Our Game
£2.98
The bill for stability - In Britain, retired civil servants are typified by life in rural cottages, pottering about in a rose garden and Sundays with The Times. Tim Cranmer doesn t quite fulfill the picture. His rural cottage is an inherited spot of land containing a chapel. His rose garden is a struggling vineyard. And Sundays are occupied by visits from his former protege. Instead of a demure wife to complete the picture, Tim s resident lady is half his age and a composer. Hardly the picture of a staid bureaucrat out to pasture. Perhaps all these variations are due to Cranmer being other than a retired civil servant - he s a retired spook.Spies never truly retire. They may distance themselves somewhat from the sharp end, but there are always loose ends left over and old cases that resurrect themselves. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was supposed to put ranks of spies from the West [and John Le Carre] out of work. They were considered poorly adapted to the new conditions. Le Carre and his literary creations have refuted that notion. His retired spy becomes enmeshed in a conspiracy of stupendous scope. It seems his protege, who was a double pretending to spy for the Soviets, is involved in an embezzlement - 37 billion BP, to be exact. The money is to finance a war of national liberation - a little item of ethnic minorities having faith in their identity. Their location is in the ramparts of the Caucasus Mountains, where loyalties are fierce, but the population scattered. Lacking resources, they seem to have convinced Cranmer s double to help finance weapons purchases.Larry Pettifer, Cranmer s long-term protege, is an intellectual. He changes ideologies like his socks. A consummate wheeler-dealer, he duped his Soviet minders for many years. What effect did his most recent case officer have to change him? And where does Tim s resident consort, who disappears mysteriously, fit in to the picture? Emma finds Larry charming, but his flighty personality and behaviour seem inconsistent for a woman yearning for stability. Has she fled from security to embrace adventure? What price will Tim pay to recover her?The Western powers seek stability as well. Le Carre imparts the view that once the Soviet Empire dissolved, capitalism sought but fresh opportunities for investment. Justice and enterprise are often at odds, the more so when resources like oil or minerals are involved. Le Carre has taken up the cause of justice in all his writings, but his more recent ones speak with a more strident voice. Cranmer is portrayed as a voice of an older generation, quietly pleased that the Soviet Union is moribund. The issues of the post-Soviet East seem remote. Le Carre, with his usual skill, portrays a man drawn in by events beyond his control or his ken. It is easy to sympathise with him. But it is Pettifer s idealism that speaks for Le Carre. Never an ideologue, Le Carre s finely wrought narrative confronts us with our own uncaring self-interest. Capitalism may have triumphed, but the victory isn t without flaws. An excellent read and a tribute to Le Carre s skills in plot and characterisation. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
been there, done that - John le Carre is such a brilliant stylist and narrator that there are times in this book when you almost think he still has what it takes. But the fact is that the end of the Cold War robbed him of his Great Theme and since then he has been all style and no substance. Worse, as he s got older he s simply lost touch with the way young and middle-aged people talk, so his characters are now stuck in a weird 60s/70s time warp. The same applies to Ruth Rendell.The rabbits coming out of the hat are now looking very predictable. Here is the gorgeous Emma, latest in the line of brilliant, sensitive, talented but oh-so vulnerable le Carre heroins, You see, Tim, Larry is life continued. He will never let me down. He is life made real again, and just to be with him is to be travelling and taking part, because where Tim avoids, Larry engages. Here is the cri de coeur of commitment that marks out the critical and catastrophic dash for freedom of the le Carre hero: because I ve seen them, in their little valley towns and in their mountains ... In life it s the luck of the draw who you meet and when and how much you have left to give, and the point at which to say, to hell with everything, this is where I go the distance, this is where I stick And here is the upper-middle-class FO wife wheeled out for plot purposes: Oh marvellous, Tim ... Simon will be over the moon. He hasn t had any buddy-buddy talk for weeks. Come nice and early and we can have a drink and you can help me put the children to bed, just like the old days This is awful stuff from an author who at his best was one of the greats. He s written out: why continue?
Post Cold-War depression - This is the best of Le Carre s post-Iron Curtain novels but it sadly fails to capture the tension of the 1960s/70s. All the ingredients are here, certainly - a love triangle, betrayal, isolation, public-school and Oxford talk - but somehow the derring-do in the Caucasus lacks intrigue and becomes a little tableau of action somewhere in the East. The novel fizzles out rather. Also there is one glaring error on the Winchester College front. Sixes was not contested among individual houses but among two groups of houses and College (the scholars house).
The Master At His Best - OK, I m a Le Carre fan and have been for years. Even so, I think this is a brilliant book.Written in a first-person-mixed-tense style which keeps you on your toes until you get used to it, this is a spare, taught story of love, deceit and-in the end-a kind of integrity.The plot is closely-woven and not always explicitly narrated-there is thinking to do when reading this book.Much of the story is set in or deals with the small states in the Northern Caucasus. There is a map in the book, but it helps a lot to have a decent [and up to date] atlas at hand for occasional reference. Like me, you may find that you start doing some research about the area and its tensions after reading the book.I read this book in two sittings, then started to read it again. I recommend it to you.
A great, thought-provoking read - In this book the Russians are still the enemy, but not in the way one might expect of a Le Carre novel. Very definitely a post Cold-war perspective on the world, and one which made me see things in a new light, just as Cranmer comes to do so also in the book. Gripping and brilliant.