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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Whilst not being my favourite of Le Carré’s, Single & Single still maintains his expert character development and leaves you wanting only the best for young Oliver. However, I felt slightly disappointed after reading the blurb in my first edition, that the narrative structure didn’t pan out how I expected. The setting up of Oliver’s little safe house family felt like it should have been given greater presence throughout, and the ‘revealing’ of the great mystery got a little repetitive, with much of the novel’s key secrets being revealed through dialogue with the various characters Oliver encounters along his great search for his father. Overall, not my favourite narrative, but still with a compelling, typically Le Carré character arc.
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
adventurous
medium-paced
adventurous
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I think we can all agree at this stage that John le Carre can write - he's had a few books out, a few people enjoyed them, he made a bob or too.
Unfortunately, on the back of his early success, at some stage he got elevated to the status of 'it must be good'. You see it with huge bands (no one will ever tell you that the latest Stones/U2/REM album is bobbins), and you see it with authors. A level of success that puts them beyond the barbs of the critic's quill.
So it is with Le Carre. Yes, he can write, but not everything is amazing. Sure, Single & Single is "faultless fiction" according to the Glasgow Herald, but according to anyone who has read more than three books in their lives there's room for improvement.
In part, this is classic Le Carre fare. Shady goings on, people working in the shadows, business and politics mingling across continents....
....but this is also a book he has written before. Many times.
When it's good we see the echoes of Smiley and The Circus. The sharp yet opaque dialogue and meandering conversations of those who trade in information. This is the world we all now know he knows (and he knows we know he.... oh you get the point) and it is where he is at his best.
Thinly-drawn characters who operate in the grey areas of life - where good and bad all depend on where you stand.
Sadly the book starts to fall apart when he decides to expand on his characters, give them depth, nuance.
Here, we see that people are not his strong suit.
His characters struggle with emotion (there's a reason he did what he did, and why his early spy books are just so damn good), dialogue becomes forced, unreal, and actions need reason. All of which Le Carre struggles with.
His won issues also start to bleed through, meaning his drawing of women and relationships are a problem and the father-son dynamic at the heart of the book is very specific to a world most of us have never lived in.
And he's not able to take us into that world. Just sketch it for us, making it barely worth a glance.
You also get a sense that, towards the end of the book, Le Carre had things he wanted to say, ghosts he wanted to lay to rest, but they needed the plot to be hammered into place around them making the final chapters a chore. Probably for him as well as for us.
There are flashes of his brilliance throughout Single & Single, but they all come when he retreats to the world he knows and we love. The rest of the time it feels like he's searching for the novel's true path. And we all end up getting a little lost.
Unfortunately, on the back of his early success, at some stage he got elevated to the status of 'it must be good'. You see it with huge bands (no one will ever tell you that the latest Stones/U2/REM album is bobbins), and you see it with authors. A level of success that puts them beyond the barbs of the critic's quill.
So it is with Le Carre. Yes, he can write, but not everything is amazing. Sure, Single & Single is "faultless fiction" according to the Glasgow Herald, but according to anyone who has read more than three books in their lives there's room for improvement.
In part, this is classic Le Carre fare. Shady goings on, people working in the shadows, business and politics mingling across continents....
....but this is also a book he has written before. Many times.
When it's good we see the echoes of Smiley and The Circus. The sharp yet opaque dialogue and meandering conversations of those who trade in information. This is the world we all now know he knows (and he knows we know he.... oh you get the point) and it is where he is at his best.
Thinly-drawn characters who operate in the grey areas of life - where good and bad all depend on where you stand.
Sadly the book starts to fall apart when he decides to expand on his characters, give them depth, nuance.
Here, we see that people are not his strong suit.
His characters struggle with emotion (there's a reason he did what he did, and why his early spy books are just so damn good), dialogue becomes forced, unreal, and actions need reason. All of which Le Carre struggles with.
His won issues also start to bleed through, meaning his drawing of women and relationships are a problem and the father-son dynamic at the heart of the book is very specific to a world most of us have never lived in.
And he's not able to take us into that world. Just sketch it for us, making it barely worth a glance.
You also get a sense that, towards the end of the book, Le Carre had things he wanted to say, ghosts he wanted to lay to rest, but they needed the plot to be hammered into place around them making the final chapters a chore. Probably for him as well as for us.
There are flashes of his brilliance throughout Single & Single, but they all come when he retreats to the world he knows and we love. The rest of the time it feels like he's searching for the novel's true path. And we all end up getting a little lost.
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Perhaps the best of Le Carre's post-Cold War novels (at least the ones I have read); the Oliver Hawthorne character is one of the most compelling "amateurs-thrust-into-international-intrigue" protagonists.
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Manages to move past a pretty smug and interminable opening, dripping with the poorly judged satire of Tailor of Panama, yet still feels oddly inert as an actual procedural spy-thriller, not least in its anti-climactic finale. Starting to worry that Our Game was a bit of an exception in terms of Le Carre's post Cold War output.