FMcB

Commendable

Reviewed: 11-10-24

The book was interesting in many ways. We got to see Smiley being operational as opposed to exclusively managing an op. We got much more about Control than any other book. More background about Karla. Why no one really knows his name.

Beale hits Smiley as good as Guinness. Possibly better. Couldn’t ask for more.

The dialog was not the usual LeCarre. No “poison dwarfs” or “your little cabaret” idioms. Sometimes the LeCarre dialogue could come off staccato in the banter. This was not present in this novel.

More characters were flushed out. Connie and the Dark Aunts. They came off more like the Weird Sisters. Which was good. Toby was seen more in action and with strength as opposed to “running between parties like a poodle” in other novels.

I listened to the book twice to pick up on more nuances.

The first time it was “ok”. After I had listened to it the second time understanding it was Smiley by a different hand than I had always been accustomed, I appreciated it much more.

It was a good contribution to the body of Smiley works.

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Startlingly Little About The Unit.

Reviewed: 10-10-24

I learned very little about what The Unit did. Virtually nothing.

It was more about “I’m a small Muslim guy and I made it. I live America.”

I also got an earful of DEI which I can do without.

It’s common sense. You hire someone that looks like your enemy so they can blend in. Duh. You hire subject matter experts. Duh.

What does being lesbian have to do with it? (Which was brought up several times with no real purpose.)

I was just shocked… I mean shocked… to hear people in the military are sexist, racist, and homophobes. Really? No…. Say it’s not so.

Tell me again what any of that has to do with The Unit?

Strip out all his growing up in Egypt, DEI, entering the Army, Muslim culture, being small, … and you’re left with about 20 pages of information about The Unit which tells you zilch that makes them unique.

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Melodrama with a touch of revisionism

Reviewed: 02-07-24

A lot of melodramatic moments and literary conjecture didn’t need to be there.

Some I just had to skip over such as the soliloquies that devolved into historical revisionism based on the mores of today and not contemporaneous ones. Going into the oppressed-peoples colonization without also pointing out the slavery and conquering natures of the civilizations that pre-existed the English and Spanish… such as the Incas and Aztecs. People have been vanquishing & enslaving other tribes since the beginning of time. Everyone’s hand are dirty, so please stop suggesting there are good guys and bad guys.

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Well paced and enjoyable

Reviewed: 09-25-23

Story is well nuanced. The movie is also excellent and adds period color. The narrator is excellent, too. Good tone and inflection at correct moments. Paints the sociopath correct. Lots of small details. Antelope hide Gucci luggage when Gucci was something special and not mass marketed. References to classic locations… Cafe Greco, Hassler, …

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Relativizism

Reviewed: 01-26-23

Imagine what evils people are going to see of us and our society 200 years from now.

Measuring the past against our current value system is impossibly tricky. All of a sudden, everything is bad. George Washington is evil. MLK Jr is bad for sequentially cheating on his wife. Mark Twain is horrible for writing in his common cultural vernacular of the time. Latin American homicidal tribes committing slavery and genocide. African tribes complicit in the slave trade. Should they pay reparations?

Here’s a secret: everyone’s sh*t smells.

And going back in time to “fix it”… errrr… don’t fix anything. It’s all just a victim culture hogwash.

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Slow, convoluted

Reviewed: 01-17-23

Beginning is just slow. Whole sections I just skipped and didn’t miss much plot development. Implausible story line, too. Skip to the last hour and that’s where it finally makes sense. If you can swallow that, then start the book in the middle to completion. I don’t understand how the authors work is compared to LeCarre. Maybe his later and not the best, but sure nothing like the Smiley books.

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Dull

Reviewed: 01-14-23

It didn’t age well.

Richard Pryor said it best about this house…

The house says “get out!”

A black family says “OK!”

For the sake of argument, there was an infestation. Any normal person would go to a Motel 6 that day.

The idea the parents, seeing this danger, would put their children’s lives in danger is preposterous.

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Middling

Reviewed: 11-19-22

Goofy and highly implausible story line.

For example, the technology used to find bodies at the bottom of the ocean could be used to find nuclear submarines… so yeah… this is freeware on the web anyone can use and all governments are ok with letting that happen… and this is all a one man vendetta… please…

It’s something a high school kid comes up with.

How does this plot line make it past an acquisition editor, much less into production?

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Times have changed

Reviewed: 11-02-22

Recreational gratuitous animal cruelty isn’t a cultural norm anymore. Even when I was living in Spain 20 years ago, they had seen enough.

Hemingway lived a life of “let’s go kill something for fun” when that was acceptable. That’s just a sick way of thinking. I had to stop reading after continuous goring. Most civilized cultures have moved on.

Same thing with getting drunk daily. Society is more health conscious and we’re all probably better for it. Cause there’s a lot of getting drunk for no good reason in this book.

The book is essentially a conversation of people with not much to say. They are not really interesting people. Someone staring at someone else. Someone getting drunk and rude. Poseurs. Inane discussion. In general, people just bs’ing.

I was impressed by the lack of profanity. Again, a different time. If it was written today, it would have been laced with it.

I only got as far as I did because of William Hurt. Finally, I just had enough of the animal cruelty and quit. I’ll try not to remember any of it the next time I’m at the Crillion or Bar Hemingway at the Ritz.

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Disjointed

Reviewed: 11-02-22

Weird story. Weirdly graphic at parts. Incoherent at parts. Interesting idea not developed. Carla Gugino is the not reason I finished it.

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