
Which Is the Best John Le Carré Novel? (2014) - keiferski
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/best-le-carre-novel
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ggm
What I liked about "they spy who came in from the cold" was the pacing. Its
small. "a small town in germany" is similary small, as is "the looking glass
war" which has a nice quality that its really about inter-service rivalry more
than the fieldman.

Peter Wright "spycatcher" made me think this stuff is more true than not. UCL
(london) is next door to the kind of grey curtained (bomb-proof chain mail
apparently) anonymous doors and blocks which we are told once housed outlier
farms of the more elite services in the seventies. The big place down on the
Thames up-ended all this, as did GCHQ's remake.

(Duncan Campbells writing on how the british state listened in pervasively to
all telephone calls in the days of the microwave backbone up the spine of the
UK is also worth reflecting on)

The atmosphere of the remake of 'tinker tailor' was really good. the grimy,
flare-trouser, italian-design feels of the place was spot-on for time. I am
less sure it was spot-on for what the secret services were like inside, but it
felt like it should be: its what we want to believe. I've stayed in those
grotty kings-cross hotels, they are alas, all too true.

I love all his books, but the later ones are frankly bloated. He's returned to
small. His biography about his amoral father ("the perfect spy" is of course
about the same family dynamic and probably has echoes of reality all through
it) but you can't call autobiography novels, so thats out.

I thought "the russia house" was a better film adaptation than "the little
drummer girl" and I thought "the night manager" was terribly adapted. All
three are much the same as books I find.

"the constant gardener" is in some ways, the most depressing. I think it very
probably speaks more truth than we would want.

~~~
stiff
If we are speaking movies, the old BBC TV mini-series "Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy" and "Smiley's People" with Alec Guinness as Smiley are absolutely great.

~~~
everybodyknows
How would you compare to Gary Oldman's "Tinker"?

~~~
tomalpha
For me, they are (or were) both great actors, but there is something masterful
about Alec Guinness’s portrayal of George Smiley.

The film has the better supporting cast by far[0], but the original series is
worth watching just for that portrayal. Watch his face as he slowly puts on
his glasses during the beginning of the interrogation scene with Ricki Tarr
for example.

[0] with the possible exception of another great performance by Ian Richardson

Edit: I very much enjoyed the film too, including Gary Oldman. But the
miniseries captured the bleakness of the era, had time to explore more of the
detail, and left more things implicit rather than explicit. All styles of
production that I personally enjoy.

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dwd
Phenomenal cast in that film - you would be hard pressed to hire even one of
the supporting cast members these days with the $20m the film apparently cost
at the time.

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kchoudhu
For me, it was _The Secret Pilgrim_.

It catches Le Carre at the precise moment when the final scales fell away from
his eyes, and he found himself unable to defend even partially the corporatist
state that his characters had inhabited and defended at such personal moral
cost for the better part of half a century.

Edit: Lol, apparently this precise article was posted in 2016...when I posted
this precise comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862489](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10862489)

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steve_gh
For me, it has to be Tinker Tailor. A truly great novel about the lies people
tell to themselves and others. A spy novel in the same way that Crime and
Punishment is a police procedural.

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KaiserPro
I do very much like the Karla trilogy.

the BBC Alec Guinness adaptation is wonderful(as is the house of cards, but
thats a different beast.) The unabridged audiobooks are read by the person who
played Peter Guillam

For me, I think his best "novel" is his autobiography. The Pigeon Tunnels is a
series of brilliantly engaging short stories, but with out the tenancy for an
anticlimactic ending.

It also vividly illuminated the background for baader meinhof, and to a
certain extent the 70/80s Palestinian conflict (and how its relevant to the UK
now, thanks to the useful idiot that is corbyn.)

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celarre
I recommend Adam Sisman's JLC biography.(
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062106279/ref=tmm_hrd_title_...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062106279/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=)
)

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pseudolus
There's also the autobiographical "The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life"
[0].

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Pigeon-Tunnel-Stories-My-Life-
ebook/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Pigeon-Tunnel-Stories-My-Life-
ebook/dp/B01D9H1RXO/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5IJAJKWULKDB&keywords=the+pigeon+tunnel+by+john+le+carre&qid=1565872415&s=gateway&sprefix=the+pigeon+tunnel%2Caps%2C495&sr=8-1)

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sbisson
I'm currently working my way through the series of counter-intelligence novels
written by his contemporary and friend Anthony Price. It's a look at a
different aspect of military intelligence through a rotating cast of
narrators, and with a deft use of military history as a plot driver.

Start with The Labyrinth Makers and go on from there. It introduces the key
characters, Dr David Audley and Major Butler.

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dynamite-ready
The whole Karla trilogy was great, but I enjoyed The Honourable Schoolboy the
most. Loved the detail.

Read the books before I watched the recent Tinker Tailor film.

I think they utterly miscued the description of Jim's capture (if you please
excuse the spoiler). In the book, I thought that part really helped to anchor
the scale and scope of the trilogy.

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bwanab
I've read almost all of them. They're all excellent and some are great. To me,
he writes tragedies disguised as spy novels.

My nod goes to "The Little Drummer Girl".

