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Amazon.co.uk Review
Our Kind of Traitor is a reminder – if such a thing were needed – that John le Carré is comfortably still at the top of the tree in arena of the intelligent thriller; he is still writing books for readers who want some texture to their genre reading. But – to rehearse the old debate -- is le Carré a genre writer – or simply a first-rate novelist? Very few would now argue with the latter assessment. The Spy who Came in from the Cold, his first real-calling card book, took the world of espionage thrillers by storm back in 1963, and that brilliantly written examination of the betrayal and duplicities of the Cold War both changed the face of the spy novel and marked le Carré out as the essential writer in the field – a badge he’s sported ever since. Subsequently, the much-acclaimed series of novels featuring the subtle spymaster George Smiley (inaugurated with Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in 1974) made much else in the field seem superficial and unambitious. While there was a move away from the pared-to-the-bone precision of the earlier books, the sprawling canvas of the Smiley sequence allowed the author to add new levels to the popular novel, making them as rich as more overtly ‘literary’ fare.
After recent work taking on American foreign policy (a bête noir of the author) and the big pharmaceutical companies, le Carré has returned to the concision of his early work, and in Our Kind of Traitor has delivered one of his most sheerly satisfying novels in years.
Britain is suffering under the recession, and a young couple – a leftish academic and his girlfriend (who is in the legal profession) – escape a depressed UK for a leisurely break on the Caribbean island of Antigua. But a meeting with a Russian millionaire by the name of Dima plunges the couple down the rabbit hole in a dizzying, picaresque odyssey in which the worlds of the City of London and the shadowy corridors of espionage collide.
In many ways, this is quite unlike any other John le Carré novel, even as it utilises familiar tropes. And the surprises here (which it would be criminal to reveal) demonstrate that one of our greatest writers – to his considerable credit – is refusing to stand still. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
If you want to know about the state of Britain today, forget the Booker shortlist. Just read John le Carré's latest thriller (Evening Standard )
Return of the master . . . Having plumbed the devious depths of the Cold War, le Carré has done it again for our nasty new age (The Times )
Few recent plays have had dialogue as good, and few recent literary novels can boast a set of characters so vividly imagined. Our Kind of Traitor is a teasing, beguiling, masterly performance (Sunday Times )
A compelling tale of deceit, dialogue and the author's own despair John le Carré's greatest gift may be his ear, which allows him to pick up a tremor of fear in the softest voice or a false note in any exchange of words and play with them to his heart's content. He can therefore create, in dialogue, a trembling soundscape that has a pitch-perfect quality (James Naughtie Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Return of the master . . . Having plumbed the devious depths of the Cold War, le Carré has done it again for our nasty new age (The Times )
Few recent plays have had dialogue as good, and few recent literary novels can boast a set of characters so vividly imagined. Our Kind of Traitor is a teasing, beguiling, masterly performance (Sunday Times )
A compelling tale of deceit, dialogue and the author's own despair John le Carré's greatest gift may be his ear, which allows him to pick up a tremor of fear in the softest voice or a false note in any exchange of words and play with them to his heart's content. He can therefore create, in dialogue, a trembling soundscape that has a pitch-perfect quality (James Naughtie Sunday Telegraph ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
26 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
With Le Carré, you don't get mad action. You get people. This is no exception. It's certainly not his greatest work, but it's still a lot better than a lot of spy novels that are out there. Perhaps, it is ultimately a bit predictable, but as ever, you are never quite sure. And when the end comes, it comes suddenly and that can lead to some suggestions of "running out of steam", but how else could it have ended?
When academic Perry and his girlfriend Gail find themselves on a tennis break in Antigua, they have no idea that their lives are going to be turned upside down when they meet a rich and somewhat scarey Russian who wants to play Perry at tennis. Soon, Perry and Gail are unwittingly involved in a bid for asylum as the Russian, Dima, has information that will be of interest to the powers that be, certainly involving the banking sector. This is Le Carré right up to date, full of talk of recession and banking meltdown.
As with any good spy book, we spend time in Paris as well as Antigua, London and Switzerland, with a short jaunt to Russia thrown in for good measure. Le Carré writes beautifully (his dialogue in particular is always authentic) and creates completely believable characters all with their own little character weaknesses. And if Le Carré's best works have been in the Cold War era, you have to admire the resilience of the man to adapt his novels to more modern times.
It's certainly well worth a read, providing you are not expecting vintage Le Carré.
When academic Perry and his girlfriend Gail find themselves on a tennis break in Antigua, they have no idea that their lives are going to be turned upside down when they meet a rich and somewhat scarey Russian who wants to play Perry at tennis. Soon, Perry and Gail are unwittingly involved in a bid for asylum as the Russian, Dima, has information that will be of interest to the powers that be, certainly involving the banking sector. This is Le Carré right up to date, full of talk of recession and banking meltdown.
As with any good spy book, we spend time in Paris as well as Antigua, London and Switzerland, with a short jaunt to Russia thrown in for good measure. Le Carré writes beautifully (his dialogue in particular is always authentic) and creates completely believable characters all with their own little character weaknesses. And if Le Carré's best works have been in the Cold War era, you have to admire the resilience of the man to adapt his novels to more modern times.
It's certainly well worth a read, providing you are not expecting vintage Le Carré.
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This was very disappointing after the excellence of A Most Wanted Man. It has Le Carre's usual fluency and clever use of different registers, though in this case they are more irritating than anything else. But the plot is vanishingly thin, and the author loses interest in his characters, so that Perry and Gail become irrelevant in the last third of the book, and Le C suddenly becomes much more concerned with the spies. It is the Smiley vanishing trick in The Honourable Schoolboy all over again. We may become interested in Natasha, or even Dima, although credibility is not a conspicuous feature of this novel, but it all comes to naught when Le C decides on an apocalyptic ending (not for the first time) to save him the trouble of working out something more plausible. I really don't know why he bothered.
64 of 73 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
For a time it felt like we were back in the happy days of Tinker Tailor and I was absorbed into this novel and very happy that the author seemed about to deliver a similar experience to his Smiley novels.
Then, the larger than life Dima began to be irritating and something began to wane. Even Hector - a very different kind of Smiley - began to let me down too.
I accept that the author has moved on and the villains of today are not the old Cold War warriors so I may be making an unfair comparison with the past. I think that I do appreciate the author has become cynical about institutions - government, the Service,the Swiss, the City - that we once relied upon, naively perhaps.
Still, I was pretty content right up to the end - or the lack of one, to be precise. Maybe the world has reached the point where no-one can win so that there cannot be an ending. Fine, but it seems that such stories are going to leave me feeling that I've rather wasted my time.
Then, the larger than life Dima began to be irritating and something began to wane. Even Hector - a very different kind of Smiley - began to let me down too.
I accept that the author has moved on and the villains of today are not the old Cold War warriors so I may be making an unfair comparison with the past. I think that I do appreciate the author has become cynical about institutions - government, the Service,the Swiss, the City - that we once relied upon, naively perhaps.
Still, I was pretty content right up to the end - or the lack of one, to be precise. Maybe the world has reached the point where no-one can win so that there cannot be an ending. Fine, but it seems that such stories are going to leave me feeling that I've rather wasted my time.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Innocence and Experience
Our Kind of Traitor is John Le Carre's latest novel. I am a huge fan of his writing and rate some of his novels - The Honourable Schoolboy and The Little Drummer Girl in particular... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Stuart Ayris
Very disappointing
I had enjoyed some of Le Carre's earlier novels and picked this as a good holiday read but I was very disappointed. Read more
Published 2 months ago by MJ
Le Carre still has his finger on the pulse of world events ....
I enjoyed this book and wolfed it down in two long sessions. Maybe the ending was sudden, but there was an inevitability to the conclusion, and Le Carre pushed the reader along... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Banjo Cat
My kind of novel
There is no middle ground here, you either categorise this is as imaginative fiction, superbly drawn certainly, from the titbits we have gleaned over the years from press coverage... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mick Read
Ending is terrible
Some of the middle section was quite good, but it's like he totally lost interest at the end. Really not very good
Published 5 months ago by Adam Ballantyne
Sadly Just not Very Good
I have not read John LeCarre before and this, being a recent work, seemed like a good place to start. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Brett H
Not vintage Le Carré
It's always a pleasure to read a Le Carré novel. I particularly love the elegance of his language and his characterisation is first-class. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Chris Bradshaw
Not vintage Le Carré but an excellent presentation
'Our Kind of Traitor' has earned some very mixed reviews, with criticism especially of its abrupt ending and use of stock characters. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mondoro
Far from the usual John Le Carré
Beginning with a strangely semi-domestic situation, yet set in an exotic part of the world as the tale develops, this novel is a departure from the world of Cambridge Circus and... Read more
Published 6 months ago by M. C. PETER
A brilliant book
I read this book over three days and thoroughly enjoyed it. Like the superb "A Small Town in Germany" it is unlikely to be seen as one of his masterpieces by the majority, but I... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Peter Bright
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