Smiley's People

Le Carre is easily my favorite author and he delivers again in Smiley' People. If you've read the first 2 in the Karla series, you don't really have a choice but to continue, do you? But don't read the author's note until afterwards- huge spoiler and you'll regret it!

This is one of the most under-rated fictional series around. I love this trilogy and recommend it to everyone. This edition of the book is great. It has an introduction and preface by John Le Carre that is enlightening but not overly long and the story is fantastic. I was very satisfied with this purchase.

I have decided that this is the most enjoyable of the George Smiley trilogy. It was a most satisfactory conclusion to Smiley's career.

Very difficult to consider anyone other than Alec Guiness in the role.

This is one of the essential books for understanding the Cold War. Though I would balance this work with something like the Gulag Archipelago. Smiley is one of the most interesting fictional characters I have met.

The grand finale, when Smiley gets his man. Begins with a Russian emigre woman being encouraged to prepare paperwork for a daughter she'd left behind 20 years ago in the motherland to join her in France... but the daughter never arrives. And so, the woman contacts a friend, who gets busy on her behalf. Not an easy book to put down, just as Smiley is not an easy person to shake off.

Gripping novel to the end. A fitting finale to the great series. No flashy spy work, but slow, painstaking joining the dots. The book is the sort of nirvana for Smiley, who reserves his best for the last!!!

The problem with Carré is that he only tells you half the story and expects you to actually think :-)

Anyway, he finally lets Smiley catch Karla which is a valid end to the series.
I just wish he'd let Smiley pick up that Ronson...

I have now finished re-reading the Karla Trilogy and am reviewing the final installment--Smiley's People.

But first, because this is a trilogy, let me sum up a few points:
* Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the fist installment, remains one of Le Carre's best novels. I've read it a half dozen times and I believe it gets better every time. It is as much a psychological journey for George Smiley as a mystery that needs to be solved. We witness George Smiley and his team root out a mole planted decades ago by Smiley's nemesis, Karla. It's exciting, it's deep, and it's subtle. In fact, I strongly recommend reading this before reading Smiley's people. Le Carre doesn't waste a lot of time going over old stuff in Smiley's people, but it provides much of the tension in the third installment of the trilogy.

* The second installment--The Honourable Schoolboy is, in my opinion, hardly worth the trouble. It's convoluted, does not have compelling characters, and could have easily used a large chunk of editing to sharpen the text. If you are interested in the trilogy, almost nothing of consequence happens in the book that must be understood in order to read Smiley's People. The one thing I'd add, though, is that this novel, more than the other two, provides context for the deep cynicism Le Carre brings to his examination of spy craft in general and the Circus in particular.

With Smiley's People, we return to Le Carre at his best. At it's core, it's an exciting procedural with Smiley attempting to solve a case of his former agents turning up dead and an attack on an innocent civilian. In the process, the clues lead him across Europe and to Karla. From the first pages, the tension drives the story forward and we witness Smiley, step by step, largely unaided by his usual team, pull together the pieces that end in the book's final denouement. The plot centric focus of the novel doesn't make for as much room for Smiley's suffering that we witnessed in Tinker Tailor. Nor is there much space devoted to the in-fighting and office politics that dominated the first and second volumes of the trilogy. It's all about Smiley and his pursuit of Karla. This laser-like approach gives the novel its tension and its greatness. Tinker Tailor has given us the psychological drama that propels Smiley's search. Now Smiley zeros in for the kill.

With the scene's final scene, however, the psychological power of the entire trilogy comes to full force (which is why I recommend reading Tinker Tailor first). Smiley has had to ruin one diplomat's career and threaten Karla with unmasking--which would lead not only to Karla's downfall, but expose his daughter to great danger. For all of his underhanded skulduggery, Smiley gives Karla the possibility of life and the dignity of fatherhood.

The personal cost is devastating however. Smiley wonders if he (and the spy game in general) hasn't become too much like his enemy. His marriage is now irreparably in ruins. In this moment of triumph, his role in the world leaves him utterly superfluous and alone. When his factotum, Peter Guillam, urges Smiley to celebrate, saying they have triumphed. Smiley asks "We won?" and "Did I?"

A final note -- I like the dictionary and x-ray features for the Kindle edition (and Kindle editions in general). Le Carre has a very large vocabulary and cast of characters. It helps to keep things straight.

One day in 1953, when Moscow Centre’s spies defected in droves following purges at home, George Smiley unwittingly came face to face with Karla in New Delhi. Karla’s newly-installed networks on the US West Coast were rolled up hours after Karla left the country. Smiley flew to India to assess his value, telling him he could help himself escape certain death, if only he talked. Karla remained silent and was deported to Russia. There, he managed to shift the blame for his failure and was given a new chance as spymaster beyond the mainstream KGB organization.
In Part 1 of the “Karla Trilogy”, Smiley painstakingly rooted out a mole, an insider turned traitor Karla was servicing inside the Circus.
In Part 2, Smiley became acting chief of a Circus still much in disarray from the damage inflicted by Karla’s mole, but he succeeded—with help from the CIA—in frustrating what would have been an immense victory for Karla in the Far East. Sadly, GS was double-crossed by some of his most senior British collaborators and the CIA ran off with the main prize, a high-placed Chinese defector. But the operation put the Circus on the map again, with GS’s two most shifty, pro-US former collaborators becoming the new Circus chief and Head of Operations.
In this volume, Part 3, Smiley is once more brought out of retirement following the murder in London of a Soviet defector, an elderly former general. What happens next is a formidable act of will, full of deceit and deception, memorable characters and dramatic scenes, with one purpose only, to sting Karla and blackmail him into defection…
Will Smiley and Karla meet again face to face, one yard between them, much as they did 25 years earlier in New Delhi?. At the end of this epic tale and trilogy, George Smiley bows out and retires for good, after 50 years (1928-1978) of serving his country unnoticed by all but a few. And by millions of enchanted readers.

Smiley's People is set the 1970s Cold War detente, a timeout observed by the politicians, but as we see, not the spies. Le Carre gives us one In the book of the best characterizations of the Cold War: "It's not a shooting war any more, George...That's the trouble. It's grey. Half-angels fighting half-devils. No one knows where the lines are. No bang-bangs." It is out of this view of the Cold War that Le Carré invents the "grey" espionage novel, and his Karla Trilogy starring the anti-Bond hero, George Smiley, is the best example of the genre.

I have loved each of part of the trilogy. Though the books are chronologically consecutive, they are each different in tone and focus, from Tinker,Tailor (claustrophobic, enigmatic) to my favorite, Honourable Schoolboy (sprawling, epic) and now concluding with Smiley's People (straightforward, precise) which an admirable ending. The first book is about the Circus itself, the second focuses on spy craft itself, in finally in the third, Le Carré makes Smiley himself the purpose of the book.

The mysterious Soviet spy with the woman's codename, Karla, is the thread that binds the three books together, yet even after three books we still never know or understand who Karla is. Le Carré, in defiance of the genre, never shows us his villain. There is no final showdown with pithy lines like: "No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die!" Only a memory of a brief one-sided interview and a cigarette lighter years before. We are only shown Karla as reflected in Smiley, or more accurately as refracted (to use Le Carré's word) by Smiley.

So after 3 books we know little about Karla's past, only a few rumors about being the son of an intelligence agent for both the Czar and Bolsheviks. We first meet him with Smiley in an interrogation room in Delhi in Tinker Tailor and recalled again here, and and some point we find out that he earned is chops and his codename during the Spanish Civil War ("The great playground," as one head of the Circus calls it.) I've always wished that Le Carré would write a novel about Karla in the Spanish Civil War. Since that's unlikely to happen, I would recommend Alan Furst's Night Soldiers: A Novel" where I could easily imagine Karla operating in the same NKVD shadows in Spain. I've always think of Furst's book of as a sort of thematic prequel to the Karla novels capturing what I imagine to be the feel of he "great playground" of espionage in the 30's.

The high point of the novel is Smiley's interrogation of Grigoriev. It is a brilliant set piece and maybe the best interrogation scene I know of in the genre. Le Carré's uses a narrative techniques to elevate the scene.and take it to another level This was a technique was a favorite of Faulkner, but I suppose he cribbed it from Homer. Le Carré Rather than simply employing the close 3rd person that LC has used throughout the novel, he interjects admiring commentary from Toby's and others' later accounts, presumably told down the ages of Circus lore. This signals to the reader that what is currently happening has since passed into legend. Some examples:
* In every successful interrogation--as Toby Esterhase likes to pontificate concerning this moment. . .
* Then [Smiley] held his pen ready, and in such a way, says Toby, that a man like Grigoriev would feel positively obliged to give him something to write down.
* Smiley's faceless style, his manner of regretful bureaucratic necessity, were by now not merely established, says Toby, they were perfected... As to the rest of those present, they could hardly believe, afterwards, that he had not been brought to the flat already in a mood to talk.

Finally, the real star of the book is Le Carré's writing. His prose is rich and precise. While tense and engaging, this is closer to Austen than Ludlum. It's effectively a Novel of Manners, just espionage manners, and while very readable, it rewards the close reader with underlining opportunities on almost every page.

Le Carre is a very good writer, whose books transcend the often pulpy genre of the spy novel. This book is about the aging of the central characters and of the Cold War in general. Smiley, the former head of the intelligence agency, is now retired, but is called back to investigate the assassination of a long-time defector. Smiley's exhaustion and disappointment with his life are palpable, as he tries to motivate himself to get the heart of the matter without letting a desire for simple revenge against his old adversary cloud his judgment.

In the meantime, the Cold War itself has aged and lapsed into ambiguity. The old-time spies are not in step with the new detente, though everyone knows that at the first opportunity they will be blamed for standing down in the conflict.

The ending captures all the ambivalence of Smiley and the Cold War, and portrays the nagging sense that the costs of the conflict and life's choices are so great as to make everything seem meaningless in the end.

Extraordinarily good.

Prompted by an enchanting and revealing time spent reading Sisman's comprehensive biography of John le Carre, I have been revisiting many of my old favourites of his. I have always loved the Smiley books best and so it was a delightful trip down memory land to immerse myself in "Smiley's People" once more, after a break of at least 20 years. What a rich, thrilling and all enveloping read, taken in hand by the master of atmosphere, language and plotting. Le Carre's name is often invoked when a new talent emerges with a book about cross and double cross in the dark world of international espionage, but there really isn't anyone else who comes close when he is on top of his form. For a masterclass, indulge yourself and read this book.

George Smiley is retired (again), but when he is called upon to routinely tidy up after the death of one of his former agents (a Russian defector), he stumbles across what might be a last chance to destroy Karla. He unofficially assembles many of his old associates and makes one last push against his Soviet equal. In the end we will find out just how alike or different the conscientious Smiley and zealot Karla are. This isn’t as intricate as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A George Smiley Novel, but it is an excellent and fitting conclusion to the trilogy.

I finally read the Smiley trilogy in the past couple of weeks after hearing about it for years. (Many thanks to my neighbor who installed a neighborhood lending library: take-a-book/leave-a-book). Starting with Tinker/Tailor it was immediately obvious why LeCarré developed his vast following. Nothing really new to say about the book that other reviewers haven't nailed. This is a far cry from other spy thrillers I've read, with the story more about the inner workings of characters than the whodunnit and chase scenes - though that too is brilliantly crafted. I suggest starting with the first, then The Honorable Schoolboy, and finally this.

Smiley's People is the final installment of the trilogy that tells of the struggle between George Smiley, British spy extraordinaire, and Karla, his Russian counterpart. George is called out of retirement to investigate the death of a Russian defector from his earlier days at the agency. As usual the trail is absolutely Byzantine, but it leads him toward an opportunity that could finally bring his nemesis Karla down. I won't reveal any more of the plot because novels like this depend too much on the specific twists and turns for their entertainment value.

To some extent, it's a waste of time reviewing the third book in a trilogy. If you haven't read them, you should really read Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy before even thinking about this book. If you have, and liked them, you want to know how the story ends and you'll read Smiley's People regardless of the reviews. If you didn't like them, then even glowing reviews probably won't be enough to get you across the finish line. For the few people on the fence, here's my two cents.

Le Carre' is an undisputed master of the spy novel and in many respects he's on the top of his game here. Of the three books in the trilogy, this was by far the easiest and most straightforward to read. It's the only one that uses a classic third party narrator perspective and the story is relatively simple (for a spy novel). I found the story and many of the characters interesting. It moves along at a steady pace and there was a sufficient sense of menace to feel some tension even if the stakes aren't as high as some of the other stories.

On the negative side, George and his dithering about a wife who cheats on him constantly has gotten a bit tiresome for me. And the ending seemed contrived to show us that George's life has lost all meaning both personally and professionally. This was not exactly satisfying to me after investing about 1300 pages or on the character. I would also warn readers that Le Carre' gives away the ending in the Introduction to the book... a truly foolish thing to do no matter how long it's been in print.

All in all, I recommend this book. If you've read the first two books and enjoyed them then it's worth finishing. It's also easier to read than the first two so if you've struggled with that at all, you can take heart.

This book was "Argo" before there was an "Argo."
At the end of "Argo" the movie I paid to see viewers cheered, likely longing for a return to the days when the West won through wits and not the weaponry of the military industrial complex. John le Carre reminds us through George Smiley and "Smiley's People" that victories of the mind and heart are the most decisive.
Smiley, beefy in body and sleek of mind, tracks the killers of a former Soviet agent/source that the current Circus in-crowd can't muster much loyalty. The trail leads through the agonies of Smiley's life (Ann, Haydon) right to the door of his arch nemesis, Karla. Does George get his cigarette lighter back from Karla? After you find that out ask yourself if he actually wanted it back.
Le Carre is incredibly adept at sketching the Wellington-esqe nobility of Smiley. Tennyson did likewise in "Farewell to Wellington." Tell me if you don't think of Smiley in these words about his spiritual grandfather - "Yea, let all good things await/Him who cares not to be great/But as he saves or serves the state").
Thomas Creevey (see "The Creevey Papers") noted some of Napoleon's political foolishness rubbed off on Wellington post Waterloo. Smiley and Karla undergo something similar (p. 371, 1979 hardback edition) - "On Karla has descended the curse of Smiley's compassion; on Smiley the curse of Karla's fanaticism. I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other's frontiers. We are the no-men of this no man's land."
Wellington and Smiley are the jewels in the crown when we contemplate the better things about His/Her Majesty's Government. Le Carre's keeping Smiley off stage for many years now is something of a political statement in that the post-Cold War Cool Britannia of the Blair/Cameron stripe doesn't deserve and/or couldn't be helped by Smiley's statecraft. The sun has finally set on the Britain that once was great. "Smiley's People," engraved by John le Carre, literary crown jewel and master craftsman, is an eloquent epitaph.

In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carre reintroduced his agent George Smiley to the world and introduced for him a nemesis: the Soviet spymaster known only by the codename of Karla. In Tinker, Smiley became the man who uncovered a mole inside the British intelligence agency known as Circus. Subsequently, Smiley became the temporary head of the Circus and continued his battle of wits in the novel The Honourable Schoolboy. With Smiley's People, le Carre sought to bring Smiley and Karla into one last confrontation and to close a trilogy of novels that came to be known as the "Quest for Karla." Smiley's People does just that and does it brilliantly.

Smiley's People begins with the death of a former agent of the Circus during an arranged meeting in a London park and quickly things escalate from there. The agent's former handler is none other than George Smiley, now retired, who is asked to clean up any loose ends. But the cleaning up reveals that the former agent, a General Vladimir, had something that was worth being killed by his nemesis Karla. Smiley's People therefore returns le Carre to the territory of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and sees Smiley setting out to solve a mystery that leads up to the final encounter between him and his nemesis in Moscow.

Smiley's People lives up to its title in more ways than one. While the previous novel in this trilogy had very much relegated Smiley to a supporting role, he is very much the center of this novel. This is a Smiley in retirement similar to the one we met all the way back in Tinker: a man with a sense of unfinished business to him. This is an older, wiser Smiley who puts everything he knows about his chosen trade of espionage to use on a road whose destination isn't clear until the last chapters. This is a Smiley who despite being cold and aloof on the outside is perhaps at his most human as the novel's incredible final chapter reveals as Smiley faces the ultimate question of the Cold War: in a battle of ideologies, do the ends justify the means? It is Smiley written at his best by le Carre.

The novel's title refers to the many people Smiley has met over his career who return to help him sort out this one last cast. There are character's from almost all of the Smiley novels appearing ranging from Oliver Lacon of the cabinet office, the new head of the Circus Saul Enderby, the very ill but still mentally sharp former Circus researcher Connie Sachs, Smiley's former right hand man Peter Guillam, the former head of the Circus lamplighters (the group who supplies surveillance and couriers) Toby Esterhase and of course to a meeting with Smiley's unfaithful yet loving wife Ann. Some of them appear for only a matter of pages, others for large sections of the narrative but like so many of the supporting characters in Tinker they each add something to the tapestry of the novel.

There are also a whole new group of characters in the novel as well. These new characters range from Maria Ostrakova who unknowingly starts off the novel's chain of events to the community of émigré's including General Vladimir, seedy night club owner Claus Kretzschmar and a Soviet attaché named Anton Grigoriev. Each of them add something to the puzzle Smiley is trying to unlock and le Carre gives each of them a life of their own from the exiled Ostrakova to the nervousness of Grigoriev. All of them lead up to a mysterious young woman who sits at the heart of a complex web that Smiley navigates before meeting her in a heartbreaking encounter. Smiley's People proves le Carre's ability to create incredible and believable characters amongst a world of shadows.

Smiley's People takes one of the strengths of the previous novel in the trilogy and combines it with the strength of Tinker's characterizations: its travelogue. Smiley's People takes its titular character from London to Hamburg, from Paris to Switzerland to one final scene in Berlin. Le Carre paints portraits of each of these places as fine as the character's he uses to inhabit them. The novel's final chapter returns the reader to the territory that le Carre first established himself in with The Spy Who Came In From The Cold: Berlin. With that chapter le Carre shows the reader, despite how great that novel is, how far he has come in creating a sense of atmosphere and menace out of seemingly ordinary places. This is a writer at the top of his form.

Smiley's People not only closes out the "Quest for Karla" trilogy but uses the strengths of its previous novels. From the first novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy comes forth a series of rich characterizations both of Smiley and it people around him. From the weaker middle novel The Honourable Schoolboy comes le Carre's ability to capture the atmosphere and menace of the places his character's find themselves in. While somehow lacking the narrative drive of Tinker, Smiley's People is an excellent conclusion to the trilogy.

The third of the Karla trilogy Smiley's People brings events started in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy to a conclusion. You can't really read this as a stand-alone novel, you really need to read TTSS and The Honourable Schoolboy (in that order first).
Smiley is called upon to cover up and tie up the loose ends of a murder.
As he starts the process he uncovers the reasons for the murder and it starts to lead to his old nemesis Karla. Bringing old characters such as Toby, Connie and Lacon as well as others this book works at a faster pace than THS, its shorter and all the better for it. You get glimpses of George Smiley the field operative as well as the intricate workings of the spy game as has already been shown in the previous two books.

Smiley's People brings things to a conclusion and whilst there may be some questions left to answer you get the end game you have been craving since the unmasking in TTSS. It covers cold war Europe well and its intricate detail and well observed narrative is as enjoyable as ever. Its thin on action but then that's been true of all the books in the trilogy. It does deliver the story satisfyingly to its conclusion and if you enjoyed TTSS then this is the destination you should head for and enjoy.

The best of the Karla Trilogy and with a satisfactory end.

As such, this is not a true Trilogy. Smiley's People at least has Karla returning to the plot but has almost all except two of the previous two books vanished. Yet, the readers finally have Smiley, however diminished, dead on plotting against Karla. Smiley novels are unique because of their highly intelligent but still real life double- and triple-crossing characters/plots, slow pace, dull settings, human characters and peculiar jargons. The last book is epitome of all of these. Plus, the game of chess like duel between the two reaches an engrossing crescendo.

Yet, the main story is denuded with the suspense completely unpeeled about a two-third of the way in the book. The end is somewhat needlessly protracted as Smiley's team predictably pursues some of the adversaries and through them Karla. All said and done, still an enjoyable read.