A Murder of Quality

A Murder of Quality by John le Carré

I don’t know what happened with A Murder of Quality. The author, John le Carré, did not construct a story nearly as good as his first novel, Call for the Dead. He was more ambitious this time around and, in the end, a little careless. The story is not tight.

My biggest problem with le Carré’s is that he hates women. He very obviously hates women. It was evident in Call for the Dead, and it really shines through in the opening of A Murder of Quality. He is so in-your-face with his hatred for women that an intelligent reader cannot believe that the victim of the story’s murder, a woman named Stella Rode, is an innocent. Thus, when le Carré gives the reader clues, they come across as unnecessary redundancies.

The novel’s biggest failing is that the protagonist, George Smiley, is a spy in something that is not a spy story. It is clear that le Carré had issues with the culture of England’s boarding schools and wanted to write a novel about it. But Smiley, as le Carré created him, doesn’t fit in that world, and so the entire story reads awkwardly. Most of the central characters are caricatures, and the women are mostly clichés (the succubus, the gossip, the spinster, and the dingbat). Nothing really worked for me. It was all thrown together. Poor, poor execution.

This was only le Carré’s second novel, so he had yet to grow out of cliché. I maintain hope that the third novel avoids these pitfalls.

D

Call for the Dead

Call for the Dead by John Le Carré


I’d never heard of John Le Carré before my wife and I saw Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy last weekend. We loved the movie. I thought it was great. I decided to go back and read all of Le Carré’s George Smiley novels. Call for the Dead is the first of them, Le Carré’s first novel of any type. I didn’t expect much from it; I knew that Le Carré was still trying to find himself as he wrote it. In his introduction to the novel, he stated that he wrote on the train during his morning commute and that his wife typed up his scripted words every night.

As I said, I didn’t expect much, but Call for the Dead was good. Nothing spectacular, nothing memorable. But it was good, and I will read at least the next novel. The only thing that really bothered me was a single passage near the end of Chapter 14. And it was, to me, a big deal. When describing a Cuban racecar driver for whom Smiley’s ex-wife had left the protagonist, Le Carré wrote: “The most repellent thing about him, he remembered, had been the hair on his arms. With the goggles and the motor oil and that ludicrous laurel-wreath he had looked exactly like an anthropoid ape fallen from a tree. He was wearing a white tennis shirt with short sleeves, which had somehow remained spotlessly clean throughout the race, setting off those black monkey arms with repulsive clarity.” So if there’s more of this, I’ll bow out of the series. There are too many good books out there to put up with this crap when it doesn’t fit the story.

C-

My Wife's Story

My Wife's Story by Richard Babcock

I doubt that I’ve ever read anything so simultaneously funny and sad. On the surface, this story is funny in the moment while your brain is telling you that it will only end sadly. Deeper, though, you know the narrator is not good. He’s selfish and lacking compassion. His life is of privilege and he resents losing the power of it. And all the while, he does not consider his wife. He tells you up front that he loses her, and as you read you know exactly why. Such a sociologically brilliant work.

A+