I've never felt the need to apologize for preferring Le Carre's more recent novels to his cold war classics; The Honorable Schoolboy is the best of both worlds, and cements my belief that he was at his best when exploring the world beyond Moscow.In an earlier discussion, I once mentioned that Le Carre writes two plots: Good guy gets crushed, and good guy barely avoids getting crushed. This is usually not resolved until the final few pages, and this book is no exception. But does anybody read him...

"What a man thinks is his own business. What matters is what he does."This quote seems fairly elementary in substance, and I can’t help thinking how much this seems to reflect the basic expectation of the intelligence agents in this novel. A man or woman is given a set of orders, and those orders should be followed through with no exception. Associations with other human beings and emotions should not come into the equation. They do not belong in the world of espionage. Stopping to question cert...

4 ☆ In this life you can give yourself or withhold yourself as you please, my dear. But never lend yourself. That way you're worse than a spy. The spy business is indeed rough and dirty. George Smiley successfully flushed out the longterm sleeper agent, the Russian mole, from the Secret Service (aka the Circus) in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. He was then immediately tasked with rescuing the Circus from an ignominious demise and dealing with the growing mistrust from both Whitehall and the Ameri...

This is the longest, densest, and in some ways most savage of Le Carré’s novels I’ve read, and it continues to affirm for me that he was a singular writer, even when aspects of his work feel a bit too obtuse and elusive, as some aspects do here. However, in this novel in particular, the manner in which his unflinchingly clear-eyed outrage interrogates and dissects the games played by governments and their intelligence agencies, is especially stirring, disturbing, and mournful. He is deeply inter...

John le Carré calls Hong Kong the world capital of espionage of the seventies. There on the invisible battlefields the unseen combats are being fought… But the invisibility doesn’t make the mêlées less cruel. Clandestinity just makes spy battles much more psychologically complex.“A redhead, which was half-way to whoredom for a start. Not enough breast to nurse a rabbit, and worst of all a fierce eye for arithmetic. They said he found her in the town: whore again. From the first day, she had not

I'm a longtime reader of the espionage genre --beginning as just a lad--and although I massively enjoyed all of John LeCarre's earlier works and particularly his George Smiley series--I must call out "The Honourable Schoolboy" for especial recognition. This penultimate work of that series is really the triumph of LeCarre's career; the point at which he reached the full breadth and scope of his powers. Afterwards--although he enjoyed further achievements--I suggest that he never again eclipses th...

AcknowledgmentsMap--The Honourable Schoolboy

There is a passage more than halfway through The Honorable Schoolboy which discusses the reading material that Jerry Westerby—the “schoolboy” of the title, about to embark for Phnom Penh—has brought with him on the plane. He read the Jours de France to put some French back into his mind, then remembered Candide and read that. He had brought the book-bag, and in the book-bag he had Conrad. In Phnom Penh he always read Conrad; it tickled him to remind himself he was sitting in the last of the t...

The Smiley books are all outstanding and this one is no exception. What really impresses me is how the narration of each of them is completely different. The tone of Schoolboy is sort of a retrospective, written after the end of the story and looking back with an omniscient, unnamed narrator with a sense of humor and a daft talent for revealing details only as the story unfolds (with occasional teasers thrown in.) Rather than following the downfall of Smiley's wife's lover who took out the entir...

Popular opinion has it that this is the weakest of the three Karla novels. I thought it was a masterpiece, and a more ambitious novel than Tinker, Tailor.It is very different from the last book: suddenly there is this unexpectedly huge scope of Southeast Asia to go alongside the muted meetings in grey London office rooms. I can well understand how some readers might have felt it was two books jammed together, but for me the contrast worked perfectly and I was riveted by how brilliantly Le Carré

“I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return. ― W.H. Auden“Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.” ― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy Well sport, this was a messy, sometimes uneven AND occasionally a plodding novel but I absolutely loved every single word of it. This is the second book of le Carré's Karla trilogy. Perhaps, the greatest spy trilogy ever. While more people focus on the first...

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a tough act to follow, but I must admit I was expecting more. At first, I thought that’s exactly what I was getting but then the mind-numbing second third happened and I was lost in a way I never was in Tinker Tailor. I still don’t have a clear understanding of what happened—in the book or with my interest in it.All I know is that I got sick of reading about Jerry. I got sick of Guillam’s overdone fawning. I got sick of the female characters—including Connie—portraye...

In the review I wrote for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy I mentioned that it took me a while to accustom myself to the spy jargon as well as many of the British idioms. It gave me a very strange feeling to start reading this episode (# 6 in the George Smiley series) and discover: (1) the British idioms are offset by the fact that the Circus (centre of espionage in London) is balanced, and often explained by the Cousins (their American counterparts, based in Langley, Virginia); and (2) the definiti...

I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return. - W.H. AudenWhat if you devoted your entire life to something because you thought it was the right thing, the good thing, the moral thing, and then you ended your life wondering if you had been completely wrong? It happens to a lot of people, particularly because things shift on us as the years go by and change in ways we do not notice or acknowledge, and because with age comes wisdom, or if not wisdo...

One of the few bright spots is how the author wrote the 1970s colonized Hong Kong, I also enjoy how the author described the international spy network and how those spies work, but all the good things I have to say about this book end here. The characters are rather flat, the plot and the war among spies slow paced and uninteresting. In the end I don't care what might happen to any of those characters. So it's a disappointed 2 stars.

I'd wanted to read the George Smiley books since watching the BBC adaptation of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' back in the 1970s. I also subsequently loved the 2011 film adaptation directed by Tomas Alfredson, which I saw in the cinema, and rewatched recently. Everything I had heard about the source material suggests joy and wonder would await and, I’m pleased to report, that’s exactly what I have found so far. I have read the series, up until 'The Honourable Schoolboy', in quick succession…'Cal...

I love le Carre, and I love the other two books in the Karla Trilogy, but for some reason this one didn't do it for me. I found the writing flat, devoid of le Carre's usual angry incisiveness, and the characters seemed more like wooden dolls than people. Maybe I'll revisit it some day, but let's just say, I'm in no rush.

The second volume in le Carre's fabled Karla spy trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy is a significant departure from the five Smiley books leading up to it. It's the longest of all the Smiley novels, and the only one where the action takes place outside of Europe. The plot centers on people and events in Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong in particular. In the mid-1970s the area was a cauldron of conflict, pitting East against West, communism (both the Russian and Chinese varieties) against capitalism/...

This is one of the greatest spy novels I've ever read. It's a powerful, ambitious, satisfying sequel to the very great Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The plot concerns the Circus (British espionage unit) tracking down a Soviet operation in the far East. Smiley rebuilds the shattered agency and hurls it into the fray. Without spoilers I can assert that The Honourable Schoolboy takes place largely in south and southeast Asia, with long stretches back in London, and an ultimate focus on Hong Kong. E...

The Karla Trilogy is not a true trilogy but a marketing spin and this book proves it in more ways than one.To start with, this book has little connection with the Karla-Smiley story of Tinker, Tailor. Yes, Karla is mentioned as linked to the spies being chased but with no other role whatsoever. Smiley team is there but more as a sideshow to the juvenile story of a fringe spy falling in crazy love over a single meeting, his Southeast Asian ventures and a complex capture tale where one is never cl...