Le Carre at his best.

Did not finish-too many characters!

Leamas’ network of spies is destroyed. He is called back from Berlin to London where his boss, Control, wonders if Leamas is “burned out.” Leamas spirals into poverty, alcoholism and anger, ending in imprisonment for an assault. Friendless, Leamas is approached by East German counterintelligence. Now Leamas leaves the cold to enter the deep freeze of the apostate, the betrayer of his past life and his country. But in this novel, things as they appear are not things as they are.

The idea of the ‘cold’ is the central one in this novel. “A man permanently isolated in deceit” lives in the cold, according to Leamas. ‘Control’ says to Leamas, “We have to live without sympathy, don’t we? … We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren’t like that really. I mean … one can’t be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold…”. So the cold is the place where spies live a duplicitous life, apart from and alienated from others, acting a role, using others as instruments of a state’s political goals. The concept of the ‘cold’ links to the novel’s love interest where the hard-bitten Leamas actually connects with another person. The novel documents betrayal after betrayal, they are piled up, one on top another.

Needing help with the vocabulary of the period, I Googled the phrase  "Pudeur Anglaise", and landed on a glossary for the novel. The website is called Book Drum, a great resource, with many useful features.

another excellent one from John Le Carre. Feeling sad for the ending, that's what the cold war done to human, use humanity to kill and hurt.

First time spy novel reader here. I loved it. I thought Le Carre's prose was excellent. The plot was superbly constructed. And the book was highly entertaining. It has a somewhat slow start, and I agree with another reader that at times the mixture of Cold War, spy, and English jargon could leave me feeling a little lost. That said, it's a spy book! I don't need to be one step ahead of the story at all moments.

I have a feeling this is book that will stick with me for a while. I highly recommend it.

Great plot and great writing. This is a classic spy novel for those who like this genre.

My first John Le Carré book, and definitely not my last. It's one of the best spy books I've read, although it seemed as if the main character didn't have a plan until about halfway through the book. Great plot twist at the end, and ultimately the book ended the way it should.

I had read many glowing reviews about this book and had been excited to read it. Maybe I'm just not suited to the whole spy genre, but I didn't enjoy this as much I thought I would. The first chapter drew me in, but the rest of the book held considerably less action and was more conversational/interrogational. The twist near the end caught me, and I enjoyed the last few chapters, but overall, I found the book a bit dull.

le Carre's best? Possibly. It's hard to say. I'd watched the movie prior to reading the book (I know, it's a sin), so the ending wasn't as powerful as it should have been. An interesting in-between point for le Carre. His later novels become more fragmentary because of flash backs. In this one, you can see how he starts to break away from straight-forward storytelling, but it isn't a terrible amount of work to keep with the plot.