A Perfect Spy

You need a road map and a list of the principal characters because this book jumps about from past to present. Irritatingly, you often don’t know who is speaking. And don’t put a book marker in before going to bed because it is a challenge to pick up the thread. The book is well-written but over-written and let down with obscure metaphors and double or even triple emphatics to underscore a point. Although there are moments in which the story rattles along, you are soon reading about some other time with yet another back story. (“Wake up at the back!”) Then it becomes a slog trying to stitch the times together. But the worst of this book is that I didn’t care for the protagonist. He could have been run over by a bus and I wouldn’t have bothered. Indeed, only Rick, his father, comes across as a fully-drawn character - a despicable rogue. As for the best English novel, this is hype. Give me “Dance to the Music of Time” any day.

The Perfect Spy is a masterpiece of its genre: Le Carre is renowned for his skill and expertise in creating characters and scenarios in this spy-thriller arena and The Perfect Spy is as near perfection as is likely to be achieved for this type of novel.How the Book Awards bodies such as Man-Booker overlooked the Perfect Spy in favour of lesser literary works will always be to their discredit.The high-brow intellectual claims, but in essence snobbishness of the literary elite publishers, agents and critics who annually rejected Le Carre's brilliant work primarily because of their misconceived notion of what constitutes 'popular, contemporary, literary fiction' is something only they will ever understand.The reading public will I am sure regard The Perfect Spy as an outstanding story, a superb narrative exploration of a remarkable character displaying a level of description, analysis and evocative development of themes that may never be matched by any other tome for this genre.No spoilers by me: This Perfect Spy, as any thoughtful reader will grasp from the outset, is anything but that exemplary, supreme Intelligenceagent, however, his story encapsulates the intellectual, philosophical and psychological aspects of that unique Cold War creature - the humanity of those that through choice and force of circumstance must bury their true self from everyone about them - theirs is a story we actually can never know, however, Le Carre in this story surely gives us insight to what creates the sort of person for whom that desperately isolated Life becomes a 'normal' existence.Le Carre at his height of his story-telling powers conveys a depth of sensitivity that will affect every reader.

This book is John le Carre's magnum opus - it is also his most personal work drawing on his own admittedly unsatisfactory relationship with a somewhat dubious father. I enjoyed the work. Le Carre has a style that is all his own as he circles around a plot and you wonder where he will alight next - it is a trait he shares with Conrad.Another element that I like about 'A Perfect Spy' is that it is not marred by the somewhat old-fashioned (and embarrassing) anti-American sentiments that can make other le Carre novels a bit of a drag. One feels that much as le Carre may protest this point he is of a generation that has never forgiven the US for saving Britain's bacon in WWII.

Like a number of readers I gave up after 88 pages. It became incomprehensible, muddled, irritating and meaningless full of self indulgent incomprehensibility. To call it "The best English novel since the war" is a travesty.

Worthy of the highest praise. His most eloquent work and a beautifully crafted tale. Tugs the heart strings while raising many a smile along the way. Takes some concentration to follow the unannounced timeline changes but worth persevering for the superb use of the English language.