le Carre does it again. I have really loved the work of John le Carre, real life spy in the 60s, ever since I saw the 2011 adaptation of
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It was unlike the world of spies portrayed by the fantastical James Bond and the techno-thrillers Jason Bourne. It was real, gritty, bare bones, deliciously confounding and maliciously dark. I fell in love with it. I seeked le Carre's books. I read the terrific
Karla v Smiley trilogy. I read his breakthrough novel
The Spy who Came in from the Cold. I saw the Alec Guiness starring miniseries
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and
Smiley's People. I was fascinated by the way le Carre portrayed spies. No glamour, no guns, limited sex.
When I started delving further in his oeuvre, one book would surface again and again:
A Perfect Spy. I learnt that it was his most personal book, and something he held in high regard from amongst his work. He described it as something a shrink would recommend him writing. That was an interesting way to put it. I was in. I found this book in Pakistan. And I sat on it for a few months, because it was a suitably thick book. I recently picked it up and had the good fortune of starting it at a time when my vacation was coming up so that I could read it in big chunks. It was not easy to get into this book. le Carre is not that much concerned with narrative linearity or heck, even the consistent use of pronouns. He writes as if his mind is like that of a child with ADHD, and somehow makes it work. There was a lot of British slang, the language was a bit difficult in the beginning, I lost the sense of place and time. But as I read further, things started to crystallise. There were points in the beginning where it would appear to be too dull or quite simply, not enough narrative thrust to capture the reader, but I stuck to it. And I am glad I did.
This turned out to be one of the best stories about
how a spy is made, and
why someone might choose to do it. Concerned with little things, not just the jingoism and patriotic rhetoric, it is concerned with the psyche behind why someone would want to lead a double life. This is told through the eyes of Magnus Pym, son to the great con man Rick Pym who used his son for his benefit throughout his life. Rick was a showman and no one, not even his son, would take that away from him. Magnus revered his father. Then abhorred him. It is a complex relationship that is the center of his impetus behind espionage. The need to be useful to someone, to his
country, to be wanted, that is desirable to him. His father played him, like he played everyone. Magnus, in turn, starts to do what he does best: get played by the greatest game in history, espionage. But this time he will control everything. From here on now, the story turns into a cat and mouse thriller the detail of which baffled me. It was so rich in the world of secret service, so involved in its character, and so beautifully written, that I could not help but be amazed.
There are terrific pages where a character called Jack Brotherhood interrogates several persons from Pym's life, and these pages are bursting with how gritty and unglamorous the spy work his. How the lives of people are upended. How the actions of one might effect the lives of many. There are intersecting sections of the book where the Americans are looking for Pym, and so is Brotherhood, and he is trying to get them off him at the same time. It makes for such a delightful reading. Then there are the shifting perspectives. Pym's wife, Pym's son, the American who is convinced that Pym has defected, Brotherhood himself.
Half the book is a flashback: Pym's life as he navigates rural England with his father, as his puppet to be used in cons, in Bern, Switzerland, in Austria, with Axel and Sabina. The contradictions in his life are clear from the beginning: he is too eager to be loyal to a person, than a cause. He wants to belong, but not to a bigger reason, but to someone.
This is a terrific book, not just a spy book, but a great character study of the human mind and the things that affect us when we didn't think anything of them.
