The Looking Glass War

The Looking Glass War by John le Carré

There is a valuable lesson in this book: when an author uses a novel’s introduction to suggest it may be his worst, believe him. Of the four books I’ve written by John le Carré, The Looking Glass War is clearly the worst. le Carré seems to have issues carrying his stories when the plot is not singularly focused, when he is trying to make a negative point about some aspect of British culture. We saw this when le Carré tackled the prep school system in A Murder of Quality, and this time the author tries to express his disgust with the disorganization and second-rate stature of the British Intelligence system.

The Looking Glass War is divided into three primary sections: Taylor’s Run, Avery’s Run, and Leiser’s Run. Taylor’s Run and Leiser’s Run are each divided into three subsections: Prelude, Take-Off, and Homecoming. After Taylor’s Run, this novel does not again get remotely interesting until the Take-Off Section of Leiser’s Run, the sixth of the seven total sections. Everything in between is a meandering tale of British Intelligence infighting and inferiority complex.

The characters are not at all compelling. le Carré spends a lot of time whining about the characters’ wives (they are all annoying and undermining). Every single one of the married men is brought down in some way by his wife. The men are all intelligence officers, but their wives all demand to know the job secrets, and the men always tell them.

George Smiley, of course, is not married. His wife left him in the first novel, so he and Adrian Haldane, another unmarried man, are the only ones able to maintain a level head. It is clear that even more than women, le Carré hates marriage. And his love for Smiley is so over the top. He goes out of his way to show how much in love he is with the character he created.

The other big takeaway from The Looking Glass War is one I’m not certain le Carré intended. Leiser is a British immigrant from Poland. Years earlier than the events of this novel, Leiser worked as a spy during World War II. As he’s thrust back into action, we readers get to see intimate details of his interactions with very important British men he’s meeting for the first time. The way le Carré writes both Leiser’s feelings and those of the British officers during their interactions, I can see that the author is a believer in British superiority. Leiser is not and can never be a true Briton; he’s a Pole. He is less than them. They know it. He knows it. And no one ever needs to voice it because it is a given. And, in the world of the characters and the author, it is just.

No, I did not like this book. But I have completed all four novels that precede the Karla trilogy. My hope is that the singular focus of a case that spans three novels will take le Carré’s writing back to what he does best. We’ll see how it goes.

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