The Other Typist
Suzanne Rindell, 2013
Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399161469
Summary
For fans of The Talented Mr. Ripley and The Great Gatsby comes one of the most memorable unreliable narrators in years.
Rose Baker seals men’s fates. With a few strokes of the keys that sit before her, she can send a person away for life in prison. A typist in a New York City Police Department precinct, Rose is like a high priestess. Confessions are her job.
It is 1923, and while she may hear every detail about shootings, knifings, and murders, as soon as she leaves the interrogation room she is once again the weaker sex, best suited for filing and making coffee. This is a new era for women, and New York is a confusing place for Rose. Gone are the Victorian standards of what is acceptable. All around her women bob their hair, they smoke, they go to speakeasies.
Yet prudish Rose is stuck in the fading light of yesteryear, searching for the nurturing companionship that eluded her childhood.
When glamorous Odalie, a new girl, joins the typing pool, despite her best intentions Rose falls under Odalie’s spell. As the two women navigate between the sparkling underworld of speakeasies by night and their work at the station by day, Rose is drawn fully into Odalie’s high-stakes world. And soon her fascination with Odalie turns into an obsession from which she may never recover. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Suzanne Rindell is a doctoral student in American modernist literature at Rice University. The Other Typist is her first novel. She lives in New York City and is currently working on a second novel. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
With prohibition picking up steam, the New York precinct where Rose Baker works typing confessions is busy enough to need a new girl. Enter the beautiful, disturbing, and enviable Odalie.... Odalie's mysterious past shows up and raises questions even Rose can't ignore, and her curiosity leads her to challenge Odalie, with explosive results. Though the final twist—the one that should make readers gasp and look back for the clues they missed—is hinted at too often to snap smartly when sprung, Rindell's debut is a cinematic page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
"The other typist" is Odalie, the mysterious, magnetic young woman who joins Rose Baker's typing pool at a Lower East Side precinct in 1924 Manhattan. Rose, confused by the rapid changing mores as the Twenties roar along, is enthralled with the newcomer, but her admiration soon turns into threatening obsession. First novelist Rindell has published poetry and short fiction in places like Conjunctions, so she can write.
Library Journal
With hints toward The Great Gatsby, Rindell’s novel aspires to recreate Prohibition-era New York City, both its opulence and its squalid underbelly. She captures it quite well, while at the same time spinning a delicate and suspenseful narrative about false friendship, obsession, and life for single women in New York during Prohibition.
Booklist
(Starred review.) [A] pitch-black comedy about a police stenographer accused of murder in 1920s Manhattan.... Rose [Baker] begins her narration archly with off-putting curlicues she gradually discards. She is tart, judgmental, self-righteous and self-justifying. She is also viciously astute. Whether she's telling the truth is another matter. A deliciously addictive, cinematically influenced page-turner, both comic and provocative, about the nature of guilt and innocence within the context of social class in a rapidly changing culture.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. Do you think Rose is a reliable or unreliable narrator? Why? If you did question her veracity, at what point in the novel did you begin to do so?
2. Why is Rose so captivated by Odalie, someone she wholly disapproves of initially?
3. Through Odalie, Rose gains entry into a world she's never seen before, one filled with opulence and rich, glamorous people. Clearly Rose is an outsider who doesn't belong. Yet she seems to take to it all rather quickly. Why do you think this is so? Why, despite all the new people she comes into contact with, is Odalie the only one she seems to be charmed by?
4. Some readers may think that Rose is a lesbian. Do you? Why or why not? Might her Victorian sensibility, when viewed by a contemporary reader, be misinterpreted and sexualized even if it might be innocent and pure?
5. Rose is such a stickler for the rules, yet as the novel progresses, she starts breaking them frequently. In retrospect, do you think she ever follows the rules? Or does she follow only the ones she agrees with?
6. Rose is actually quite funny, an astute observer. ("I crawled into [bed]...exhausted...from the efforts of making conversation with a man who if he were any duller might be declared catatonic by those in the medical profession.") Why, then, is she so humorless when it comes to people like Iris, Gib, and the Lieutenant Detective, especially?
7. Rose states in the beginning of the book: "I am there to transcribe what will eventually come to be known as the truth." The novel plays with the notion that the written word is superior to the spoken-Rose's transcripts and her diary that the reader is reading, versus the narration she provides throughout the book. Do you think the written word carries more weight than oral history? Why or why not?
8. Consider the many possible story lines for Odalie's history. Did she really kill her ex-fiancé? Was Gib really the driver of the train? Was she indeed a debutante from a wealthy family in Newport? Did she at a young age leave her mother to live with Czakó, the Hungarian, in Europe? Which of these stories is the most plausible? Do you believe any of them is true?
9. What do you make of Rose's appearance? Throughout the novel she takes pains to point out that she is plain-looking. Yet the Lieutenant Detective obviously finds her attractive, and at the end of the book, she is a doppelgänger for Odalie, who is portrayed as a knockout. What do you think Rose really looks like? Should her appearance even matter?
10. When Rose is in the hospital at the end of the book, the doctors call her "Ginevra." That is the name Teddy used for Odalie. Who do you think is the real Ginevra? Are Odalie and Rose the same person?
11. What do you make of the kiss at the end of the novel? Is Rose doing it just to get the Lieutenant Detective's knife, or is there some true feeling behind it? Were you surprised that she admits she's never kissed a man before?
12. What do you believe really happened at the end of the book? Did Rose kill Teddy? Or did Odalie?
(Questions issued by publisher.)
The Perfume Collector
Kathleen Tessaro, 2013
HarperCollins
464 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062257833
Summary
An inheritance from a mysterious stranger . . . an abandoned perfume shop on the Left Bank of Paris . . . three exquisite perfumes that hold a memory . . . and a secret.
London, 1955: Grace Monroe is a fortunate young woman. Despite her sheltered upbringing in Oxford, her recent marriage has thrust her into the heart of London's most refined and ambitious social circles. However, playing the role of the sophisticated socialite her husband would like her to be doesn't come easily to her—and perhaps never will.
Then one evening a letter arrives from France that will change everything. Grace has received an inheritance. There's only one problem: she has never heard of her benefactor, the mysterious Eva d'Orsey.
So begins a journey that takes Grace to Paris in search of Eva. There, in a long-abandoned perfume shop on the Left Bank, she discovers the seductive world of perfumers and their muses, and a surprising, complex love story. Told by invoking the three distinctive perfumes she inspired, Eva d'Orsey's story weaves through the decades, from 1920s New York to Monte Carlo, Paris, and London.
But these three perfumes hold secrets. And as Eva's past and Grace's future intersect, Grace realizes she must choose between the life she thinks she should live and the person she is truly meant to be.
Illuminating the lives and challenging times of two fascinating women, The Perfume Collector weaves a haunting, imaginative, and beautifully written tale filled with passion and possibility, heartbreak and hope. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Pitts burgh, Pennsylvania, USA
• Education—attended University of Pittsburgh
and Carnegie Mellon University
• Currently—lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
2008)
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kathleen attended the University of Pittsburgh before entering the drama program of Carnegie Mellon University. In the middle of her sophomore year, she went to study in London for three months and stayed for the next twenty-three years.
She began writing at the suggestion of a friend and was an early member of the Wimpole Street Writer’s Workshop. Her debut novel, Elegance (2003), became a bestseller. All of Kathleen's novels including Innocence (2005), The Flirt (2008), The Debutante (2011), and The Perfume Collector (2013) have been translated into many languages and sold all over the world. She returned to Pittsburgh in 2009, where she now lives with her husband and son. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Tessaro dazzles the senses in this novel about a reluctant British socialite who receives a mysterious inheritance from an unknown Frenchwoman in 1950s Europe. Tessaro’s flashback-layered narrative concerns the mildly cliched Grace Munroe, a London housewife yearning for a sense of purpose, and Eva d’Orsey, an older Frenchwoman “living between memory and regret."... Predictably, Tessaro cycles between narratives....but [n]uanced observations soften the blow of the contrived banter [and] familiar form.
Publishers Weekly
A compelling plot in a truly magical Parisian setting, fascinating information about the way perfume is made, and great secondary characters make this a charming read. Tessaro does a marvelous job of conveying the atmosphere of a fairytale trip to 1950s Paris by a woman who finds herself, and romance, in the City of Light. Readers of the works of Emily Giffin and Laura Florand will enjoy. —Elizabeth Mellett, Brookline P.L., MA
Library Journal
A bewitching, compelling novel, full of dark desires, long-buried secrets, revisited memories, and new opportunities.
Booklist
Grace Munroe, a young woman in London in 1955, receives a letter from Paris informing her that a woman she has never heard of has just died and left her an apartment and an investment portfolio.... The story then moves back in time and...from continent to continent and...reveals the sometimes-tragic, sometimes-exhilarating life journey of Eva D'Orsey.... Eva's story, told from her perspective, is interspersed with her story as told by Madame Zed to Grace Munroe, who has followed a clue to the old perfume shop. A colorful, stimulating journey through time.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. The book is described as a secret history told in scent. The three perfumes Andre Valmont creates for Eva mark significant turning points in her life and changes in her identity. Do you have a secret history in perfume? What three perfumes best describe different turning points in your life? Discuss the significance that perfume plays in your own life to alter mood or trigger a memory.
2. Each of the main characters is not quite what they seem to be upon first meeting. How do they appear originally, and how do they change? What do you consider to be the significance of this in the story and how does it alter your opinion of them?
3. Should perfume always be pleasing?
4. Grace’s story is based on a real woman’s story. She was born into a wealthy, aristocratic family and only discovered she was actually the child of another man in adulthood, when he left his Paris apartment to her in his will. This woman was never able to reconcile her true history. In the novel, Grace’s discovery profoundly alters who she is and, more importantly, who she might become. Discuss how she’s affected, how it changes her view of herself and what possibilities are open to her now that weren’t before.
5. Do you think Eva a good mother? Point to examples as to why or why not.
6. In the novel, it’s not clear if Grace’s husband has been unfaithful or not. Why do you believe this is kept ambiguous?
7. Imagine you discovered that your parents were not biologically related to you. What part of your identity would change as a result? What personal backstory about who you are and who you ought to be would you feel free to let go of? Would it alter your values or place in the world? Or would it not make any difference to you?
8. Again and again, the phrase "le droit de choisir" or the right to choose is echoed through the book. It forms the principal legacy that Grace inherits. Why is choice so important to Eva d’Orsay? How does she pass on that legacy?
(Questions from author's website.)
The Apple Orchard
Susan Wiggs, 2013
Harlequin
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780778314936
Summary
Tess Delaney makes a living restoring stolen treasures to their rightful owners. People like Annelise Winther, who refuses to sell her long-gone mother's beloved necklace—despite Tess's advice. To Annelise, the jewel's value is in its memories.
But Tess's own history is filled with gaps: a father she never met, a mother who spent more time traveling than with her daughter. So Tess is shocked when she discovers the grandfather she never knew is in a coma. And that she has been named in his will to inherit half of Bella Vista, a hundred-acre apple orchard in the magical Sonoma town called Archangel.
The rest is willed to Isabel Johansen. A half sister she's never heard of.
Against the rich landscape of Bella Vista, Tess begins to discover a world filled with the simple pleasures of food and family, of the warm earth beneath her bare feet. A world where family comes first and the roots of history run deep. A place where falling in love is not only possible, but inevitable.
And in a season filled with new experiences, Tess begins to see the truth in something Annelise once told her: if you don't believe memories are worth more than money, then perhaps you've not made the right kind of memories. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—May 17, 1958
• Where—N/A
• Education—B.A., Harvard University
• Awards—4 RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America: for Best Romance, Favorite Book of the Year, and twice for Best Short Historical; Holt Medallion; Career Achievement Award from Romance Times (twice)
• Currently—lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington, USA
Susan Wiggs is an American author of historical and contemporary romance novels. She began writing as a child, finishing her first novel, A Book About Some Bad Kids, when she was eight. She temporarily abandoned her dream of being a novelist after graduating from Harvard University, becoming a math teacher instead . She continued to read, especially reveling in romance novels.
Writing
After running out of reading material one evening in 1983, Wiggs began writing again, using the working title A Book About Some Bad Adults. For three years Wiggs continued to write, and in 1987 Zebra Books published her first novel, a Western historical romance named Texas Wildflower. Her subsequent historical and contemporary romances have been set in a wide range of settings and time periods. Many of her novels are set in areas where she's lived or visited. She gave up teaching in 1992 to write full-time, and has since completed an average of two books per year.
In 2000, Wiggs began writing single-title women's fiction stories in addition to historical romance novels. The first, The You I Never Knew, was published in 2001. After writing mass-market original novels for several years, Wiggs made her hardcover debut in 2003 with Home Before Dark.
Many of her novels are connected, allowing Wiggs to revisit established characters. Her books have been published in many languages, including French, German, Dutch, Latvian, Japanese, Hungarian and Russian.
Recognition
Wiggs's books are frequently named finalists for the RITA Award, the highest honor given in the romance genre. She received the Romance Writers of America RITA Award for Best Romance of the year in 1993 for Lord of the Night. She won a second RITA in 2000 when The Charm School was named "Favorite Book of the Year."
She has also won the RITA in 2001 for Best Short Historical for The Mistress and, again, in 2006 for Lakeside Cottage. She has also been the recipient of the Holt Medallion, the Colorado Award of Excellnce, and the Peninsula Romance Writer's of America Blue Boa Award. Romantic Times has twice named her a Career Achievement Award winner.[4]
Personal
Wiggs lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington with her family. (From Wikipedia. Retrieved 5/9/2012.)
Book Reviews
This brilliant and epic family drama...fills the senses...courtesy of Wiggs' amazing narrative and supreme skill as a writer. (Top pick.)
RT Book Reviews
Wiggs who is know for her insightful, emotion-filled women's fiction, has again written a tale with universal appeal. The background story of the Danish resistance as well as recipes from that part of the world are a nice touch, and add depth and atmosphere to Tess' story.
Booklist
Antiques treasure hunter Tess Delaney lives a high-octane existence and is on the cusp of the success she's fought for...[when] brokerage firm, banker Dominic Rossi... inform[s] her that she has a grandfather and a half sister she never knew about...and that she's named in his will as half owner of an orchard.... [A] lovely, poignant story of a woman who thinks she has it all until she discovers she truly does, and none of it is what she expected.... Wiggs tells a layered, powerful story of love, loss, hope and redemption
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher.
Death of a Dowager (Jane Eyre Chronicles, 2)
Joanna Campbell Slan, 2013
Penguin Group USA
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780425253519
Summary
In her classic tale, Charlotte Brontë introduced readers to the strong-willed and intelligent Jane Eyre. The Jane Eyre Chronicles pick up where Brontë left off, with Jane married to her beloved Edward Rochester and mother to a young son. But Jane soons finds herself having to protect those she loves
While extensive repairs are being made to Ferndean, their rural home, Jane and Edward accept an invitation from their friend Lucy Brayton to stay with her in London. Jane is reluctant to abandon their peaceful life in the countryside, but Edward’s damaged vision has grown worse. She hopes that time in the capital will buoy his spirits and give him the chance to receive treatment from an ocular specialist.
Once in London, the Rochesters accompany Lucy to the Italian Opera House. But there is more drama in the audience than on stage—Jane not only unexpectedly finds herself in the presence of King George and his mistress, Lady Conygham, she also encounters an old nemesis in the form of Lady Ingram (whose daughter, Blanche, once hoped to wed Edward herself). The aging dowager deals both Jane and Lucy a very public snub; hoping to mitigate the social damage caused by this, Lucy insists on visiting the Ingrams the next day. The visit goes poorly from the start—and ends with Lady Ingram dropping dead in the midst of taking tea. It soon becomes clear that the dowager’s death was an unnatural one, and Jane must set her considerable intelligence to the problem of solving it—and why the throne appears to have an interest
. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth— June 22, 1953
• Raised—Vincennes, Indiana, USA
• Education—B.A., Ball State University
• Currently—lives in Jupiter Island, Florida
Joanna Campbell Slan started storytelling—and winning awards for her writing—at an early age. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Joanna grew up in Vincennes, Indiana, and graduated cum laude from Ball State University (Muncie, Indiana) where she majored in journalism. Today she's the author of eleven non-fiction books, a mystery series featuring Kiki Lowenstein, a spunky single mom who loves to scrapbook, and a new series featuring Charlotte Bronte's classic heroine Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth.
Joanna's first novel—Paper, Scissors, Death—was a 2009 Agatha Award finalist. The Kiki Lowenstein series has been praised by the Library Journal as "topically relevant and chock-full of side stories." Publisher's Weekly calls them, "a cut above the usual craft-themed cozy." RT Book Review has said that Kiki Lowenstein is that she is "our best friend, our next-door neighbor and ourselves with just a touch of the outrageous." Once you've met Joanna, you can guess where the outrageous comes from.
Ready, Scrap, Shoot, the fifth book in the Kiki Lowenstein series, was released in 2012, along with short stories featuring Kiki. A sixth book in that popular series has been scheduled. In addition, Joanna is writing a new historical mystery series featuring Jane Eyre as an amateur sleuth. Death of a Schoolgirl, released also in 2012, marks the first entry in The Jane Eyre Chronicles; it was followed by the second, Death of a Dowager in 2013.
In her ongoing quest to never see snow again, Joanna lives with her two dogs and her husband on a nearly deserted island—Jupiter Island, Florida. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
This book has few, if any, mainstream press reviews online yet. We'll add reviews as they become available. In the meantime, see Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.
Discussion Questions
1.In this book, as in Death of a Schoolgirl (the first book in The Jane Eyre Chronicles), we are presented with the question: “How much do we owe other people?” In various ways, characters either take or refuse to take responsibility for how their actions might harm others. Discuss this theme.
2. In various ways, characters in this book try to show their love for other people, only to create troublesome situations. For example, John has shown his love for his master Edward, Lucy has shown her love for her friend Olivia Grainger, and King George IV has shown his love for Maria Fitzherbert. Compare and contrast what love means to each of these pairs. How successful are they are showing their affection?
3. Compare and contrast the relationships of parents with their children in the book. Consider: Dowager Countess Ingram with Blanche and Mary; Jane with Ned; the King and his daughter Princess Charlotte. Discuss how parents try to guide their children, and how sometimes parents do not see their children clearly. Is it possible that on occasion their assumptions about what is “right” for their children might be terribly wrong? How is this shown in the book?
4. Jane’s friend Lucy Brayton worries that she will fail in her desire to be a good mother to her adoptive son. She believes that a natural mother would have instincts that are more in tune with her child’s needs. Do you agree? Why or why not?
5. Jane and Edward face the looming problem of his worsening vision. We see how it has an impact on his moods. Is Jane responsible for keeping Edward happy? What if that comes at the expense of her own happiness?
6. King George IV is shown as a complex character in this book. What did you know of him before reading Death of a Dowager? Has your opinion of him changed as you learned more?
7. Maria Fitzherbert, Queen Caroline of Brunswick, and the Marchioness Elizabeth Conyngham were all real people, and their relationship with the King is accurately described. Consider these in light of modern day royal pairings such as Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Wales, and Prince William and Kate, Duchess of Cambridge. In what ways have the responsibilities of modern British royalty changed? In what ways are the responsibilities the same?
(Questions found on author's website.)
A Delicate Truth
John le Carre, 2013
Viking Adult (Penguin Group USA)
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780670014897
Summary
Nearly five decades ago, John le Carre became an international sensation with the publication of his third novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. His last novel, Our Kind of Traitor, won unanimous critical acclaim and hit the New York Times bestseller list just as the Oscar-nominated film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy introduced a new generation to his chillingly amoral universe.
A Delicate Truth opens in 2008. A counter-terrorist operation, codenamed Wildlife, is being mounted on the British crown colony of Gibraltar. Its purpose: to capture and abduct a high-value jihadist arms-buyer. Its authors: an ambitious Foreign Office Minister, a private defense contractor who is also his bosom friend, and a shady American CIA operative of the evangelical far-right. So delicate is the operation that even the Minister’s personal private secretary, Toby Bell, is not cleared for it.
Cornwall, UK, 2011. A disgraced Special Forces Soldier delivers a message from the dead. Was Operation Wildlife the success it was cracked up to be—or a human tragedy that was ruthlessly covered up? Summoned by Sir Christopher (“Kit”) Probyn, retired British diplomat, to his decaying Cornish manor house, and closely observed by Kit’s beautiful daughter Emily, Toby must choose between his conscience and duty to his Service. If the only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, how can he keep silent? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—October 19, 1931
• Where—Dorset, England, UK
• Education—B.A., Oxford University
• Awards—Somerset Maugham Award
• Currently—lives in St Buryan, Cornwall. England
David John Moore Cornwell was born to Richard Thomas Archibald (Ronnie) Cornwell (1906–75) and Olive (Glassy) Cornwell, in Poole, Dorset, England. He was the second son to the marriage, the first his brother Tony, two years his elder, now a retired advertising executive; his younger half-sister is the actress Charlotte Cornwell; and Rupert Cornwell, a former Independent newspaper Washington bureau chief, is a younger half-brother.
John le Carre said he did not know his mother, who abandoned him when he was five years old, until their re-acquaintance when he was 21 years old. His relationship with his father was difficult, given that the man had been jailed for insurance fraud, was an associate of the Kray twins (among the foremost criminals in London) and was continually in debt. A 2009 UK Guardian-Observer profile recounts:
The family swung between great affluence and bankruptcy. The boys were often called upon to help their father evade creditors during an upbringing that le Carre has referred to as "clandestine survival." He and his brother, he has said, "were conspirators from quite an early age...."
His troubled relationships with each of his parents proved instrumental in shaping his fiction. Duplicitous father figures crop up regularly in his work and, more obviously, the question of trust is at the centre of le Carre's fictional world.
The character Rick Pym, the scheming con-man father of protagonist Magnus Pym in his later novel A Perfect Spy (1986), was based on Ronnie. When Ronnie died in 1975, le Carre paid for a memorial funeral service but did not attend.
Education
Cornwell's formal schooling began at St Andrew's Preparatory School, near Pangbourne, Berkshire, then continued at Sherborne School; he proved unhappy with the typically harsh English public school regime of the time and disliked his disciplinarian housemaster so withdrew.
From 1948 to 1949, he studied foreign languages at the University of Bern in Switzerland. In 1950 he joined the Intelligence Corps of the British Army garrisoned in Austria, working as a German language interrogator of people who crossed the Iron Curtain to the West. In 1952, he returned to England to study at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he worked covertly for the British Security Service, MI5, spying upon far-left groups for information about possible Soviet agents.
When Ronnie declared bankruptcy in 1954, Cornwell quit Oxford to teach at a boys' preparatory school; however, a year later, he returned to Oxford and graduated, in 1956, with a First Class Honours Bachelor of Arts degree.
Intelligence work
He then taught French and German at Eton College for two years, afterwards becoming an MI5 officer in 1958; he ran agents, conducted interrogations, tapped telephone lines, and effected break-ins. Encouraged by Lord Clanmorris (who wrote crime novels as"John Bingham"), and while an active MI5 officer, Cornwell began writing Call for the Dead (1961), his first novel. Lord Clanmorris was the inspiration behind spymaster George Smiley.
In 1960, Cornwell transferred to MI6, the foreign-intelligence service, and worked as a Second Secretary cover in the British Embassy at Bonn; he later was transferred to Hamburg as a political consul. There, he wrote the detective story A Murder of Quality (1962) and The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1963), as "John le Carre" (i,e., John the Square, in French), a pseudonym required because Foreign Office officers were forbidden to publish in their own names.
Cornwell left the service in 1964 to work full-time as a novelist, as his intelligence officer career was ended by the betrayal to the KGB of numberous British agents and their covers by Kim Philby, a British double agent (of the Cambridge Five). Le Carre depicts and analyses Philby as the upper-class traitor, code-named Gerald by the KGB, the mole George Smiley hunts in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974). Credited by his pen name, Cornwell appears as an extra in the 2011 film version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, among the guests at the Christmas party seen in several flashback scenes.
In 1964 le Carre won the Somerset Maugham Award, established to enable British writers younger than thirty-five to enrich their writing by spending time abroad.
Personal life and recognition
In 1954, Cornwell married Alison Ann Veronica Sharp; they had three sons—Simon, Stephen and Timothy. The couple was divorced in 1971. The following year, Cornwell married Valerie Jane Eustace, a book editor with Hodder & Stoughton. They have one son, Nicholas, who writes as Nick Harkaway. Le Carre has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, UK, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.
In 1998, he was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Bath. In 2012, he was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa by the University of Oxford.
Writing style
Stylistically, the first two novels—Call for the Dead (1961) and A Murder of Quality (1962)—are mystery fiction in which the hero George Smiley (of the SIS, the "Circus") resolves the riddles of the deaths investigated; the motives are more personal than political.
The spy novel œuvre of John le Carre stands in contrast to the physical action and moral certainty of the James Bond thriller established by Ian Fleming in the mid- nineteen-fifties; the le Carre Cold War features unheroic political functionaries aware of the moral ambiguity of their work, and engaged in psychological more than physical drama. They experience little of the violence typically encountered in action thrillers, and have very little recourse to gadgets. Much of the conflict they are involved in is internal, rather than external and visible.
Unlike the moral certainty of Fleming's British Secret Service adventures, le Carre's Circus spy stories are morally complex, and inform the reader of the fallibility of Western democracy and of the secret services protecting it, often implying the possibility of East-West moral equivalence.
A Perfect Spy (1986), chronicling the boyhood moral education of Magnus Pym, as it leads to his becoming a spy, is the author's most autobiographic espionage novel—especially the boy's very close relationship with his con man father. Biographer Lynndianne Beene describes the novelist's own father, Richard Cornwell, as "an epic con man of little education, immense charm, extravagant tastes, but no social values"; le Carre reflected that "writing A Perfect Spy is probably what a very wise shrink would have advised."
Most of le Carre's novels are spy stories set amidst the Cold War (1945–91); a notable exception is The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971), an autobiographical, stylistically uneven, mainstream novel of a man's post-marital existential crisis. Another exception from the East-West conflict is The Little Drummer Girl that uses the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, le Carre's œuvre shifted to portrayal of the new multilateral world. For example The Night Manager, his first completely post-Cold-War novel, deals with drug and arms smuggling in the murky world of Latin America drug lords, shady Caribbean banking entities, and look-the-other-way western officials.
As a journalist, he wrote The Unbearable Peace (1991), a non-fiction account of Brigadier Jean-Louis Jeanmaire (1911–92), the Swiss Army officer who spied for the USSR from 1962 until 1975. In 2009, he donated the short story "The King Who Never Spoke" to the Oxfam Ox-Tales project.
Political views
In January 2003 The Times (London) published le Carre's article "The United States Has Gone Mad," which condemned the approaching Iraq War. He observed in this essay, "How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger, from Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history." He contributed the same article to a volume of political essays entitled Not One More Death. The book is highly critical of the war in Iraq. Le Carre's contribution was entitled "Art, truth and politics." Other contributors include Harold Pinter, Richard Dawkins, Michel Faber, Brian Eno, and Haifa Zangana. (Adapted from Wikipedia, retrieved 5/8/2012.)
Book Reviews
A career’s worth of literary skill and international analysis…..No other writer has chartered…the public and secret history of his times.
Guardian (UK)
Remarkable….[A Delicate Truth] displays the mastery of the early and the passion of late Le Carre.
Robert McCrum - Observer (UK)
Writing of such quality that…it will be read in one hundred years….[Le Carre] found his canvas in espionage, as Dickens did in other worlds. The two men deserve comparison.
Daily Mail (UK)
The narrative dominoes fall with masterly precision…and by the time [Toby's] joined by Kit's alluring daughter the story settles into classic conspiracy thriller territory, the two of them racing to assemble evidence before they can be silenced by the men who pull the strings. As ever, le Carre's prose is fluid, carrying the reader toward an inevitable yet nail-biting climax. This is John le Carre's 23rd novel, and neither prolificacy nor age…has diminished his legendary and sometimes startling gift for mimicry. More than the inventory of closely observed outfits, chronicles of public schools and slumped, bookish frames, it's the voices that give the characters in A Delicate Truth their most immediate claim to three-dimensionality.
Olen Steinhauer - New York Times Book Review
What makes A Delicate Truth work is that the story powers the writerly flourishes and, after a while, vice versa. This is popcorn reading—you can shovel buckets of it into your mouth as you turn the pages. At the same time, the narrative and temporal shifts enhance your sense of the complex choices that men like Paul, Jeb and especially Toby—he is our real hero in a three-man race—have to make, which in turn suggest choices we make as readers. In the case of A Delicate Truth, the rewarding choice is to follow le Carre down the labyrinthine corridors of a novel that beckons us beyond any and all expectations.
Colin Fleming - Washington Post
Loyalty to the crown is tested; consciences are checked; and nothing is more terrifying than, as this novel’s protagonist puts it, ‘a solitary decider’ asking himself how on earth he talked himself into this mess.
Daily Beast
State-sanctioned duplicity drives bestseller le Carre’s entertainingly labyrinthine if overly polemical 23rd novel.... In 2008, a cloak-and-dagger plot to capture an arms dealer in Gibraltar under the mantle of counterterrorism goes awry.... As usual, le Carre tells a great story in sterling prose, but he veers dangerously close to farce and caricature, particularly with the comically amoral Americans. His best work has been about the moral ambiguity of spying, while this novel feels as if the issue of who’s bad and who’s good is too neatly sewn up.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Le Carre, the author of such 20th-century classics as The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, has nothing left to prove except that he can still be stung into turning out suspenseful, totally convincing political object lessons.... His target of choice here is the mendacity of the British government and the easy camaraderie between the public and private sectors. Verdict: This is a guaranteed hair-raising cerebral fright, especially for anyone who enjoyed Robert Harris's The Ghost or who just knows his or her email account has been hacked. —Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO
Library Journal
(Starred review.) Le Carre further establishes himself as a master of a new, shockingly realistic kind of noir.
Booklist
(Starred review.) A colorless midlevel civil servant is... packed off to Gibraltar, where he's to serve as the eyes and ears and, mainly, the yea or nay of rising Member of Parliament Fergus Quinn, who can't afford to be directly connected to Operation Wildlife. On the crucial night the forces in question are to disrupt an arms deal and grab a jihadist purchaser, both Paul and Jeb Owens, the senior military commander on the ground, smell a rat and advise against completing the operation. But they're overridden by Quinn.... Quinn's Private Secretary Toby Bell...becomes painfully aware of irregularities in the official record.... [K]eeping potential action sequences just offstage, le Carre focuses instead on the moral rot and creeping terror barely concealed by the affable old-boy blather that marks the pillars of the intelligence community.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
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