I Loved Reading Le Carre–And I Will Miss Him

One of my favorite authors died this weekend. Most of my readers won’t care much about John Le Carré. He wasn’t a Steven King, a J.K. Rowling, or a John Grisham. But Carré was a friend from my childhood who followed me into middle and old(ish) age. I will miss his annual contribution to my reading list and the anticipation I felt waiting for my name to reach the top of the library book reservations (never audio-his books were meant to be read) at the local.

He was a connection to my Dad, who first introduced me to the author with his 1968 Literary Guild Book Club purchase of A Small Town in Germany. Admittedly, I wasn’t overly impressed. Small Town was an espionage novel in which, in the opinion of my 12-year-old intellect, not much happened. It took me a while to rebuild my faith in Le Carré, although Dad redeemed himself by choosing Portnoy’s Complaint as his next Literary Guild selection. That particular Philip Roth blockbuster had much more action of the type a pre-teener might be interested in.

My view of Le Carré was upended when eight years later I came across Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which critics much more knowledgable than I have called the best spy novel ever written. It hooked me then, and it has hooked me every time that I have reread it. I found the movie version (3 Oscar nominations!)  with Gary Oldman thrilling. Barb and our friends found it a dreadful bore.

The Tinker, Tailor experience set me off on the path of reading every Le Carré I could find, jumping for joy with each new novel, and burying myself in every TV adaptation. There was a special thrill with 2017’s A Legacy of Spies, which revisited The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, Le Carré’s first big success. I had hope that Le Carré would proffer a similar re-examination of Tinker, Tailor with his next publication. That didn’t happen-2019’s Agent Running in the Field took a different tack. And now, unless some post-humous efforts are forthcoming, my hopes of learning more deep secrets in the story of Tinker, Tailor’s Jim Prideaux and Operation Testify are extinguished.

I bid my farewell to you, John Le Carré. I am sure my late dad would agree that you will always be at the top of our list.

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