By: Richard Santos

Richard Santos — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:07:56 +0000

Thanks Winslow. I think the autobiographical elements are what allow the book to really shine and take on a life of its own. The emotional depth to everything is so impressive because it’s all so real! I should have found a place to work in a mention of this, but the structure of the book just floored me so much. I think the little three page intro LeCarre wrote for the newest paperback version of the book (the one pictured above) handles this issue pretty well.

By: Winslow

Winslow — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:29:44 +0000

I like this book so much I’ve read it three times. It’s really le Carré’s best, I think, at least in terms of novelistic craft. Philip Roth is quoted as saying that it was perhaps the best novel in English since the war. What I am surprised you did not mention, here, is the fact that ‘A Perfect Spy’ is largely autobiographical. The author’s father was a con man much like old man Pym, scamming his way through victim’s savings and getting put in prison and enlisting his children to help out and so forth. He was lower, working class but insisted on sending his son to the best schools, including Oxford and making him a proper gentleman. Cornwell, the author’s real name, studied in Bern, never saw his mother for many years, was in army intelligence interviewing displaced persons in Austria, and eventually joined MI5 and MI6. He has said that he could have turned out quite “bent,” as Rick Pym’s people describe him, but he got out of intelligence and became a writer. If you can, try to find the audiobook of le Carré reading this book; he is truly a great reader, wonderfully adept at all the accents. And while you are at it, see if you can find the lengthy profile of his father that Cornell wrote for The New Yorker maybe 10 years ago; it’s marvelous. Once his son was a famous, the old man used to come around and try to get money from him, talking his way onto Hollywood sets, etc. In the end, the son, fed up, paid for his father’s funeral but did not attend.

By: Sara Habein

Sara Habein — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 23:00:12 +0000

I’ve been meaning to read this. Great review.

Comments on: Richard Santos: The Last Book I Loved, A Perfect Spy

By: Richard Santos

By: Winslow

By: Sara Habein