- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Sceptre; New edition edition (4 Nov 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340750340
- ISBN-13: 978-0340750346
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 973,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Looking Glass War (Penguin Modern Classics)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘A book of rare and great power’
(Financial Times )‘A bitter, bleak, superlatively written novel’
(Publishers Weekly )‘A devastating and tragic record of human, not glamour, spies’
(New York Herald Tribune ) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Publishers Weekly
‘A bitter, bleak, superlatively written novel’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't miss this one,
By Alice Lane (London UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Looking Glass War (Paperback)
This is not perhaps the best-known Le Carre book, but it's my favourite and I recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet discovered it. It has elements in common with 'Tinker Tailor' in that it deals with collective delusion by a group of secret service officials - here, a bunch of second-rate spymasters who decide to run an unauthorised operation. Le Carre has a great gift for portraying vanity and the terrifying lengths people will go to in order to make themselves feel important.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A realistic jaunt into espionage,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Looking Glass War (Push Me Plush Series) (Paperback)
Le Carre is famed for his realism, when compared to many other espionage writers. This book followed his huge success with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and was not well received critically. Le Carre felt that this book was the most realistic of all of his novels and he is right. Nothing that you read here is fanciful or contrived, but as a result the novel lacks an edge that le Carre normally would provide. This novel is by no means a bad one, it is maybe a little too realistic and thus missed out on providing the escapism that most people read espionage thrillers for.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not your average spy story,
By
This review is from: The Looking Glass War (Push Me Plush Series) (Paperback)
A bleak, unusual and compelling thriller. Fans of le Carre will know not to expect car chases and glamour, but this novel also has little of the complexity, puzzle-solving and intrigue of his better known spy stories.The plot is fairly simple: a small and out-of-favour military intelligence department in London have a potentially huge discovery on their hands - an unconfirmed and sketchy report of Soviet missiles being stored in East Germany (the period is Cold War, early sixties). In a bid to confirm the discovery - and regain some of their former status and credibility - the department decides to find and train an agent to go over the border, something they have not done for many years. The majority of the book is taken up with the preparation and training for the mission and the shifting politics and loyalties of those involved. This provides a strange mix of convincing technical detail and le Carre's always excellent character sketches and observations on a certain type of English character. Without giving too much away of the story, the heart of the book is a study of ambition, resentment, jealousies and fading glories in the intelligence community during this period. The outcome of the mission is almost secondary, but the reader can discern the likely outcome as le Carre carefully reveals the endless possibilities of small details and judgements that can mean the difference between success and failure in this environment. In conclusion, not your average spy story, not typical le Carre, but still engrossing and worth a read.
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