Review of "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold" by John Le Carre

I've missed out on John Le Carre. I read The Honourable Schoolboy years ago, and didn't like it - not the plot, the characters or the writing. And I thought, he's writing about the world he knows, and that means he's a bit like that - posh, a former spook, what is there to like?

But now I want some familiarity with spy novels, so I thought I'd give some of his earlier work a go, and I realise I have indeed been missing out.

This is so good - all the things I didn't like about the schoolboy, I love here. The characters, especially the central character, is great, conflicted and complex. It's told in the third person, but mainly from his POV, so it's artful in keeping up all the deceptions that make the plot work - Leamis doesn't tell us all that he knows about what is going on, and sometimes seems to not even tell himself. 

One of the things that really struck me was the close attention to physical detail, which really evokes the world of the 1960s, a world before computers and smartphones (before any mobile phones, of course). I can just about remember this world myself in all its grittiness...and realise that while it was much poorer in lots of ways, it was also more abundant in others.  For example, the Liz character has her own bedsit...now she'd have to share a house or flat with others, and perhaps a room too. And Leamis just bounces into a job in a library via the Labour Exchange, even though he has no job history at all.

I won't try to summarise the plot for fear of spoilers, but it's just great.