Legacy of Spies (le Carre) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
If not a capstone to John le Carre’s remarkable career (like Philip Roth, le Carre keeps soldiering on), A Legacy of Spies surely puts a finishing touch to his Soviet era spy vs. spy oeuvre. His new book has the feel of an elegy for that earlier time: rather than triumphal — the West, after all, won the Cold War — Legacy is melancholic. It mourns not the glory days but the ugly choices, the betrayals on all fronts, that resulted in the sacrifice of colleagues. And it asks the imponderable: were those sacrifices worth the price? Does patriotism trump personal loyalty and affection?  READ MORE…
Molly Lundquist - LitLovers


The good news about A Legacy of Spies is that it delivers a writer in full. Le Carre's prose remains brisk and lapidary. His wit is intact and rolls as if on casters. He is as profitably interested as ever in values, especially the places where loyalty, patriotism and affection rub together and fray. He wears his gravitas lightly…Le Carre is not of my generation but I have read him for long enough to understand how, for many readers, his characters are old friends — part of their mental furniture. There's something moving about seeing him revive them so effortlessly, to see that the old magic still holds. He thinks internationally but feels domestically. In an upside-down time, he appeals to comprehension rather than instinct. I might as well say it: to read this simmering novel is to come in from the cold.
Dwight Garner - New York Times


Le Carre is such a gifted storyteller that he interlaces the cards in his deck so they fit not simply with this book, but with the earlier ones as well.
Atlantic


We wish for more complexity and logic in our politics, so we look to make political art that is logical and complex: a genre defined by John le Carre.
New Republic


(Starred review.) George Smiley returns in this stunning spy novel from MWA Grand Master le Carre.… He can convey a character in a sentence, land an emotional insight in the smallest phrase—and demolish an ideology in a paragraph.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) Le Carre incorporates many layers of meaning and numerous memorable characters into this intense story that pulses with tension, humor, and moral ambivalence. Smiley fans will be lining up for this one. —Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA
Library Journal


Le Carre returns to put yet another spin on the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).… The miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.
Kirkus Reviews