way with words. I often found myself delighted with one sentence after another, each one saying something in a way I hadn't realized was possible.

The way in which the plot is slowly but surely expanded is also very satisfying. We start out with the daily lives of a few seemingly ordinary people. But then the seemingly ordinary people are shown to be less and less ordinary, and at the same time more and more people are added to the story, and the scope of the story expands until high-level international politics of the worst sort get involved.

Yet another positive aspect of the book is the large amount of very interesting information about life in Panama and how Panama society works. In this respect the book can be considered to be an insider's tourist guide to Panama.

Highly recommended - and to be read slowly and savored.

Finally, my opinion as to why there have been a lot of reviewers who have given this book a low rating: I'm guessing that many of these reviewers expected a straight James-Bond-style spy thriller and were disappointed because "The Tailor of Panama" is definitely not a simple spy thriller. Another "problem" may be that most of the main characters are very British, and the book is written in British English. The dialog between the characters contains a lot of British slang and British expressions. To me this adds to the charm of the book, but I'm guessing that some readers find this irritating.

Rennie Petersen

Written with endless wit and some dark humor, Le Carre proves himself again as a master of words as he plots a classic spy story- and the greatness of it is that this is both a spy story and an anti-spy story.

Do no except Tom-Clancy-like-action since this novel is about the humans and not the missiles. Harry Pendel is an anti-hero, a man drowning himself in a sea of lies, lying to the British intelligence- fabricating tales upon tales, lying to his beloved wife, lying to himself. With a multitude of conspiracy fabrications of all sorts, this story almost becomes a wry satire about the spy world.

Panama city and its characters are portrayed in a rich and elegant manner. The dialogues are complicated and brilliant; loaded with so much tidbits of fiction that Le Carre's mind seems to be a bottomless pit of ideas.

I'm sure that many people who expected more action gave it low reviews because of this- explaining the surprisingly low average rating. But the novel is not uneventful, and it contains a cynical plot of intrigue and greed, and some satirical jabs at some imperialistic desires still present in some dark elderly western power holders.

This is literature, subtle, elegant and stylish, humorous and at its best.
And poor pathetic Harry Pendel, with all his weaknesses, is a character as human as can be, and one you can only sympathize with.

This is one of the more intriguing spy novels in recent memory, and a rather good satire in addition. John Le Carre is a very talented writer who has his weaknesses (more about them below) but also has his strengths, and they frankly are legion, and outweigh anything else. This isn't Le Carre's best novel (The Little Drummer Girl? Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy?) but it's not his worst either. It's a very interesting book.

At its heart is Harry Pendel, the Tailor of the title, who's half-blackmailed half-bribed into spying for Britain. Pendel's a voluntary exile from a rather sordid lower-class existence in Britain, who's remade himself (and promoted himself socially) in the exile and wanna-be Brit community of Panama. He lies to everyone about his background, so when he becomes a British spy, it should come as no surprise that he immediately begins to fabricate information there, too.

Pendel's controller is Andy Osnard, a shady character with hidden agendas of his own, and behind him there's a rogue's gallery of crooked embassy officials, government functionaries, American soldiers, espionage service supervisors, and even a Murdoch-like media baron who tries to create the news in order to better report it ala William Randolf Hearst. While most of the characters are well-drawn, Pendel's wife sounds suspiciously British for an American. In one scene she refers to the children eating "crisps" which I believe is Brit for potato chips...though I'm not sure. No American would talk like that.

This all leads to several very funny passages where the heads of two governments decide to invade a country on the basis of the fabrications of this silly tailor who's trying to recoup his wife's inheritance, which he lost in a bad investment. The book winds up reading like the book version of the movie It's a Mad Mad Mad World, with everyone trying to steal more than their fair share of the pie.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. John Le Carre doesn't do satire much, or comedy (though some of the Smiley stuff was fun) and so this was a welcome change of pace. It's an interesting book, and I would recommend it to most anyone.

One of the best novels I have ever read. Makes "the spy who came in from the cold" seem like a cardboard cutout of a novel in comparison. After having lived in Latin America I found the description of Panama vivid and very romantic. The characters are exaggerated and entering the realm of caricature but were real enough to evoke my empathy and make me squirm with embarrassment at the recognition of some of my own failings, and laugh at those I don't yet admit to. Above all the weakness and sadness in some of these characters' lives *is* very real for many people and as such parts of the book had me close to tears. I can't help thinking that the people who didn't like this book are either looking for the simple gratification of suspense and discovery found in "true" spy novels or are frightened of such a frank exposition of human frailty.

Anyone who has ever read both Graham Greene and John Le Carre knows that Le Carre is a stylistic and thematic descendent of 'Greeneland'. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Tailor of Panama which seems to be a retelling of Greene's Our Man in Havanna with a darker world veiw and a more menacing 'humour'. In Greene's story, a down and out inoccent allows himself to become a 'spy' so that he can supplement his meager income. Since he has no real knowledge of what he is doing he invents stuff to keep his handlers happy and the consequence is real world misery from which he is lucky to escape with his life. The story is both funny and horrific, and the characters are among the best drawn in any of Greene's works. In The Tailor of Panama, Le Carre has tells much the same story, set in Panama rather than Cuba, except that his 'hero', a successful tailor to the well to do, is pretty happy with his life but is coerced into spying. He has (as is true of many of both Greene's and Le Carre's characters) a past that he can't afford to have revealed. He too invents information which is simply not true, having no real idea of the full consequences when that information is believed by those professionals who should know better.

What I really found different in the two books, both of which I like a lot, is that Le Carre's satire is harsher and has more of an edge than Greene's. There is less foregiveness, less tolerance here. And the central character, while drawn with great skill and understanding, is not as warm or charming as Greene's. Instead, Harry comes across as sad, pathetic, and more than a little annoying.

I think it would be a great exercise to read these books back to back. Despite their obvious similarities, the pleasures to be drawn from them are quite different.

As a writer myself, I experience a variety of feelings when reading the works of others. Sometimes it's a great deal of frustration and impatience, occasionally some anger, and less often then I'd like, real pleasure. Rarely, though, do I feel jealousy, but such is the case with The Tailor of Panama. It's that good.

Several words spring to mind when talking about the spy novels of LeCarre: difficult, impenetrable, obtuse. Honestly now - how many have you actually read through to the conclusion? I suspect that the circuitous construction and non-linear plot progressions are deliberate, intended not so much to precisely tell a story as to convey a feeling, that of actually being involved in some tortuously complex web of deceit and doublecross. After all, if George Smiley himself is confused, discomfited and suspicious, why shouldn't we experience similar vagueness as we follow his exploits?

In that regard, The Tailor of Panama represents a significant departure for the universally-acknowledged master of the espionage thriller, because it is easily the most accessible of his novels. That's good news in itself, but it gets better, because this singular gem of a novel may also be his best written. It is also based on a unique premise. How to put this without blowing the surprises, of which there are many...

One of the worst fears of an intelligence case officer is that the asset he is controlling is a double agent loyal to the other side. That concept is central to more spy stories than it is possible to count, as is the notion of a mole in your own organization. In The Tailor of Panama, LeCarre presents a new dilemma, a situation that, at least in my limited familiarity with the genre, hasn't been tackled before. Which is all I plan to say about it.

The first part of the book is actually humorous, as LeCarre casts a wry eye - and ear - at the bombast of expatriate Britishers trying to maintain traditional civility in uncivil lands. In this case, that ! kind of overblown pomposity has implanted itself within British intelligence, with disastrous results; the last part of the book is anything but funny, as we witness the degree of catastrophe that can flow from the kind of carelessness engendered by an out-of-control sense of self-importance.

Set against the backdrop of the Panama Canal's impending handover to the local citizenry, it's a great story, full of huge but understated surprises and soundly buttressed by brilliant and controlled writing that is a joy to read and, for many passages, to re-read. Absent the kind of dizzying complexities that require such an investment in other of his novels, The Tailor of Panama drags us willingly into intrigue gone very wrong even as we wince at the awful events that precipitate out of the collision of one man's towering arrogance and another's desperate vulnerability. One only hopes that the character of anti-hero Andrew Osnard returns in a future volume to wreak more havoc for our amusement.

John Le Carre paints a colourful picture of a number of eccentric British expatriates in Panama whose lives become entwined with each others and those of their local friends, against the political backdrop of the imminent hand over of the Panama Canal by the USA to Panama.

We have Harry Pendel, owner of Pendel and Braithwaite Co. Limitada, Tailors to Royalty, formerly of Savile Row, London and presently of Via Espana, Panama City. And then there's Andrew Osnard, from the British Embassy, Old Etonian, womaniser and a spy.

Harry of course is no upper class Brit, rather "906017, Pendel, convict and ex-juvenile, delinquent, six years for arson, two and a half served. Taught himself tailoring in the slammer." Self-taught he may have been but as tailor to General Noriega his credibility in Panama is well established and even his devoted wife knows no better.

Osnard is a different person altogether, painted as an unattractive man and a bully with a superiority complex. He leans on Pendel with both carrot and stick for inside information on the mood of the people as the ownership of the canal is about to be transferred. The inner con man in Pendel cannot admit that he doesn't know any more than Osnard himself and so he fabricates tales which he thinks will please Osnard. He thus becomes the archetypal intelligence fabricator whilst earning a few bonuses on the side.

This is an excellent spy thriller which combines mystery, intrigue, romance, misplaced loyalties, jealousy, revolution and murder. If you know nothing about Panama, the educational value of this book alone makes it well worth reading. "The Tailor of Panama" gives an easy-to-read insight into the country, its people, its history, its two neighbouring oceans and its engineering marvel, the canal.

See the movie. It might help you to get into something rather different from one of my favorite authors. If you like the witty and the sly, you will adore this book. It's a true "slice" of life, and you learn a lot about history and Panama as well. Love the characters - and the pace. LeCarre truly is, not only a good storyteller but a comic genius as well. One of his best.