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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780743457927
ISBN number: 0743457927
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 608
Printing Date: January 01, 2003
Publishing house: Scribner
Release Date: December 31, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 44955
Studio: Scribner
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Product Description:
John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge, and have earned him unprecedented worldwide acclaim.
Immersing readers in two parallel dramas -- one about the making of a spy, the other chronicling his seemingly imminent demise -- le Carré offers one of his richest and most morally resonant novels.
Magnus Pym -- son of Rick, father of Tom, and a successful career officer of British Intelligence -- has vanished, to the dismay of his friends, enemies, and wife. Who is he? Who was he? Who owns him? Who trained him? Secrets of state are at risk. As the truth about Pym gradually emerges, the reader joins Pym's pursuers to explore the unsettling life and motives of a man who fought the wars he inherited with the only weapons he knew, and so became a perfect spy.
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Rated by buyers 
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I'm no literary critic, so I will leave the heavy stuff to others. But If you are thinking of buying this book, I would say, Don't. I love LeCarre, but this one is his endeavor to do greatness, and it fails. I've read it twice, and have given it the respect he deserves. I found it to be self indulgent and way too long. Of course, there are some great passages and wonderful observations. And we do get a psychological profile of his father. And we have a great bit with an emigre, and their relationship. Fine. But all of this takes 700 pages to play out. Interesting, but not essential. Get "Constant Gardener"or "The Night Manager", both of which are brilliant, instead.
Rated by buyers 
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Speaking as someone who enjoys classic literature written in styles that force you to think, I hate to admit that LeCarre's "A Perfect Spy" is far more work to read than it is worth.
A good part of the reason is more than just LeCarre's use (or abuse) of "linguistic artistry," which often comes across as an over-indulgent exercise in making things metaphorically obscure. More to the point is the fact that in "A Perfect Spy," LeCarre has made several critical mistakes that can easily kill a reader's interest.
For one, the beginning portions of the book read as something of a "Table of Contents," where glimpses of events are subtly telegraphed ahead of their recounting. This recounting is then accomplished through a haphazard, non-chronological use of flashbacks that are sometimes communicated in a straightforward narrative, and at other times through the gimmick of the main character's - Magnus Pym's - writing of a book or letters. It is extremely confusing at times to tell which, with LeCarre's willy-nilly use of very first and third person, and addresses to "Tom" (Pym's son) and "Jack" (one of Pym's mentors) arbitrarily tossed in here and there. Anyway, it soon becomes obvious that the reader will then have to wade through the various topics in that "Table of Contents" until the book comes to its inevitable, very predictable conclusion.
Another aspect that makes this book tedious is that LeCarre once again has created a world of characters who have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, unless you consider the sexual appetites of alley cats redeeming: "He slapped her once, then he slapped her again and on a clear day he would have taken her straight to bed." I kid you not, that is not from a cheesey Mickey Spillane novel, that is straight out of this book. At any rate, the reader is then required to examine the lives of all these charming characters, past and present, knowing full well that critical moments in their lives, which have been alluded to earlier, have yet to be gone over in excruciating detail. Normally, a good amount of descriptive detail is desirable to flesh out a character, to make a character believable so you care what happens to him or her. But in this case, all the main characters are so unappealing, why should we care to wade through it all?
The use of stereotype, especially toward the American characters, is a further irritant. Consider, from the last third of the book: "Gary was your typical Kentuckian-tall, spare and amusing." It makes one wonder if the full extent of LeCarre's exposure to Kentuckians has been a fleeting glimpse at a bio of Abraham Lincoln.
Strip the book of its flashbacks and other narrative gimmicks, and you end up with a boring tale of an unlikable character who has betrayed his country in uninteresting ways, and the parade of unlikable, uninteresting people that helped shape his uninteresting life.
A predictable, relentlessly dark and bleak story, made even more difficult to read in both style and method.
Rated by buyers -
A veteran spy named Magnus Pym disappears. A lot of his former co-workers are pretty stressed about this, because they think it is pretty strong evidence that he has been a long time double agent.
The novel is mostly told in the form of memoirs, particularly from his father, among others.
He has to be tracked down to find out what has happened, and why.
Rated by buyers 
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I listened to this as an audiobook read by John LeCarre. Mr Le Carre's narration added enormously to my understanding and enjoyment of this novel.
Magnus Pym's story is told in a memoir format and involves multiple narrators in addition to Pym himself. I suspect I would have found this format more difficult to follow in a written form but the author himself is able to navigate and narrate these multiple voices effortlessly. The memoir is intended for Pym's son Tom, and traces Pym's rise and fall.
This is not, in my view, a traditional 'spy' novel. It is far more complex than that. The actions taken by Pym are only part of the story: the influences on Pym and his quite complex motivations are far nore interesting and intriguing.
I recommend this book (or audiobook) to anyone who is looking for a layer of psychological complexity to the traditional spy novel.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
Rated by buyers 
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This is a spy novel focused primarily on the development of characters--primarily two college-aged students who later become spies and the father of one. If you are expecting an engaging novel with lots of intrigue and interesting twists, this is not that kind of novel. There are less than a handful of books that I have started and not completed, yet by page 175, I was seriously considering abadoning it entirely as my interest had not been engaged. The author does a good job of character development, demonstrating some of the complexities in actions and feelings that those employed in the spy trade might encounter. The writing jumps regularly between different narrators, locations, and time periods with, as you might expect from spies, characters have multiple names. Thus, it can be challenging to follow the story. There also seems to be a lot of unnecessary descriptions. While clearly other reviewers liked this book, I read a lot and would say this was one of the least enjoyable books I've read in a while.
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