Re-reading Le Carre

I was sent to the woodshed to study up on tense issues. At the urging of my editor/muse/wife, BaBa the Beautiful, I turned to rereading some of the early works of one of my favorite authors, John Le Carre, and found lessons and inspiration once again. I opened what was perhaps his first work, ‘Call for the Dead’ and was charmed/seduced/instructed anew. He writes in a deceptively simple style that pulls me on like an old boot. This first work starts with a prolog called ‘A Brief History of George Smiley’ that does a novel’s worth of character exposition in five pages. Masterful.

Le Carre has a way of painting his protagonists as ciphers who burst forth with strength and resolution when needed. He lulls then ambushes.

Another Le Carre signature is his respect for his readers’ intelligence as demonstrated by his jump shifting times and places. When I first encountered this in ‘The Perfect Spy’ – one reviewer called it The Perfect Novel – I thought perhaps it was a mistake. But, upon a bit of backtracking and reorientation, I took it as a personal compliment that Le Carre thought I would pick it up and press on. He was right. I did and pressed on thinking,‘Wow, that was cool!’