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Title: The Honourable Schoolboy by John le Carre ISBN: 0-7434-5791-9 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 29 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.48 (23 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Schoolboy, Smiley, Drake & Nelson Ko - What Characters!
Comment: The story begins in mid 1974 with the pullout of intelligence operatives from Hong Kong, for fear of the how much was compromised, following the uncovering of Bill Haydon as a Russian 'mole' at the highest levels of British Intelligence in London.
If that sounds like it has the makings for an involved and intricate espionage thriller then that's only part of the story. It's not the plots or the politics that are the gems in Le Carre novels - it's the characters. Character development is his forte'. No character is as well developed or more complex than the awkward and unlikely superspy George Smiley. On the other hand no character is as simple to get a grip on as the central character - Jerry Westerby, whose case name - "The Honourable Schoolboy" defines and contains him perfectly.
Smiley as head of the Service sends Westerby east to Hong Kong following the trail left by Haydon. The target - two Chinese brothers supposedly in the employ of his arch nemesis 'Karla'. Along the way Le Carre lets us peek at ex-colonial life in East Asia and he misses no opportunity to tweak the nose of the serious British Civil Service.
Rating: 5
Summary: 5 Spent Spies Against Asian Backdrop
Comment: The Honourable Schoolboy is the fifth Le Carre novel featuring the enigmatic George Smiley. After unmasking the mole in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Smiley is put in charge of the Circus, a position he should have had years ago based on merit. It appears that Smiley is one of many who were put out to pasture by Bill Haydon's nefarious activities over the previous years. Smiley, starting with his closest circle, must work backwards ruthlessly discarding people with questionable loyalty or little competence and finding others like himself who were purged by Haydon. In the process he finds Jerry Westerby living quietly in Italy. Westerby is resurrected and sent to Hong Kong to foil Smiley's arch-nemesis Karla. The result is an epic tour de force with Westerby's journeys throughout South East Asia presenting a fascinating counterpoint to Smiley's group working inside the Circus.
The Honourable Schoolboy contains a cast of fascinating characters. Smiley himself is the classic anti James Bond. He is middle-aged, plump and bespectacled. Unlike Bond he is not a ladies' man. In fact, his wife is serially unfaithful to him. In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy his wife's infidelities were used by Karla to undermine him. Smiley has sacrificed whatever he had of a marriage to remove his vulnerability. Westerby is a stark contrast to Smiley; tall, athletic and a womanizer. In contrast to Smiley he lets his own torn emotions affect the way he does his work. There are also large assortments of supporting characters who are naive or scheming. It also features two of the most vicious characters ever employed in novels; Fawn and Tiu. Le Carre rarely showing any of their direct handiwork accentuates their viciousness.
The novel has Le Carre's usual themes; betrayal, misdirected love and the use of an opponent's human vulnerability against him. The betrayals in The Honourable Schoolboy towards the end are perhaps the most multi-layered and intense of any Le Carre novel. If the reader wants a James Bond type ending with Bond having killed the enemy and gotten the girl, The Honourable Schoolboy should be skipped. Le Carre's novels are of "the no good deed goes unpunished school". However, he is extremely adept at revealing the story details much like peeling the layers of an onion. His characters whether good or evil, most being somewhere in between, are fascinating and believable. The insider's knowledge of espionage shines through as always. The Honourable Schoolboy also contrasts the East with the West. The fall of Cambodia and Vietnam are especially poignant backdrops to the story.
Perhaps it is difficult to understand in this day what the cold war environment was like. It's instructive to read a novel like The Honourable Schoolboy that was written a quarter of a century ago to understand. The novel contains a lot and probably requires several readings to thoroughly appreciate all the nuances. However, based on the first reading The Honourable Schoolboy is superb.
Rating: 5
Summary: LeCarre, The Thinking Man's Spy Master!
Comment: Like most of the best-selling works that come from the unchallenged master of the intelligent spy thriller John LeCarre, this is a fictional but absorbing treatise on the hidden and conflicted corners of the human heart, the many ways in which our own natures feed into and extend the darker impulse of a society bent on pursuing the secrets and treachery that ever lurks for the unsuspecting victim. Here, in the second of three best-selling novels tracing the pilgrim's progress of George Smiley, the intrepid and unlikely hero of the post-industrial Western world, LeCarre continues his marvelously convoluted narrative tracing the continuing history of the Smiley chronicles, a three volume spy novel treatise detailing the perfidy and treachery of the world of British intelligence.
In "The Honourable Schoolboy", the instrument of Smiley's revenge against the legendary Karla, the Chief of the Soviet espionage effort, is one Jerry Westerby, a man who comprises such an amalgam of honor, evil, and rage that he is perhaps one of the most complex and yet completely believable characters to pop from LeCarre's fertile mind. Westerby is the old hand in the Far East, Smiley's eyes and ears, and the man George has placed to push the first domino spinning toward the eventual collapse of all the others in the vast Soviet spy network. Smiley is spinning the network in the aftermath of the uncovering of a Soviet mole deep within the Circus, the code name within the trade for the center of British Intelligence. As he probes the various aspects of the British network to discover the loci of damage and infiltration, Smiley picks the point of entry as Hong Kong, and no one is better suited to Smiley's complex undertaking that Jerry, a complicated, immensely intelligent, and yet absolutely dangerous and committed cold warrior who can be counted on to go the extra mile for the team and for Britian and the Queen.
The plot is ingenious, intricate, and horrific in its human toll, played out against a landscape of the far-flung persons and places of the former British Empire. With Westerby, the 'honourable school boy' of the title, we embark on a cautious yet beautifully choreographed adventure into the heart of darkness of ourselves, and we shouldn't be surprised to find some scar tissue and broken bones as we descend deeper into the tortuous caverns we keep hidden in our subconscious realms. LeCarre is nothing if not a superb chronicler of the ways in which our own natures become a battle ground for the struggle between good and evil, the good we can be for others, and the evil we do to them and ourselves by subscribing to ideologies, almost any ideology, that finally forces us to choose between our values and our duty. This is a marvelous book, an entertaining read, and a stunning example of the sophistication, complexity, and sheer intelligence of the author in detailing the subterranean world of international espionage. Enjoy!
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Title: Smiley's People by John le Carre ISBN: 0671042769 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre ISBN: 0743457900 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carre ISBN: 0743442539 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Murder of Quality by John le Carre ISBN: 0743431685 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Looking Glass War by John Le Carre ISBN: 0743431707 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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