Product Description

Rounding off his astonishing vision of a clandestine world, master storyteller le Carré perfects his art in Smiley's People.

In London at dead of night, George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus (aka the British Secret Service), is summoned from his lonely bed by news of the murder of an ex-agent. Lured back to active service, Smiley skillfully maneuvers his people -- "the no-men of no-man's land" -- into crisscrossing Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland as he prepares for his own final, inevitable duel on the Berlin border with his Soviet counterpart and archenemy, Karla.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55875 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-01
• Released on: 2002-11-26
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From AudioFile
The conclusion to the famous Karla trilogy, in which George Smiley attempts to entrap his Soviet counterpart and settle old scores, is magnificent on audio. John le CarrŽ's absorbing world of spies and espionage is one of human voices--of many nations and emotions--all artfully filtered through his caustic world view. Through the narration of British actor Jayston, layers of interpretive sound collide in fantastic verisimilitude. Jayston captures both sides of Smiley: his obsessive, steely drive to redeem the past and his melancholic musings on the ultimate impossibility of victory in such a contest. His European and Russian dialects are convincing, enhanced as they are by sensitive pacing, clear enunciation and vocal moods so appropriate that the listener enters the text completely. A wonderful performance. P.W. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Review
NewsweekAn enormously skilled and satisfying work.

NewsdayRiveting. Le Carré at the top of his powers.

Chicago TribuneA splendid spy story...a fine narrative, a delight to read, intricate, exciting, absorbing.

Review
Chicago TribuneA splendid spy story...a fine narrative, a delight to read, intricate, exciting, absorbing.

Customer Reviews

needs to have the fat boiled off
Sadly, I only read half the book - couldn't stomach any more than that. Yes, the book has some good stuff in there: a few flesh-and-blood characters, bright moments of tension, a decent plot underneath it all. But my god, this book PLODS, and after 190 pages I coudln't take it. Where's a good editor when you need one?

My gripes:

1) Way too much irrelevant description - about people's faces, their clothes, cityscapes, trees, apartments - AAAAH, we don't need to know!!!

2) Too many irrelevant details about the characters' personal lives. I don't CARE about Smiley's relationship with his wife or girlfriend Ann, let alone to have the same details restated fifty ways.

3) Le Carre has an annoying way of taking forever to get to the point. This technique is fine as long as there is tension, but this book lacked it.

I tried skimming for a while, but who wants to skim a spy novel? So I quit. FRUSTRATING!

The Karla trilogy
Smiley's People was a bit beter for me than the others in the Karla trilogy.
But the trouble with it, like the others, is 1) its set in the cold war, in a dreary time for England (the malaise of the 1970s) and 2) its is devoid of setting.
The books don't have a reference - a way of "framing" - the setting. Its Smiley, plodding through the past via convoluted conversations with ex-Circus people that take pages and pages to get through. The fact that it lacks "action" is not by itself bad, but combined with the lack of setting it makes for a tedious and in some parts miserable read. It really just does not stimulate the reader - I wonder how many people have been turned off to serving their country by reading these books:)??

It needs more ancillary characters, more players; and less retirees.

These books do, of course, have a place in literature - but they are not for the average reader. More of a s-l-o-w drama than spy fiction...

Back to his best
Le Carre picks up the thread of Smiley's pursuit of Karla as it was at the end of Tinker, Tailer . . . , the first book in the series, with barely a reference to the second. And like the first, this is a return to the spare, taut writing that makes Le Carre's best writing classic, without the overplotting and "literary" touches that marred the second.

Le Carre writes with omnipresent omniscience, getting in every character's head, selectively, sometimes pulling the story forward, sometimes pushing it forward, a style that works best with Le Carre's spare prose. And the last 100 pages push the reader forward inexorably, having reached that tipping point of good suspense or mystery writing beyond which the reader must finish without interruption.

My plan now is to stop reading Le Carre now and double back to the Vollman novel Europe Central (see my review here)

Europe Central

which retrospectively covers the same ground and see if there are touch points of similarity, congruity, or extreme difference that cast light on the time and place.so central to the history of the 20th Century but so fast fading in the distant rear view of the 21st.