The Mission Song: A Novel

John Le Carre's real world of espionage is sometimes banal, often tedious, sometimes ludicrous but infinitely more engaging than hyperactive fiction. It is a world in which inadequate people struggle to achieve something that becomes harder and harder to believe in. It's about secrets and the people who guard them and those who try to release them. As Le Carre said when the Cold War ended, the game goes on, only the characters change. Mission Song was as engrossing and satisfying as anything Le Carre has done. He's not lost a beat anywhere along the way.

I see people comparing this book to The Constant Gardener due to the Africa connection or The Tailor of Panama for what it says about human nature. However, when I read it, it reminded me more of The Night Manager in that it deals with a guy who spends a lot of time with a group of goons on a small, secluded island, behaves like an idiot for someone who ought to know better, and spends way too much time obsessing over a woman for no particularly good reason. I know that Hannah is there to contrast with Penelope and to help establish Salvo's mindset for what he does, but at the end of the day, I can't help but think it would have been a better story without his obsessing over her. That said, for me, the most engaging thing about Le Carre's novels is that you can feel the characters. They come across as real people with real and believable personalities. The way that he describes the thoughts and behavior of human beings is masterful. This is no exception. Ultimately, I thought the ending was a little disappointing but overall a good read.

Such a small island and so much mischief. LeCarré puts together a knowing tale, where, as usual, everybody gets their comeuppance except the guilty, who just get richer. But then Africans are not civilized, whereas the English are gentlemen.

The story of Salvo and his moral and ethical journey as a translator is

a delight to read. I am still thinking about the book a week after

I finished it, and the dilemna of the protagnoist rises up as I

read the morning paper. I couldn't help making comparisons between this book and the recent Nicole Kidman movie "The Interpreter".

Of the post cold war LeCarre my favorite is still "The Night

Manager" but they are all great books that explore the human

psyche and the need of the individual to follow the straight

and ethical patch. He is not just a spy novelist - he is a classic

novelist.

Just a quickie because everyone else seems to have missed it. JLC's language in The Mission Song is well clever. He's written Salvo the wonder-interpreter's voice in 'talented interpreter-speak', successfully imitating the fresh but awkward and irritatingly colourful phraseology of those caught between languages. He's had a couple of other digs at translators/interpreters in earlier novels, but his portrayal of a naive young prat speaking naive-young-prat-ese to the Big Boys and landing up nicely screwed but badly bruised is hilarious. This is high comedy, and I suspect that JLC is taking the wotsit out of himself, his fanbase, the genre and the whole chaotic black farce that is today's greedhead world. Don't judge it by his 'serious' spy novels - read it as farce, quickly, and have a giggle.

I'm around JLC's age and work as a translation tutor/editor at high political (but not 'cloak and dagger') level. I just can't wait to kick the bucket with a grin and a wave, wishing you poor young sods the best of a lousy world. I suspect he's much the same.

P.S. I wanted to give it four stars but the opportunity to revise passed me by - website blues.

The Mission Song starts gamely enough, with an interesting cast of characters and a juicy conspiracy. But once the lead character, Salvo, begins to question the motives of his employers, the novel spirals rapidly into a series of increasingly implausible attempts to set things right. At least justice is served when Salvo ends up a secret prisoner with plenty of time to reflect on his stupidity.

Le Carre has long been a master of the clever thriller. This one devalues the brand.

Le Carré is my favorite writer. Funny, mature, intelligent, yes everything you need in a writer. But this book is no action-packed thriller. Far, far, from it. It's vintage Le Carré in the writing and in the theme - a person(Like in Little drummer girl or The Russian house)discovers that they can make a difference and sign up for a cause that's very personal. In this book a black interpreter who suddenly understand his African roots and make a commitment. But this book is not , i'm afraid, specially suspenseful and it lacks Le Carrés normally interesting twists and turns. It's rather straightforward and sometimes, i'm afraid, a bit uninteresting and as I wrote, absolutely no thriller. It's a good book, but to market it as a action-packed thriller is just not true. I whish it were, because then it hade easily earnd a fifth star.

I enjoyed the book. It keeps your interest and Salvo, the protagonist is likeable. The book itself appears to be a product of the author's sympathy for the Congo and its history, but he is clearly no historian and story line appears to me simply a vehicle for the author to express his own simplistic solutions.

A first-person telling of intrigue re originating a coup in Eastern Congo--has some chilling realism of how/who could be behind some actual historic happenings in the area. Without revealing who the bad guys are, I was surprised at the naivete of the principal. Not the best of Lecarre's efforts, but a believeable account of how the Congo's troubles may be caused.

I am a longtime John LeCarre fan, especially the Smiley books. He obviously tries very hard to do justice to the tragedy of recent decades' Congo/ Rwandan history but the resulting novel was sickeningly sticky slow for me. I gave it 2 stars only because of the great effort in writing and respect for the subject LeCarre obviously shows. But if I hadn't known it was a leCarre creation, I'd have tossed it in the waste basket after 30-50 pages. I did at the end (sorry, I didn't want to submit anyone else to the pain) and felt I needed to balance the good reviews with this one. Sorry John, not a good read.

I've been reading, and enjoying, Le Carre's books for 45 years or so and have often marvelled at the way in which he manages to bamboozle the reader with the plot twists. Not so in this book. The end was pretty obvious from about the third or fourth chapter. Of course, you are sceptical that you can have picked the ending, given Le Carre's normal plots but sadly I was correct. Unfortunately, this book was dull, had no, or only obvious, plot turns (no real twists), and the characters were almost comic book in their predictability.