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osprey_archer) wrote2024-04-04 07:57 am
osprey_archer) wrote2024-04-04 07:57 am
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Book Review: Our Game
A few months ago skygiants reviewed John Le Carre’s Our Game, a post-Cold-War spy novel in which former spymaster Tim Cranmer discovers that his former star spy Larry (schoolmate, friend, object of obsession, everyone including Tim’s girlfriend Emma keeps asking if Tim and Larry ever banged) has gone missing. With Emma. And also thirty-seven million dollars.
Upon readingskygiants' review I instantly decided I must read the book… then did not read it for six months. But last week an inexplicable craving from repressed spy pining and end-of-the-Cold-War existential ennui came upon me, and I picked it up and zoomed through it in two days.
It’s written in a very tight third person, Tim Cranmer the organization man who has been pushed out of the organization now that the Cold War is over, living on his little vineyard trying to make a go of it with the unsuitable vines that his idealistic uncle planted rather than starting anew with vines actually suitable to the climate. Tim Cranmer and his thoughts about Larry, about Emma, both of whom he thinks about so incessantly that you feel almost as if you know them, and then about three-quarters through the book one of them actually shows up and you realize how distorted is a Tim’s-eye-view of anyone, including Tim himself.
And, of course, to a certain extent this is already obvious: Tim is very tightly controlled even in his own head, a man who looks down on ideals and is irrepressibly drawn to idealists and devoted his whole life, built his entire personality, around serving the Agency to further an ideal of stability - much less romantic, much more compromised than Larry and Emma’s attraction to the little beleaguered nations of the world, but an ideal nonetheless. There’s a hole at the center of the man, and it’s not entirely clear if there is simply nothing there, or if he simply refuses to see.
I love tight first-person novels with a distorting POV (Rebecca, We Have Always Lived in the Castle), as well as stories about obsessive relationships - and although it’s hard to tell, through the looking glass of Tim’s POV, just how Larry feels about Tim, it is clear that their lives have been intwined since school and even after they are both let go by the Agency, superannuated Cold Warriors, Larry just can’t leave Tim alone.
Until, of course, Larry disappears. And Tim, left alone, tells himself that he has to find Larry to clear his name with the Agency (which of course suspects he had his thumb in those thirty-seven million dollars)... and does so by chasing Larry, the course of action most likely to convince the Agency that he’s up to his eyeballs in guilt.
And then there’s the ending.
Eventually Tim follows Larry’s trail to the Caucusus, where Larry’s new friends the Ingush separatists show Tim the pile of rubble where Larry is buried. Then one of them tosses Tim a Kalashnikov, and Tim (who has after all burned every other bridge in his life) catches it and follows along.
“THAT’S IT?” I screamed. “THAT’S IT?? WE’RE NEVER EVEN GOING TO MEET LARRY?” Because we haven’t, except in flashbacks, and Tim’s flashbacks cannot be said to be reliable! Who is Larry! What is he like, really, once he gets off the adoring yet disdainful pedestal that Tim has put him on? We’ll never know! Brilliant. Cruel. An ice cold ending, John Le Carre. Kudos and also fuck you.
skygiants reviewed John Le Carre’s Our Game, a post-Cold-War spy novel in which former spymaster Tim Cranmer discovers that his former star spy Larry (schoolmate, friend, object of obsession, everyone including Tim’s girlfriend Emma keeps asking if Tim and Larry ever banged) has gone missing. With Emma. And also thirty-seven million dollars. Upon reading
skygiants' review I instantly decided I must read the book… then did not read it for six months. But last week an inexplicable craving from repressed spy pining and end-of-the-Cold-War existential ennui came upon me, and I picked it up and zoomed through it in two days. It’s written in a very tight third person, Tim Cranmer the organization man who has been pushed out of the organization now that the Cold War is over, living on his little vineyard trying to make a go of it with the unsuitable vines that his idealistic uncle planted rather than starting anew with vines actually suitable to the climate. Tim Cranmer and his thoughts about Larry, about Emma, both of whom he thinks about so incessantly that you feel almost as if you know them, and then about three-quarters through the book one of them actually shows up and you realize how distorted is a Tim’s-eye-view of anyone, including Tim himself.
And, of course, to a certain extent this is already obvious: Tim is very tightly controlled even in his own head, a man who looks down on ideals and is irrepressibly drawn to idealists and devoted his whole life, built his entire personality, around serving the Agency to further an ideal of stability - much less romantic, much more compromised than Larry and Emma’s attraction to the little beleaguered nations of the world, but an ideal nonetheless. There’s a hole at the center of the man, and it’s not entirely clear if there is simply nothing there, or if he simply refuses to see.
I love tight first-person novels with a distorting POV (Rebecca, We Have Always Lived in the Castle), as well as stories about obsessive relationships - and although it’s hard to tell, through the looking glass of Tim’s POV, just how Larry feels about Tim, it is clear that their lives have been intwined since school and even after they are both let go by the Agency, superannuated Cold Warriors, Larry just can’t leave Tim alone.
Until, of course, Larry disappears. And Tim, left alone, tells himself that he has to find Larry to clear his name with the Agency (which of course suspects he had his thumb in those thirty-seven million dollars)... and does so by chasing Larry, the course of action most likely to convince the Agency that he’s up to his eyeballs in guilt.
And then there’s the ending.
Eventually Tim follows Larry’s trail to the Caucusus, where Larry’s new friends the Ingush separatists show Tim the pile of rubble where Larry is buried. Then one of them tosses Tim a Kalashnikov, and Tim (who has after all burned every other bridge in his life) catches it and follows along.
“THAT’S IT?” I screamed. “THAT’S IT?? WE’RE NEVER EVEN GOING TO MEET LARRY?” Because we haven’t, except in flashbacks, and Tim’s flashbacks cannot be said to be reliable! Who is Larry! What is he like, really, once he gets off the adoring yet disdainful pedestal that Tim has put him on? We’ll never know! Brilliant. Cruel. An ice cold ending, John Le Carre. Kudos and also fuck you.
no subject
no subject
If I do write this fic I think it will have to be in Larry's voice, because I just don't feel that I could capture Tim's distinctive blend of thinking he's the most reasonable man in the room while also being bugfuck insane about everything in general and also Larry in particular. And the way that he blends this idealization of Larry - he's so offended when anyone suggests that Larry might have stolen money for personal gain! - while also being so tolerantly disdainful of Larry's silly little ideals.
no subject
THAT'S IT THAT'S OUR TIMBO