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The plot is one of those jigsaw puzzles where the individual pieces look about right, but in practice don't fit. The prose is serviceable. Ultimately, this is a second-rate novel from someone who has written much better in the past. The characters are cartoon-like in their motivations. The air of ambiguity and the struggles of people to do good in a dirty world are nice touches. But ultimately, this book is unbelievable.
has been so diminished by its response to terror. In the end what triumphs is the self-righteousness of the most powerful, and it is horribly ugly, and it is American. The experience of the end in turn changes the way one regards the foregoing narrative. I assume le Carre aimed for such a reader response. And then there are all those representatives of European spy agencies, continental and British, and their eventually nuanced points of views that illuminate how very morally ambiguous is the "war of terror" on both sides. Having read several reviews, I decided to listen to this book despite them.
It is something like the literary equivalent of a suicidal bombing, and the audience's sensibilities are the target, especially if American. The book left me at first feeling sickened, then very sad; and upon reflection I am sad that the quality of the U.S. Its audible rendition is superbly well done, and I am glad to have heard it rather than read it because the "reading" is really a finely done dramatization. But they in turn are as impotent in their nuanced vision as is the moral purity of the believer. A great book, by a very great writer. And the novel itself is very fine indeed.In a way what this book does is to blow up at its end.
All of the seemingly tedious (but beautifully rendered) narration serves retrospectively to construct the consciousness of a devout if uninstructed believer in Islam: a consciousness doomed on account of its categorical mentality that constructs reality in a morally admirable, but intellectually limited way.
Americans, please read this book. And ultimately portrays a Weltanschauung (world view) with gut wrenching reality courtesy of the soul crushing life destroying and oh-so-polite word we know as 'Rendition'. It at's if Tom Paine wrote "The Rights Of Man" as a novel. This is a novel with impeccably drawn twenty-first century characters finding their way in the tenuous world they (we) live in. And PS, you'll be rather entertained. Post colonial geo-politics at street level. A contemporary diaspora meets the illegitimate offspring of Smiley and Karla. A MOST WANTED MAN puts faces to crushed dreams and aspirations.
Don't waste your money or your time on this. Disappointing = failing to fulfill one's expectations. Le Carre WAS the best of the best.
Cold war spies and spying are lot more interesting. An interesting story but not up to his usual mind bending suspense and matter of fact endings. But if you are into tweaking the Muslim world, you will like this. Tough story to listen to. With the hardcopy, you can go back a few pages to pick up one of his many character threads that you may have dropped.
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