A review by left_coast_justin
Single & Single by John le Carré

4.0

I once met a guy whose job was running a production line for the little squeeze-sprayers of perfume bottles. I’ll admit that these little squeeze sprayers (or atomizers, to give them their proper name) were something I’d never given much thought to, and I may well have responded with something dismissive and assholish when he mentioned it.

“They have to be able to survive 100,000 cycles up to twenty-six times atmospheric pressure,” he continued, “and be resistant to all sorts of solvents and corrosives, and we have to build them for three cents.”

I learned, once again, that my fields of ignorance are vast, more numerous than the sands of Arabia, and that any time I start feeling superior, I get smacked down sharply.

One thing I do know, though: LeCarre understands exactly how it happens. How men lead themselves astray, how we are fools for love, how we make bad decisions (without which, of course, life really wouldn’t be worth living at all). I’ll need to quote at length here:

(Oliver, a decent man from London, finds himself in the home of the Russian gangster Zevgeny.)

Iron gates open before them, the escort peels away, they enter the gravel forecourt of an ivy-covered mansion teeming with yelling children, babushkas, cigarette smoke, ringing telephones, oversize televisions, a Ping-Pong table, everything in motion. There is a blushing cousin called Olga, there is Yevgeny’s benign and stately Georgian wife, Tinatin, and three—no, four—daughters, all full-bodied, married and a little tired, and the prettiest and most doomed is Zoya, whom Oliver with a kind of aching recognition takes instantly to his heart. Female neurosis is his nemesis. Add a trim waist, broad maternal hips, a large, inconsolable brown gaze and he is lost. She nurses a baby boy called Paul, who shares her gravity. Their four eyes examine him with forlorn complicity.

“You are very beautiful,” Zoya declares, as sadly as if she were reporting a death. “You have the beauty of irregularity. You are a poet?”

“Just a lawyer, I’m afraid.”

“Welcome,” she intones with the profundity of a great tragedienne.

Yevgeny walks them to a brand new BMW motorbike that stands pampered and glistening on a pink Oriental carpet at the center of the drawing room.. With his household crowding the doorway—but Oliver sees mostly Zoya—Yevgeny kicks off his shoes, climbs onto the beast’s back and revs the engine all the way up, then down again and shines out his delight from between matted eyelashes. “You now, Oliver! You! You!”

Watched by an applauding audience, he hands Shalva his tailor-made jacket and silk tie and springs onto the saddle in Yevgeny’s place; then demonstrates what a good chap he is by setting the building shuddering to its foundations. Zoya alone takes no pleasure in his performance. Frowning at this ecological mayhem, she clutches her son to her breast, her hand protectively over his ear. She is straggle haired and carelessly dressed and has the deep shoulders of a mother-courtesan. She is alone and lost in the big city of life, and Oliver has already appointed himself her policeman, protector and soul companion.

Like all of LeCarre’s books, there’s fierce criticism of the world’s millionaire parasites and corrupt public servants, an array of memorable characters, and a nice tidy plot to keep things moving. But that lightning strike to Oliver’s heart is, to me, what makes the book so haunting, so recognizable and so rewarding. (And which makes our hero so very, very screwed -- not a spoiler.)

Five stars for any other author, but because it's a LeCarre and not among his very best, my judgement is more demanding. But this is a very enjoyable read, make no mistake.