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steveab 's review for:
A Perfect Spy
by John le Carré
Reread and finished today. Even for Le Carre, a most complex psychological exploration of what it takes to live a life of espionage, treading between both sides in the final decade of the cold war. Though it takes place in real time in just one month, the story line jumps back and forth through six decades of the live of the "perfect spy," Magnus Pym. We gradually come to understand how his relationships growing up, notably with his con-man father, shaped the complex, contradictory character he became.
One could imagine that Le Carre wrote the book settling accounts with some of his own history. Who can say. The very intensity of the descriptions of people and the culture suggest it. There is a scene from a campaign rally, for example, that seems so extreme and yet so timely, even after the book's publication in the 1980s.
I don't think Le Carre means to suggest that you need to have as tortured a personal background as Pym had to succeed in "the game" of intelligence, that is, as a field agent, including dealing with double agents and more (without giving away plot). I suspect more that Le Carre invites the reader to explore how perhaps more mundane dilemmas of growing up affect all of us in our likely more mundane lives than Mr Pym. It is a reminder how hard it is and how important it is to "be present" entirely in our lives.
Having read this twice, I probably won't read it again for quite a while. I do find all of Le Carre's books worthy of second passes. He is unique for sure.
One could imagine that Le Carre wrote the book settling accounts with some of his own history. Who can say. The very intensity of the descriptions of people and the culture suggest it. There is a scene from a campaign rally, for example, that seems so extreme and yet so timely, even after the book's publication in the 1980s.
I don't think Le Carre means to suggest that you need to have as tortured a personal background as Pym had to succeed in "the game" of intelligence, that is, as a field agent, including dealing with double agents and more (without giving away plot). I suspect more that Le Carre invites the reader to explore how perhaps more mundane dilemmas of growing up affect all of us in our likely more mundane lives than Mr Pym. It is a reminder how hard it is and how important it is to "be present" entirely in our lives.
Having read this twice, I probably won't read it again for quite a while. I do find all of Le Carre's books worthy of second passes. He is unique for sure.