Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

By John Le Carré

In case you are wondering, John Le Carré is not going to hold your hand. Not even for one page.

You'd be well served to do your homework before attempting Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carré's classic Cold War spy novel featuring the enigmatic George Smiley and the first novel in his Karla Trilogy. You are going to need all your knowledge about Cold War era espionage to decipher this narrative, but I'll come back to that in a bit, but first a little background. Unlike Le Carré, I will hold your hand (and take you out for a nice steak dinner, if you are inclined).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy progresses via a series of flashbacks and tracks the history of the Circus (the in-house name of M16, the Secret Intelligence Service). After an agent engages in a love affair with the wife of a Soviet intelligence officer in Hong Kong, it becomes apparent that the British office has been infiltrated by a mole. Smiley has the unenviable task of ferreting out the mole, spying on the spies as it were. The title of the novel are the code names given to the potential spies in the British intelligence service. A trap is set, the culprit is apprehended and there's a neat little twist ending that... oh who am I kidding? I have no idea how this book ended. I finished it, but I'm not entirely sure what happened.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is considered a classic in the spy genre and was recently made into a film starring my favorite actor of all time, Gary Oldman, as George Smiley. the film garnered several Academy Award nominations including a Best Actor nod for Oldman (good for him!). I can't vouch for the film, though because I haven't seen it and after reading the novel, I have no plans to do so (even if it does have Gary Oldman... I'm not a fanboy). That's how much this novel frustrated me.

I's not no idjit, ya hear? But I couldn't make heads nor tails of this book. It was borderline nonsense to me. Entire chapters would go by and I had no idea what had just happened. At times I felt like I was reading a foreign language. I'm not the sort to be intimidated by a novel and I'm more than comfortable diving into classic novels that others find weird, verbose or abstract (I've read and enjoyed Naked Lunch, Vurt and Pussy, Queen of the Pirates, I'll have you know!). But even with the Wikipedia page and other sorts of cliff notes, I had trouble understanding this book. I realized there were flashbacks and I could follow the storyline at times. but there seemed to be a never-ending chorus line of minor characters and pointless tangents. It was an overload of information!

And the jargon, my GOD! I was constantly going back to find out that the hell a lamplighter or shoemaker or a janitor was. It was infuriating. I found myself drifting off for pages at a time and not really caring about what I had missed. Not a good sign when reading.

Now, I know that John Le Carré is a well respected spy novelist and I'm not going to go so far as to disrespect the man on this blog like I did to Cathy Lamb. Salman Rushdie is not everyone's cup of tea, but his reputation affords him some wiggle room from people who don't like his work (even from Ayatollahs). I think I owe Le Carré the same courtesy. So, instead of rambling on about why I didn't like this book, I'd like to hear from anyone out there that did like this book and why? Given its stature as a classic, there must be more than a few people out there that love this book. I'm addressing you! What did I miss here? How could I have read this book differently and enjoyed it? Really! I hate it when I don't get it but....

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? I don't get it.

(It does have a cool cover, though).

Faceless Killers

Faceless Killers

By Hennig Mankell

I have no idea where this book came from. It was on my shelf and looked short enough and interesting enough to wash my head clear of all the non-fiction I have been reading over the past couple of weeks. There's nothing like settling into a novel after a non-fiction binge. It's like coming home.

When I started the book I had absolutely no idea that it was yet another Swedish crime novel (these things are like bed bugs lately... just what you think you've seen the last one, out pops another from the seams of your coverlet). All I read on the back of the book were the words: "It was a senselessly violent crime," and I said: "SOLD!" I'm not a discerning customer. Anyway, I should have guessed it was Swedish.

As it turns out, Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell pre-dates the current fetish (um.. that's two blog posts in a row that I've used that term) with Scandinavian crime drama, but it does not pre-date the conventions. It is also the first in a series (dammit!). I don't know enough about Scandinavian crime dramas but based on the fact that this novel was an international best seller in 1991 and that it seems to have all the requisite insanity of The Millennium Trilogy (and others), I'm curious as to whether or not this is the grandfather of a genre (much like The New York Dolls were the grandfather of punk rock). Of course, it is set in a quiet provincial town. There is the unnecessarily gruesome murder, the overworked and under-appreciated cops, the over-arching distrust of foreigners, the ubiquitous dislike for women and the ever-impending snowstorms. It's all there. In 1991. I'm beginning to think that, much like Canadian fiction, there should be a checklist that should be created to decide exactly how Swedish a particular book is.

Faceless Killers starts with the (what else?) gruesome murder of an elderly couple on a farm outside a quiet, provincial town. Naturally, the wife suffers a fair amount more than her husband. The rest of the novel follows Kurt Wallander, an over-worked and under-appreciated cop leads the investigation of the killings. The first two thirds of the novel follow Wallander's life in a minute by minute account of the first two weeks of the investigation when it becomes apparent that the killers just might be refugees from Eastern Europe (which naturally sparks all sorts of reactionary hate crimes... this is Sweden after all, the land of Church burnings and Neo-Nazis). He attempts to move the investigation along while his personal life seems to be unravelling all around him. Only his calm and cool Ystad demeanor and the lack of snow seems to carry him through what to virtually everyone else living on the Skane would be a stress level of coronary proportions. Given that he is recently divorced (what cop isn't?) and eating nothing but hamburgers and pizza, I'm surprised that he lives through this episode, but what do I know about the Swedish constitution?

The last third of the novel seems to send the story into overdrive. Months pass in the span of a few pages as the case seems to go as cold as March in Hällesjö, before Wallander resolves the mystery in the final few pages. Given the detailed narrative of the first third, I found this shift in the momentum jarring. I had become accustom the minute by minute narrative style. When it started to spin out of control, Mankell lost me a bit. I started to care a lot less about the resolution due to the pace transition. It felt a little like Mankell was trying to wrap up his novel in time to catch the last train to Sävsjö or something. It all just seemed to lose traction.

But I could live with that. It was a minor nuisance in an otherwise enjoyable crime novel. What really irked me was the translation. I kept checking back to see whether Ernest Hemingway had returned from the grave to abbreviate an entirely new generation. Turns out it's a guy named Steven T. Murray. I'm assuming he really likes Hemingway, or Dick and Jane novels, either/or. It got to a point where I began talking to my wife in short, rapid-fire sentences over lunch. She asked whether or not I had suffered a stroke.

This is a typical (though written by me, not Henning Mankell) paragraph from the book:

Wallander wondered whether he should call Kalle in Väderstad. He felt sick. Ryberg still hadn't arrived. The winter wind blew outside his window. He remembered he hadn't eaten since yesterday. He walked out of the station. He entered the restaurant across the street. He ordered a pizza. He would call Kalle as soon as he got back to the office. The pizza had pineapple. It was 11:46pm.

See what I mean? It's as unnerving as a staring contest.

The other uncomfortable thing about Faceless Killers was its focus on Sweden's (apparent) liberal policy toward immigrants and refugees. While I wouldn't class this novel as being racist or anti-immigration, it did seem to imply a lot of negativity toward non-Swedish residents. While it could be that Mankell's intention was to raise the issue, I'm not sure he was overly clear about it. I got the impression that most of the characters in the book would have been perfectly happy with mass expulsion, but they were all too Nordically polite to say so. I might be wrong, but that was the impression this book left me.

But I'm not going to slag on Faceless Killers too much. As a whole it had me from page one through the pace change and while I lost some of the interest Mankell generated in his build-up I didn't lose so much as to throw the book down in disgust or anything. It's not the world's greatest crime novel  but it certainly isn't the worst book on the market and who am I to get all huffy about Swedish immigration policy? Besides, I could think of worse things to read if you happen to be caught on the overnight train from Stockholm to Rättviks.

If you dig sado-masochistic novels from Scandinavia, check it out. If you were ambivalent about the Millennium Trilogy, give this one a pass.

Ape House

Ape House

By Sara Gruen

(Mild spoilers ahead)

Ah, the airport thriller. There's nothing quite like a novel about a plucky journalist who uncovers a nefarious plot while his/her personal and professional life is crumbling all around. These sorts of books are usually described as "gripping," a "wild ride" or "compelling." Not that there's anything wrong with airport thrillers, mind you. I've been known to be compelled into the grip of a wild ride from time to time, but I was a bit surprised to find that Sara Gruen, the author of Water For Elephants, had written one. And as it turns out, it's better than most.

To be frank, I was ready to hate this book after the first 100 pages. It all seemed too absurd. Too Cathy Lamb. The novel centers on a troupe of highly intelligent bonobos living in a research lab who are able to use sign language to communicate with humans. Their closest human friend is a woman named Isabel. Isabel is socially awkward and feels more at home with the bonobos than she does with other humans. Her fiancé was recently put in charge of the research and is immediately introduced as a creepy slime ball who has cheated on her with Isabel's only other friend: a hip, vegan, Lisbeth Salander-esque character named Celia.

Meanwhile, John, a down on his luck journalist from the Philadelphia Inquirer has been working on an article about the lab for an on-going piece about great apes, though his partner, an unscrupulous tiger woman aptly named Cat has been scooping his story from underneath him. John's wife, Amanda, is a struggling writer with the world's most annoying mother has been given a chance to write a television series in Hollywood with a man she has met on the Internet. Given Amanda's recent struggles with depression, this opportunity coupled with John's recent troubles with his job, send their marriage into a tailspin. Will it survive? Read on!

All this is trouble enough, but a terrorist explosion rocks the lab and severely injures Isabel. In the aftermath, Isabel is left to mend, John is fired from the Inquirer and the lab is closed down. Somehow, the bonobos are sold to a known pornographer and installed in a house with cameras in every room where they become the unwilling stars in America's new hit reality TV show, Ape House.

Of course all of this seems so improbably stupid that you'd keep reading, too. And it's not that the book gets any less stupid. It's not Water For Elephants if that's what you are thinking. But Gruen does handle the airport thriller genre with a certain flare and depth that others in the field often lack and I ended up liking the book in the end (though not loving it). There were more than a few times when I was sure I had the plot figured only to have Gruen surprise me with a neat little twist. And that's all anyone should really ask of an airport thriller. Good plot, surprises and twists. So I'm not complaining. It's a solid read and I doubt very many people will throw it away in disgust. If you do, you probably are not a hit at parties, either.

But the novel does have a certain degree of social import that deserves mention. Among many other things, Gruen has a lot to say on the vulgarity of our celebrity-obsessed culture and reality television. A solid half of the novel delves into the sleazy side of reality television with its unscrupulous creators. One could almost smell the mustache wax  secreting from the bad guy while he wrung his hands in evil glee at the thought of making millions off this "stupid little monkeys." Why is could have been Donald Trump himself! Naturally, the show becomes a hit and a nationwide success. In that respect, Ape House reminded me a lot of Ben Elton's novel Dead Famous.

Certainly there is a lot to say about our TMZ unfused lives and the saturation of our televisions with such reality nonsense as Survivor, The Bachelor, Big Brother etc... These shows are the cultural equivalent of Big Macs and Twinkies. Indeed, we should spend more time worrying about our cultural diet and what out viewing habits are doing to the collective intelligence of our society, or some such social science-speak. And juxtaposing this obsession with "reality" and celebrity by way of intelligent apes (who continuously display more maturity than the humans in the book) is an ingeniously sly backhand against society as a whole. But my question to Sara Gruen is: Aren't you preaching to the choir, sister?

I mean, anyone who is reading your novels (or, sadly, reading at all) is more than likely already well aware of the degrading nature of celebrity gossip and reality television. The sorts of people that read Sara Gruen books are already the sorts of people who probably don't waste their time surfing Perez Hilton or watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. They're probably eager to pick up the next Tom Robbins (or whoever...) novel on their bookshelf and forego the antics of overly-tanned, tribal-tattooed 20-somethings cavorting in hot tubs and arguing over who used all the ketchup in the fridge.

Readers are, by nature, cultural vegetarians. They are picky about their pop culture due to the time and effort they invest in their medium of choice. For a reader it's not simply a matter of flicking on the show, mid-episode and picking the themes up mid-sentence. Reading requires time and patience and readers become adept at protecting those commodities. Perhaps this is why readers tend to shun television. It has always been the cultural junk food. Besides, airport thrillers are the reader's equivalent to junk food (though I like to equate them to decadent desserts). They are, along with Young Adult fiction and books about zombies (or vampires) the reader's guilty pleasure. A refreshing slice of sweetness after the heftier meals of which we are accustomed...

Riiiiiiight..... Anyway, for fear of coming across as a snob, I am well aware that I am speaking in gross generalities (and tasty metaphors), but I think I'm getting my point across.

I  do admire Gruen's verve in detailing the unfortunate cultural phenomenon that is the cult of celebrity. Sure, Ape House tackles other issues such as animal rights, the absurdity of extreme groups (both right and left) and the decline of print media to name a few. And one shouldn't lose sight of the fact that it is, after all, just a story. But I couldn't help ponder Gruen's motivation for even bothering with the world of reality television. While I agree with Sara Gruen about everything she says on the subject of reality television and celebrity culture, I can't imagine that many of her readers came to an epiphany about the subject while reading this. Explaining the absurdity of reality television and celebrity culture to an audience of readers is like explaining snow to an Inuit. Totally unnecessary.

But I digress.

OK, perhaps I'm looking too far into an airport thriller for something to write. Perhaps none of this really needs to be said.  Perhaps I should just shut my yap and enjoy this gripping, wild ride.

Good book.

Not great.

Smoke Screen

Smoke Screen

by Sandra Brown

Sometimes books end up on my reading shelf and I have no idea how they got there. I suspect there is a book god that steals books from airport lounges, public toilets and youth hostels and deposits them randomly around the world. It's the only logical conclusion as to why this book was there in the first place. Nothing about this book would have convinced me to put this book on the shelf willingly, but since everything on that shelf must be read, I picked it up and had at it.

I suspected something was amiss right away when the writer consistently referred to the varying tightness of each character's clothes, but it wasn't until the first contrived and graphic sex scene that my fears manifested:

"Oh God! I'm reading an erotic thriller."

Three solid pages of sex. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, like a good scare in a horror movie, I prefer my romance to be implied. Perhaps that is a personal character flaw.

Anyway,

Further reference to extra tight shirts, and heaps of unnecessary sexual tension later, the book took one last gargantuan twist that bordered on a leap of faith and ended.

Mercifully.

The gods mock me.