Writing Styles-John Le Carre

I finished reading A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre; arguably a master novelist of espionage genre.

After I finished A Perfect Spy I started on Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy the first of the Triology of Quest for Karla. (I saw the mini series of the same name back in 1970s, which I enjoyed thoroughly).

I was struck by the different writing styles of the same author in two books. The first one is meanderingly long in events and people. The events described could be in the present or in the past, in movie lingo it is known as “flash backs”. And the switch from present to past is so sudden that for a moment you need to scratch your head to figure out what did just happen. Too many people are introduced at random and the relationships are not quite established immediately or understandably. Within a paragraph the one may be saying or quoting something in first person and then suddenly it changes into a third person. I was kept on my toes through out the reading.

The second book is relatively short and straight forward, or so it seems so far. I like the plot here so much better than the previous book. I hope it continues into the next two sequels.

Both books use that pure king’s or queen’s English with least amount of embellishments, which I really appreciate. He introduces few spy jargons; moles, mothers and babysitters which have different than commonly understood meanings.

Most books I read are heavily dotted with irrelevances and redundancies which give the novels their length and weight, neither of them I like.  But if I have to choose which I can live with I will opt for irrelevances.  Fortunately Le Carre’s books are speckled with irrelevances but not redundancies. Phew....

I think I will continue with Spy genre only because they are less likely to be superfluous……….. I hope.