It's not SFF but George Smiley is back!

I shall certainly get the book.
Whether I'll be able to see the event from here is more doubtful.
 
Hmm. I thought The Secret Pilgrim, which I think was Smiley's last outing, was excellent, and I liked the Carla books very much. However, I was put off by the crude anti-Americanism of A Most Wanted Man and I felt that stylistically the writing wasn't as good. But I'd certainly be interested to see what he does with Smiley. Sounds promising.
 
BigBadBob141 said:
I've read the 1st & 3rd of the Carla trilogy, both very good!
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Me too, it took me some years to track down a cheap enough Honourable Schoolboy and tbh it could have been left out of the main story.
However, as with most LeCarre stories, it grows on you at subsequent readings.
Two week ago I read the Spy who came in from the cold yet again - still gripping and interesting to see how Smiley casually destroys lives to gain a bit of secret info
 
There are eight books that have Smiley in there somewhere.
"Call For The Dead"
" A Murder Of Quality"
"The Spy Who Came In From The Cold"
"The Looking Glass War"
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"
"The Honourable School Boy"
"Smiley's People"
"The Secret Pilgrim"
BBC Radio 4 Extra did all eight as plays or serials last year.
 
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I have some in paperback but have 'em all in ebook. Until now I've never considered how many have Smiley in. Cheers
 
BigBadBob141 said:
There are eight books that have Smiley in there somewhere.
"Call For The Dead"
" A Murder Of Quality"
"The Spy Who Came In From The Cold"
"The Looking Glass War"
"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"
"The Honourable School Boy"
"Smiley's People"
"The Secret Pilgrim"
BBC Radio 4 Extra did all eight as plays or serials last year.
Click to expand...

'Tinker, Tailor ...' followed by 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold' are my favourites, but they're all excellent.
 
Question for those who have read some or all of the author's books -- what by Mr. le Carre is worth reading?

The ones I have read are A Murder of Quality, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, Tinker, Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. I've read Looking Glass twice. I will probably reread Spy Who. I like Tinker; I've read it at least three times. I do think the miniseries with Guinness was better than the book. Honourable I find I can't reread; I just bog down in the thing. Murder of Quality left little impression.

My impression is that many of his books after Smiley's People are burdened by tendentious politics and very predictable villainization of betes-noirs of literary leftists. These things I could probably tolerate if the storytelling were of good quality, but I have the sense, further, that his books have tended to be rather longer than they needed to be -- a common problem since bestselling novelists took up wordprocessors.
 
I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold I rather liked it.:cool:
 
@ Extollager: My own feeling is that the more recent Le Carre's - basically post Iraq war - are to be treated with a degree of caution. He seems to have adopted a fairly knee-jerk anti-American "leftism" which makes his writing feel cruder. Whether or not you agree with his position, I don't think it has helped the novels I've read. The Americans in, say, A Most Wanted Man are all thugs and morons, whereas the hardline Muslim around whom the plot revolves is treated in quite a complex manner, and this harms the novel. His lead characters also feel increasingly passive to me, as per Our Game and The Constant Gardener, which I think is a standard trope of literary fiction and doesn't make for a very exciting read.

That said, he has written some excellent books. I liked Tinker Tailor, and Smiley's People slightly less (it has some odd stylistic aspects) but still thought it was pretty good. I think Le Carre's prose was a bit too heavy for the stories he was telling back in the 1970s. My favourite, though, is the portmanteau book The Secret Pilgrim, which I think is full of good stuff. Every chapter is effectively a short story, and each story sheds some light on an aspect of the Service. I'd definitely recommend that one.
 
Thinking about it I agree with that..
The Secret Pilgrim is outstanding as a Smiley book. However I feel you would need to read at least three of the others first to understand his character. It's not the type of book you could read as 'an introduction to George Smiley'
 
The Night Manager and The Russia House are my favourite Le Carres outside of the Smiley set. I feel like his plots run away from him a bit in a lot of his later work but he's still worth reading simply for the joy of his characterisation and ability to convey an atmosphere.
 
Well I finished reading the new Smiley book "Legacy of Spies" this morning.
The great man himself wasn't in the main plot through most of the book, just referred to and as a shadowy background figure.
He appeared in the last couple of chapters and then, disappointingly, the story just fizzled out.
Still, all in all, it wasn't too bad a read. I've read much poorer spy novels.
 
I've read all of John Le Carré's work up to the end of the Cold War, and only spottily after that. I think the early '90s mark a significant drop in quality. My favorites are "A Perfect Spy" followed by the Karla trilogy. Then "The Spy who Came In from the Cold," "Little Drummer Girl," and pretty much anything pre-1989, with the exception of the first two books, which are more mysteries (and not great ones) than spy stories. "The Secret Pilgrim" is pretty good too. Other than that I would largely not bother with the work of the 1990s and 2000s. (I must confess I found "A Small Town in Germany" not particularly engaging, and "The Looking-Glass War" pretty slight, so I'd leave those for last.)
 
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