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Le Carré's latest.

Bill - you're obviously a big fan. I am currently reading "Tinker Tailor" on the recommendation of my wife. I am bored with it - none of it makes sense to me. What am I doing wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong. LeCarre was in his depths by then. His best are his earliest 5 or so novels, and he's written better ones (like The Night Manager) in later years.

I couldn't follow Tinker either. Struggled to the end then got rid of the copies of The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People that I had been planning to read next. I consoled myself while reading Tinker with spotting instances of bad grammar and poor sentence construction. A pity, as I liked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

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I finished Pharr's S.R.O. Definitely an underground classic. Some parts are a bit repetitive, but it actually has some interesting echoes of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London.

I am trying to wrap up Ellison's Juneteenth for Black History Month. It certainly has some strong passages, but overall kind of diffuse and unfocused. I suppose that is what happens when a book is written and rewritten and rewritten. I can't even imagine reading the entire thing that came out a couple of years ago. It is supposedly three times as long.

On the bus, I am reading Banville's The Sea, which won the Booker Prize in 2005. I find it very much in the spirit and perhaps even style of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse.

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Le Carré's latest.

Bill - you're obviously a big fan. I am currently reading "Tinker Tailor" on the recommendation of my wife. I am bored with it - none of it makes sense to me. What am I doing wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong. LeCarre was in his depths by then. His best are his earliest 5 or so novels, and he's written better ones (like The Night Manager) in later years.

I couldn't follow Tinker either. Struggled to the end then got rid of the copies of The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People that I had been planning to read next. I consoled myself while reading Tinker with spotting instances of bad grammar and poor sentence construction. A pity, as I liked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

You surprise me Crisp. Those three novels, published collectively as 'Smiley vs Karla' are easily my favourite Le Carre's and are generally regarded as not only his best work but the best of the genre. While they all have complex plots I never found them particularly difficult to follow, just superb storytelling.

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Le Carré's latest.

Bill - you're obviously a big fan. I am currently reading "Tinker Tailor" on the recommendation of my wife. I am bored with it - none of it makes sense to me. What am I doing wrong?

You're doing nothing wrong. LeCarre was in his depths by then. His best are his earliest 5 or so novels, and he's written better ones (like The Night Manager) in later years.

I couldn't follow Tinker either. Struggled to the end then got rid of the copies of The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People that I had been planning to read next. I consoled myself while reading Tinker with spotting instances of bad grammar and poor sentence construction. A pity, as I liked The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.

You surprise me Crisp. Those three novels, published collectively as 'Smiley vs Karla' are easily my favourite Le Carre's and are generally regarded as not only his best work but the best of the genre. While they all have complex plots I never found them particularly difficult to follow, just superb storytelling.

Part of the problem may be that Le Carré deliberately sets out to mystify the reader as part of his narrative method. Very often his central characters don't know what's going on themselves, particularly in the earlier parts of the books. His use of secret service jargon ("lamplighters" etc) without explanation is another factor. But all gets resolved eventually.

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Glad you guys are discussing Le Carre; after seeing the Gary Oldman flick, I'm ready to dive in. Any suggestions as to where to start?

In view of the way the discussion has gone, start with a shorter, early one. I think The looking Glass War is great - full of atmosphere from the first page.

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Glad you guys are discussing Le Carre; after seeing the Gary Oldman flick, I'm ready to dive in. Any suggestions as to where to start?

In view of the way the discussion has gone, start with a shorter, early one. I think The looking Glass War is great - full of atmosphere from the first page.

Good choice. 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' would be another.

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Glad you guys are discussing Le Carre; after seeing the Gary Oldman flick, I'm ready to dive in. Any suggestions as to where to start?

In view of the way the discussion has gone, start with a shorter, early one. I think The looking Glass War is great - full of atmosphere from the first page.

Good choice. 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' would be another.

Am currently reading the more recent Le Carrés and have just finished this:

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While they don't equal the earlier classics, they still stand out nowadays as exemplary writing. Of these newer ones, the best I've come across so far is this, but I haven't got to the end of the list yet!

A+Most+Wanted+Man+by+John+Le+Carre.jpg

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Continuing my journey through this series - this time an evocative setting in Cambridge. You'd never know the writer was American given her geographically accurate descriptions of various parts of Britain and her character descriptions.

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Enjoying this long but engaging biography. He's just arrived in Gaul and is chasing down the Helvitti.

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You surprise me Crisp. Those three novels, published collectively as 'Smiley vs Karla' are easily my favourite Le Carre's and are generally regarded as not only his best work but the best of the genre. While they all have complex plots I never found them particularly difficult to follow, just superb storytelling.

Perhaps because I'm a journalist, I'm rather into simple, solid sentences these days, so perhaps that's part of the problem I had with Tinker. As I said, I didn't read the others, although I started Schoolboy before abandoning it. I'm currently reading Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, which has a complicated structure and grapples with some quite ineffable themes but is a masterpiece of clarity. The odd Oxford comma aside, each sentence is beautifully composed.

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