Secret Pilgrim (Mass Market Paperback)

by John Le Carre (Author) "LET ME CONFESS to you at once that if I had not, on the spur of the moment, picked up my pen and scribbled a..." (more)
Key Phrases: lingerie department, Head Office, Foreign Office, Moscow Centre (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
The guru of the Cold War examines the roots of human behaviour in extremis as the legendary George Smiley in retirement holds a cadre of Secret Intelligence trainees spellbound with his reminiscences, assuring them (and countless faithful readers) that, however modified is a changing scene, the future of espionage is secure. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description
The Cold War is over. The rules of the spying game have changed. But to train new spies for this uncertain future, one must first show them the past. Enter the man called Ned, the loyal and shrewd veteran of the Circus. With the inspiration of his inscrutable mentor George Smiley, Ned thrills all as he recounts forty exhilarating years of Cold War espionage across Europe and the Far East .


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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (January 13, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345374762
• ISBN-13: 978-0345374769
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #771,755 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 8 in The George Smiley Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Right People Lost The Cold War, The Wrong People Won It, June 8, 2000

By	Loren D. Morrison "amateur_reviewer" (Los Angeles County, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ned, the narrator, is nearing retirement from the British Intelligence, or "The Circus" as it is known. The book opens on the occasion of the traditional informal dinner that celebrates the end of the training of a new class of spies-to-be who will be among the first to operate in the post Cold War environment. Ned, who has been in charge of their training, has invited his already retired mentor, George Smiley, to speak at the get-together. To Ned's surprise, Smiley has accepted.

All this is in the way of setting the scene for the series of reminiscences that make up the meat of THE SECRET PILGRIM. Smiley, who has attained the status of a legend in the service, keeps the students entranced for hours and his comments trigger a life time of memories in Ned, who has been one of the Circus' key players in a forty year career that covered most of the Cold War years.

One of Ned's earliest experiences, in the final phase of his training, was when an older hand kept him from making a career ending faux pas. He misread a situation and believed that a member of a visiting Royal's retinue was an intended assassin. Ned, who was anxious to show off his new found skills was about to jump the "assassin" but was prevented from doing so by the more experienced agent. This was a learning experience that he never forgot.

As the evening progresses we share more of Ned's memories with him. One is when a murder is made to look like a suicide, and false evidence is left that was meant to discredit Ned.

At another time, almost every group of spies that he is "running" are betrayed, and a number of innocent people are thought to be the betrayers. The source of the betrayals remains a mystery until one of the top men in the Circus is found to be the traitor.

We go through many other life threatening, and occasionally humorous, escapades with him. As is frequently the case in Le Carre's novels, the deskbound, high level, decision makers run the gamut, from the rare competent and dedicated individuals, to the more common politically motivated self enhancers who build their own careers with no thought to the jeopardy in which they are putting their field agents.

The evening ends, and we accompany Ned as he passes the final days before his retirement.

With three days left to go, he is given one last assignment. He is charged with convincing a rather unpleasant multi-millionaire to stop providing armaments to various participants in conflicts throughout the world. These armaments are sold through an interlocking chain of corporations which he totally controls. Because of the international complexities of these corporate structures, the armament sales are technically legal. Unhappily for Ned his efforts are rebuffed. It is at this point that he remembers Smiley's old aphorism about the right people losing the Cold War but the wrong people winning it.

If you've never read Le Carre, this book should whet your appetite to go back in time and read his "Smiley" books. If you have read other of his books, I can't think of a better way to wrap them up.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love and Betrayal, August 26, 2005

By	John Lentz (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In my teaching past, I came to love some of the great writers -- Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Faulkner. I can now add John Le Carre to that list. Over the years, I have kept coming back to him, especially the cold war epics involving George Smiley. These books have come to be known as the "Karla" novels, named after Smiley's Soviet nemesis and master-mind of betrayal. Having passed, however, through a "spiritual search" and having been subsequently dulled and fatigued by the numbing routines of work, I have, nevertheless, in order to occupy my mind with something other than the details of the job, returned to the soul searching of this novelist, who now appeals to me even more than when I was young and obsessed with meaningful pilgrimages. And now here is The Secret Pilgrim. As the title suggests, its theme is the hidden journeys that cannot be explained by a routine narrative but must be felt, or more accurately, lived.

Written in 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet empire, The Secret Pilgrim spans the thirty years of cold war spy life from the point of view of a single agent recollecting his own observation of the moral ambiguities and soul-destroying ambitions that have become the hallmark of Le Carre's writings. In the background, George Smiley, the main character in his previous cold war novels, represents a man who survived the wasteland of underground service to his country (England) by accepting his inner ruin as a natural byproduct of spying. He became a model of how deception can be accepted as the essence of spy life by hiding the betrayals that have scarred him behind a wisdom and competency that allowed him to survive the cultural insanities of his time.

Although Le Carre has many times shown his characters trying to redeem themselves through love, one small chapter in The Secret Spy shows how far one must go in order to address a truly broken soul. It shows us a love so absolute that it alone can imply the kind of destruction that lies behind our deepest defenses. Those who have read Le Carre over the years have understood his spy stories as a metaphor for the human condition -- each of us in search of a truth that always destroys what it is we are looking for.

Chapter Nine.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I could read Le Carre's grocery list, August 8, 2002

By	Robert St. James (Salem, OR) - See all my reviews

And probably still be enthralled. The man has one of the most engaging, fluid, and delightful prose styles of anyone I've ever read. When it's connected with a powerful story (such as the books of the Karla Trilogy) the result is overpowering. When combined with leftovers from that era the result is...still a damn good read. What stops it short of a great read (4 stars) or a masterwork (5 stars) is one simple problem: Ned's stories (in fact the character himself) isn't anywhere near as interesting as George Smiley. Smiley's presence in this book actually detracts from the stories. It's like dropping Luciano Pavarotti into a men's choir. You're so busy trying to hear *him* that you can't enjoy the rest of the music.

Anyway, this is not a novel, it's a collection of short stories. Very good short stories. Brilliant not only for their intrigue, but simply for their literary quality. You do have to get past a few Le Carre trademarks (a tendency towards glibness, and a seeming inability to create female characters who are more than just surface), but these are less flaws than simply elements of the Le Carre style. You won't notice them as you're reading the stories. You won't notice much of anything else, either; these stories are completely engrossing, the kind that have you up until the wee hours telling yourself "just one more...ok, two more."

The Secret Pilgrim, however, does suffer from focusing on the wrong character, "Ned" instead of George Smiley. It's not a big problem, but at some points during my reading I found myself saying "hold on, let Smiley tell a story!" Who among us wouldn't have preferred a collection of short stories about the Master instead of his Acolyte? A tale or two of Smiley's days in Germany during the War, a Haydon story (or three), a sidelight on what he was doing while working on the Dolphin case (Honourable Schoolboy), and--greatest lack of all!--more information on Karla's debriefing after "Smiley's People." Talk about someone who would have some stories!

I sincerely hope that, before he retires from the writing game, Le Carre revisits some of his characters from the Karla Trilogy. A collection of stories about Smiley, Karla, Haydon, Control, and even young Peter Guilliam would be most welcome. It's not that his newer work is bad, just that it is completely overshadowed by his earlier work.

RstJ