Rachel Weisz (22) in The Advocates (1992)
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Where do you recommend people start reading John le Carré? Seeing your posts made me want to try his books but there's a lot of them
I'm flattered. But also, I don't think there is one ideal starting place for Le Carré. My recommendations would depend on knowing what you like. Dark comedy? Romance? Mystery? Political thriller? I think all of these elements are present in his books, in varying combinations.
I will say, having no further information about you and your tastes, that I might recommend not starting with his magisterial and justly acclaimed Cold War sagas, but rather with one of the following novels that deals directly with issues very obviously present and pressing in our own historical moment:
The Constant Gardener (2001)
A Most Wanted Man (2008)
Our Kind of Traitor (2010)
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Operation DVD - Day One
First day of checking out the charity/thrift shops for 'operation DVD' aka 'subscription services can piss off", and I hit gold at the British Heart Foundation. Sealed! £5 the lot! Kiss my ass Britbox!
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#Happybirthday #RachelWeisz #actress #melinavostokoff #blackwidow #whatif #themummy #returns #constantine #theconstantgardener #thelobster #thefountain #disobedience #TheFavourite #TheMercy #OztheGreatandPowerful #TheBourneLegacy #TheDeepBlueSea #TheLovelyBones #Agora #Sunshine
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source: bishopsbox
Great handsome actors #5: Ralph Fiennes with Rachel Weisz in The constant gardener (2005)
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Rachel Weisz (22) in The Advocates (1992)
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As much as I'd love to talk Carré, I gotta admit I've tried and failed to get through even one of his novels. (I had to do research to even find out which it was, it was The Spy Who Came In From the Cold). It's really a tragedy, as someone who is SUPER into spy stories, political thrillers, and cold war history esp. re: the GDR, I was so ready to enjoy this book. But it just gave me nothing I enjoyed and I gave up halfway through. Also read excerpts of Tinker, Taylor for university and while that was a little better, I can't say I felt the need to get the full novel either...
Is there any novel of his that is markedly different in style or should I just give up on Le Carré if I didn't like that one?
I'm very glad that you've asked this question so that I can say: please, do not give up on Le Carré! One of the things I love about him is the variety of his novels, the precision of their individuality. Also, I'm trying and failing to imagine how reading excerpts of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy would work, because while the prose is gorgeous, it doesn't strike me as, really, an excerptable novel. A word in defense of TSWCIFTC as well: when I first read it, in my early twenties, I rather forced myself through much of it it, not seeing, really, how it all added up: the deliberations, the compromises, the aspirations, the betrayals. And then I got to the end, started weeping, and immediately started rereading it to try to force the novel and the characters to some other conclusion.
Anyway! Other Le Carré recs: A Small Town in Germany, perhaps the most Austenian of his works, about the functioning and functionaries of Bonn, and postwar/Cold War anxieties in the Bundesrepublik.
For late Cold War anxieties, there's A Perfect Spy, about the (mis)education of a British spy, and the myths and vulnerabilities of the Old Firm. The Russia House is a particular favorite of mine, with the US, UK, and USSR anxiously figuring out what the parameters (and vulnerabilities) of glasnost are, and people figuring out what heroism is required to live with integrity in an era of inhumane states and... I just love it a lot.
You might also enjoy his more recent political thrillers, whether about neocolonialist exploitation (The Constant Gardener,) Islamic fundamentalism and western cynicism/hypocrisy (A Most Wanted Man,) or the feverish extremism of the Brexit/Trump era (Agent Running in the Field.)
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