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Summary: Panamá?
Review: I have enjoyed many other Le Carré books, and being from Panamá was thrilled to get my hands on the tailor of panama. The book in itself is very good, but for me, it was hard to read, hard to belive and really get into the book, because the panama in the book is SOOOO different from what Panama really is. With the other books, it is easy to take Le Carré's word about the countries in which the novels take place, because i know little about them. But with Panama, it was hard to just give up the truth and take le carré's word for it. He was misrepresentative of practically everything...even the social clases and the Union Club. Enjoy the book, but don't believe all you read.
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Summary: What is the reason for the "Our Man in Havana" parallel?
Review: The parallels are not just a matter of both books being about bumbling spies being comically deceived by false information. They are both set in Latin America and Pendel and Wormwold are both English expats concerned about their families. I cannot believc that a plotmaster like Le Carre just ran out of ideas. There is some devious purpose. Grahame Greene was closely linked with Panama. Is that a clue? It is a great read in its own right. Le Carre takes pages of exposition to say what Greene said in a sentence, but by the same token you get 400 pages whereas OMIH is a mere novella. Greene barely hints at the Havana atmosphere. LeCarre takes us to Panama. LeCarre is an excellent writer. Greene was genius.
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Summary: Le Carre Does Our Man in Havana
Review: If you read and liked Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana, I predict you will like The Tailor of Panama. The books have many similarities, especially in their satirical treatment of the spying establishment and those who serve it.If you have not read Our Man in Havana, be aware that this book is not at all like any other Le Carre spy book you have read before. So if you are looking for another of his great reads in the genre of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, The Looking Glass War, A Small Town in Germany, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, this is the wrong book for you. On the other hand, if you are open-minded enough to wonder what Le Carre's idea of humor would like in making fun of spies, spying, and spy novels, then you have come to the right place. This is one of the two great satires of this sort. Our Man in Havana is the other. I recommend them both, when you are in the mood for that kind of a story. As I read this book, I was constantly reminded of stories that often surface in the newspaper about spies who have been working both sides against the middle to improve their incomes. I am sure that these stories were an indirect inspiration for this novel. In a broader sense, the satire here is really about the foibles we all have. If you have an easy time laughing at yourself, you may find moments when you see yourself in the mirror through Le Carre's fine novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, maybe, but literally fantastic.
Review: THE TAILOR OF PANAMA is considered second league le Carre, and maybe on one level it is. The novel is a fantasy about fantasists, about sinister powers fabricating a pretext for invading a Central American country. The novel is futuristic (set in 1997 and after, published in 1996), and ends in terrifying apocalypse. The problem is that the move from character comedy to political fabulation is implausible. The first is incredibly rich, detailed and convincing, the latter is rushed and vague, especially when you consider that le Carre's best novels compel on account of their seeming, almost penantic, authenticity. I just didn't believe that five men having dinner could contrive a war, not because it isn't possible, but because it wasn't made believable as literature. Ironically, some of the book's best writing is in this section, as Pendel's guilt takes on a hallucinatory and oneiric texture. Otherwise, this is another deceptively lovely le Carre novel. The first 2/3 give us two wonderful characters, Harry Pendel, the endearingly waffling East End convict turned tailor to the mighty, who, through bad financial decisions, and a badly concealed past, is forced into intelligence work, with deadly results; and Andrew Osnard, his spymaster, a callous, unloveable, fat Lothario, determined to amass the fortune that is his by right, with a dodgy history of his own. The mixture of sunny farce and jolting horror is realised with unfailing mastery; the potentially unwieldly series of revelations is beautifully orchestrated; and the sublime gallery of supporting players, all verging on caricature, probably confirm the frequent comparisons between le Carre and Dickens. Only the romanticised portrait of Marta grates. When we think of great writing, it is often in terms of expertly constructed, poetic, elegant sentences, such as Nabokov or Proust. Compared to these masters, le Carre might seem a little ordinary. This is a novel stuffed with words, indeed it might seem overwritten. But just as in the cinema, Bunuel's 'plain' style masks a profound elegance of form, le Carre's excellence is as an ironist, and if we pay too much attention to what is being said, if we lose critical distance, we founder, because every important character is a liar, for whatever reason, and their lies make us distrust everything that's said, as the novel is told teasingly through (very faulty) point of view. Eventually, we cannot credit anything we read, as we might expect in a world where moral values simply do not exist (and Panama is still corrupt, Pendel or not), or if they do (in the case of Marta) they pay an intolerable price. Traditional literature, be it generic of 'Victorian', the very book we're reading, is co-opted as unreliable, and we are left with a whole lot of nothing, where the pressure to make and remake one's self (Pendel is the classic European who comes to America to begin a new life) only obliterates that self.
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Summary: Made me laugh, made me cry, scared the hell out of me...
Review: One of the best novels I have ever read. Makes "the spy who came in from the cold" seem like a cardboard cutout of a novel in comparison. After having lived in Latin America I found the description of Panama vivid and very romantic. The characters are exaggerated and entering the realm of caricature but were real enough to evoke my empathy and make me squirm with embarrassment at the recognition of some of my own failings, and laugh at those I don't yet admit to. Above all the weakness and sadness in some of these characters' lives *is* very real for many people and as such parts of the book had me close to tears. I can't help thinking that the people who didn't like this book are either looking for the simple gratification of suspense and discovery found in "true" spy novels or are frightened of such a frank exposition of human frailty.
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Summary: Badly written, nearly incomprehensible
Review: When I was reading the first chapter, I felt like maybe English wasn't my first language. It is so badly written, tenses and persons are mixed (to no effect). I skipped pages at a time to get to the point. Awful people I did not care about, too.
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Summary: A dark update for Graham Greene
Review: Anyone who has ever read both Graham Greene and John Le Carre knows that Le Carre is a stylistic and thematic descendent of 'Greeneland'. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Tailor of Panama which seems to be a retelling of Greene's Our Man in Havanna with a darker world veiw and a more menacing 'humour'. In Greene's story, a down and out inoccent allows himself to become a 'spy' so that he can supplement his meager income. Since he has no real knowledge of what he is doing he invents stuff to keep his handlers happy and the consequence is real world misery from which he is lucky to escape with his life. The story is both funny and horrific, and the characters are among the best drawn in any of Greene's works. In The Tailor of Panama, Le Carre has tells much the same story, set in Panama rather than Cuba, except that his 'hero', a successful tailor to the well to do, is pretty happy with his life but is coerced into spying. He has (as is true of many of both Greene's and Le Carre's characters) a past that he can't afford to have revealed. He too invents information which is simply not true, having no real idea of the full consequences when that information is believed by those professionals who should know better. What I really found different in the two books, both of which I like a lot, is that Le Carre's satire is harsher and has more of an edge than Greene's. There is less foregiveness, less tolerance here. And the central character, while drawn with great skill and understanding, is not as warm or charming as Greene's. Instead, Harry comes across as sad, pathetic, and more than a little annoying. I think it would be a great exercise to read these books back to back. Despite their obvious similarities, the pleasures to be drawn from them are quite different.
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Summary: Le Carre has some fun.
Review: I suppose the best word for this book is "challenging." There is no question that the book is masterful: his insights into his characters are almost embarrassingly true and intimate. The plot is compelling enough that you'll be willing to flip back 20 pages every once in a while to keep it straight. What is difficult about the book, however, is it's humor. It has the same dark and sometimes-horrible mood he creates in his other books. His characters are noble but pitiful, usually despairing, and routinely subjected to political torture. But it's a comedy. He uses his powers to put his characters at their most vulnerable, and then poke fun at them. It's perverse. If you're a Le Carre fan, you of course need this book. But if you're laughing, you're tougher than I am.
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Summary: TOO LONG, TOO MANY CHARACTERS...
Review: This book jumps from one character to another and easily leads a reader to confusion. Also too long and does not have much suspense. Hopefully, John Le Carre will do better with his next book...
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Summary: This book suffers as much from bad editing as bad writing.
Review: As an occasional reader of the spy genre and a sometime fan of Le Carre's earlier works this book was hugely disappointing. The characters were two-dimensional and scarcely believable. The plot was dull and slow-moving. Clearly, certain writers receive a pass from their publishers when it comes to editing. I could barely summon the interest to finish reading this compost heap of a book. Don't buy this book unless you'll read anything by Le Carre regardless of merit.
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