Single & Single

Rating:
Summary: Intelligent, ambiguous and dull
Review: Like all Le Carre novels, Single & Single can be read for the shear beauty of the style, each sentence neatly crafted with well placed and carefully selected words that just beg to be spoken aloud. But beyond that it has problems. Taking more time than usual to get his story going, Le Carre launches the reader into a muddy mix of high finance, secret intelligence, political connivance, treachery and deceit - just the stuff we expect of his fiction, but embodied in a plot that is so all over the place that it needs a map to follow it. Unlike the spare, dark constraints that made The Spy Who Came In From The Cold such a tight and tragic story, this story seems to have no constraints. The cast of characters is huge (something he handled well in Smiley's People because the focus of the story was clear) but their place in the action is not always apparent. The direction of the plot - while known on one level (locate the crooked banker Tiger Single, father of the magician ex-spy recruited to help find him, and answer certain questions about mysterious bank deposits and shodowy transactions in drugs, money laundering, Russian mafia, etc. - that's clear, isn't it?) has so many strands it's as though Le Carre took a full notebook of ideas and tried to use them all at once.

Ultimately it doesn't work. The plot is too convoluted and the conclusion achives neither the satisfactions of tragedy or melodrama. Further, the lead character, Oliver Single, is too weak and peculiar a figure to serve as the hero (even granting that Le Carre intends him to be flawed) of a story that hopes to achieve so much. His father, the corrupt and selfish Tiger Single is easily a more interesting character, but not enough is really done with him. He is, for too much of the book, offstage, while onstage the weaker characters stumble through one ambiguous situation after another.

I will read anything Le Carre writes and with a certain pleasure even when, as here, he doesn't achieve the narrative clarity that some of his books have. But I could hardly recommend this as an example of him at this best. Not even close.

Rating:
Summary: Single&Single
Review: This is easily the most boring book I have read in the past year. If I were not so stubborn about finishing everything I start, I could have saved myself a lot monotony and boredom. I can not believe this author is so popular.

Rating:
Summary: Single & Single
Review: Le Carre is back on his game. This book has the feeling of the old Smiley novels. I highly recommend it to anyone who liked Smiley and thought Le Carre was losing his touch. Le Carre is still a great writer and master of this genre.

Rating:
Summary: Don Quixote de la City of London
Review: If you read this book expecting one of Le Carre's spy novels, you will be disappointed because although there are connections to the spy world this is not a spy novel. If you keep an open mind about what will emerge in Single & Single, you will enjoy an interesting tale of good and evil drawn through the detective genre. At its best, Single & Single is as gripping as any Le Carre book -- especially in the first few chapters. The downside is that the tawdriness of almost all the characters make the book a bit of a downer. The Cold War stories in Le Carre's earlier books had the redeeming (and sometimes inspiring) quality of addressing more kinds of potential nobility. The hero in Single & Single is a rewardingly complex figure, righteous yet not always strong enough and conflicted . . . and more than a little idealistic, reminding one of Don Quixote. If you like heros like that, you will very much enjoy the book. If you find small-minded crooks pursuing their ends in petty, immoral ways relatively uninteresting, you will meet a lot of them here. I found myself mixing the crooks up in many cases because they seemed so similar in motivation and characterization. Perhaps the best part of the book is the subtle exploration of a son's feelings for a father, even when that father doesn't really add up to a lot. Although far from his best work (probably because of the subject rather than his writing skill), this Le Carre will satisfy all but the most demanding fans. Those who will be disappointed will include those who want a startling revelation at the end. That's not the way this story is constructed. It would be a mistake not to read it, however, if you are a Le Carre fan or just like a good story.

Rating:
Summary: A Good But Predictable Read
Review: A first time reader of a Le Carre novel, I found it intrigueing, yet predictable, and all too willing to rush through the finish. I enjoyed the developing of the characters and the first chapter was as good as I've ever read. I would recommend this book but I'm sure he has written some better ones. I hope I can find them.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: Besides being a good read with richly developed complex characters, this book has one aspect on which I'd like to commend Le Carre: his treatment of women. Yes, the female characters are a little flat, but compared to other, equally mature best selling authors--Tom Clancy comes to mind in particular--LC's women don't seem to me to fit superwoman stereotypes so readily. I had to congratulate the author here, especially given that he's from a generation of men who find modern women just puzzling. Aggie's nurturing side doesn't detract from her strengths; LC juxtaposes it with Oliver's equally nurturing tendencies in a scene in a Georgian house. Giving two women critical plot-altering victories while the men lie helpless? Unheard of in LC's generation. Good courage on his part.

Rating:
Summary: A compelling read but far from his best.
Review: After the utter disappointment of The Tailor of Panama, Le Carre's latest novel harks back to his crafty old ways. His writing is superb, particularly in the treatment of the father-son relationship and he knows the way around scenes of physical and psychological tension better than any other author I know. The opening chapters are brilliant and his ability to put together a seemingly complex puzzle is still in top form, albeit with somewhat less shine than in his early masterpieces set during the Cold War. However, this outing is deceptively timid by comparison. The plot, when revealed, is simple and contains no surprises. We know who's the crook from the start, don't we? The approach to the climax is indeed rushed and the big bang one hopes for fails to materialise. Despite these flaws, it's still a very good read and I'm glad to see Le Carre regaining some of the lustre that made him, in my opinion, the best and classiest espionage author of his generation.

Rating:
Summary: single & single
Review: As a Brit who had access to to the very high tech and secret high spend world (military) of the cold war against the old soviet war machine, I have to admit to being disappointed with this book - it was not memorable ! The only reason I am writing this piece was the lasting impression I had when I read "the Tailor" was that LC has now exhausted his anger against the incompetance of the British establishment,FO MI5 MI6 etc. I really thought that his next book would be a travelogue

Rating:
Summary: The Old Master at it again, but...
Review: I snapped up this book as soon as I saw it at a newsstand in Rome. Mr LeCarré has cleverly switched over from the the world of espionage between the West/East blocs during the Cold War, to that of some British Services (in this case, the Customs Service) versus the so-called Russian Mafia. The House of Single, a law firm in the City of London headed by Single senior (Tiger) is active in representing and managing several shady interests, and gets dangerously entangled with an assortment of Russian, British and Turkish characters and their offshore companies. Enter Single junior, Oliver (aka Oliver Hawthorne), who is instrumental in getting Dad out of a very sticky situation. We can find here the Old Master in action again but please, Mr LeCarré: is it possible that, for every 5 minutes of real action and dialogue in your books, the reader has to go through ten solid pages of philosophizing, introspection, insights, rationalization, meditation, self-criticism, self-effacement, flashbacks, memories, sudden change of times, etc.? Most confusing, sir, to the simple minded. I would have loved to give this new book of yours the usual 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Simplified, wish-fullfilling but intense and brilliant
Review: For all who love le Carre and haven't read this book yet, one word of caution before you get yourself a copy. This is not definitely vintage le Carre and it doesn't have the wild unpredicatbility and complex characterization of 'Our Game'. Especially the female characters( Zoya, Aggie and Nadia) are pathetically one-dimensional. And the language, though it sparkles and shines at eveywhere it doesn't carry the profoundity of emotion as expected from the author of 'The Tailor of Panama' or 'The Honourable Schoolboy'. And he surprisingly fails his own standard of exposing details while trying to explain the dark side of the whole banking machinery. An immensely unsatisfactory failure.

So why 3 stars ? First, because of a new dimension added to the archetype le Carre protagonist. The tormented, attractive, loner, loving Oliver Single also has a fight to fight against his father and at the end save the senior Single from his own betrayal. Mostly this thread of father-son feud keeps your interest alive. Second, sketches of the family life of a Georgian aristocrat, his country and his downfall.Yevgeny Orlov is possibly one of the most enigmatic beast(or angel)in le Carre's vast repository of wild old men. And finally, the delightfully long and detailed scene of the murder which opens the book and sets its course of action. Supra-realistic and utterly convincing.