Skip to main content

Our Game by John LeCarre

"Let me tell you a few things about myself. Not much, but enough. In the old days it was convenient to bill me as a spy turned writer. I was nothing of the kind. I am a writer who, when I was very young, spent a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence."
--John le Carre, from his website

I had the unique pleasure of reading for the first time a John le Carre novel, Our Game. I picked it out of a bin of throwaway paperbacks, thinking it would be a trashy, page-turning, throwaway novel. I expected a few hours of forgettable reading to help me forget that I was on a twelve hour plane ride to New Zealand.

This book was not forgettable. And it introduced me to a new (to me) fiction writer who I look forward to reading again and again.

Everyone compares these books to the action-packed spy novels of Ian Fleming, but the two are so different that the very comparison itself is misleading. Ian Fleming is flash, drama, excitement, and of course, narcissism. John le Carre's works are psychological thrillers.

Our Game centers on the life of an aging former intelligence man, Timothy Cramner, who is trying to enjoy retirement, a new girlfriend, and a new life in the country. But when one of his old double agents drops back into his life, and then disappears again with a large sum of government money, Cramner finds himself back into "the game" one last time, grappling not only with his age and the fundamental emptiness of his day-to-day life, but with the possibly treasonous actions of his former agent.

John le Carre is thought of as a master of the "intelligent" spy thriller genre, a genre I never knew existed until I randomly picked up one of his books out of a box. I'm looking forward to reading more from this author.



Suggested reading list from Our Game:
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carre
The Russia House: A Novel by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre
Call for the Dead by John le Carre
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories by Ian Fleming
On Her Majesty's Secret Service by Ian Fleming

Full Disclosure: if you purchase any items from Amazon by following the links provided, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Please think of it as my "tip jar"--and thanks so much to readers for all of your support!
Labels:

More Posts

How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World by Harry Browne

This book is a praxis: a set of real-world practices for navigating reality as it is, rather than how we wish it to be. The language is clear and direct, and the book aggregates into a highly robust and coherent work of practical, livable philosophy. Author Harry Browne developed this philosophy over the course of many years, and it's inspiring to hear him talk about his mistakes, his refinements in thinking over time, and the surprising and often liberating benefits that came his way as he followed his own practices. This author eats his own cooking, and the result is a generous gift to readers. This does not mean you'll agree with everything the author writes! In fact, Browne encourages readers to disagree with him as we sort out  our specific values, rules and boundaries. He wants volitional readers, not readers looking to be told what to think and do. We'll come back to this idea. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my wor...
Read more

The Art of War in the Middle Ages by Charles Oman

A wonderful, information-dense book surveying the evolution of warfare across the Middle Ages, and a glorious starting point for readers to contextualize an enormous amount of European history. There's a great deal of historical knowledge here that author Charles Oman assumes in his readers.  And so the very act of reading this book (and looking up the author's near-constant historical references) equates to a semester or two--at least--of upper-level undergrad European history. Read this book and spend some time looking things up. Then read several more books like this [1].  Pretty soon, enough osmosis happens such that the various battles and historical figures this author mentions casually will be things you start mentioning casually: Cannae, Adrianople, Brunanburh, Hastings, Robert Guiscard, Durazzo, Tours, Crecy, Agincourt, Arnold von Winkelried, Albrecht von Wallenstein, and so on. (This will be an inner monologue of course, because we all know how much every...
Read more

H.R. by Edwin Lefevre

I wouldn't recommend this odd book for its story. But H.R. is interesting for its social and psychological commentary on early 20th century New York society, as the Gilded Age gave way to the so-called Progressive Era. Edwin Lefevre is the author of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator , the famous (at least among investors) pseudobiography of Jesse Livermore. This book, in stark contrast, is a forgotten and comparatively forgettable work.  But not totally forgettable. The reader watches the life arc of a young man who catapults himself across several caste barriers, starting as a frustrated New York City bank clerk who quits and, implausibly, starts a union of sandwich-board advertisers. He then uses this sandwich board advertising platform (you could think of it as an early 1900s "new media" platform) to gain influence throughout the city, ultimately parlaying his way into joining New York's social and economic elite. At its heart, this book is about power and influ...
Read more