Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré; my writing exploits

So, everyone's seen the film and everyone's raving about it. That includes me; it's brilliant. However, when I decided to see the film, I was convinced that I'd already read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when I was about 13.

After about ten minutes of watching the film in total confusion, it became abundantly clear that I had not in fact read Tinker Tailor at all, however. I then remembered that what I'd read (and loved) was actually A Perfect Spy. D'oh. Consequently I decided to read Tinker Tailor. Also, I felt I owed it to my dad, a big fan of George Smiley and all things spyish (so much so that when I was little, he told me that he used to be a spy himself, and was so convincing that I believed him).

For the first 100 pages, even though I'd seen the film, I had very little idea what the hell was going on. There are numerous characters, many of them with more than one name, and very little indication of what their jobs might be and whether they were important. Moreover, the book is crammed with secret service jargon which is never explained. Call me stupid, but I was baffled.

However... perhaps perversely, this was actually one of the things I liked about it. The jargon and the complete lack of any practical explanation of Who's Who In Spying brings with it a feeling of real immersion in the murky, oddly down-at-heel world of George Smiley, the recently sacked intelligence officer re-recruited to dig out a mole from 'the Circus', as MI6 is known throughout the novel. After 100 pages of pleasant confusion, it suddenly clicked, and I felt as if I was eavesdropping on Smiley and his assistant Guillam as they in turn shadow the potential Circus traitors.

Written and set in the early 1970s, Tinker Tailor reads like something of a period piece now. The Cold War is very much a reality, the Iron Curtain is still solid and the idea of an office with a computer is laughable. These spies are middle-aged, largely unattractive characters, with dysfunctional personal relationships and distinctly unglamorous lifestyles - Prideaux, dismissed from the Circus after being unmasked and shot in Czechoslovakia, teaches at a shabby prep school and lives in a caravan. Smiley spends much of the novel hiding out at a seedy hotel where the proprietor's adult son listens at the doors of honeymoon couples. James Bond this ain't; Spooks this even ain'ter. There's very little action as such, Smiley being an introspective, thoughtful introvert rather than a man who chases around London waving guns, and the whole novel is bleak, pessimistic and ever so slightly grubby. These are real spies, who use dead letter drops and microfilm and miniature cameras and secret codes, and position single hairs over door jambs to ascertain if someone has entered secretly and speak fluent Czech.

And I loved it. I couldn't put it down. Perhaps because every character is so vivid and believable, and perhaps because it's just so much more than a spy novel. It's a novel about obsession, about betrayal, about futility, and the gradual drip-drip effect one one's psyche of having to trust nobody and largely living a lie. Smiley himself is unable to rid himself of his nagging fixation with Karla, his opposite number at the KGB; in a series of flashbacks, we learn how a sick, feverish Smiley had the opportunity to recruit Karla as a defector in India once but simply ended up pouring out his marriage woes - and indeed, Smiley is still being humiliated by his wife's indiscretions. Smiley's failed marriage becomes inextricably entwined with his attempts to uncover the Circus mole, and a strong sense of melancholy prevails throughout. It was almost a wrench to leave Smiley's Cold War world.

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So, when I started this blog it was partly - mostly, in fact - supposed to be about writing. Followers, however, will notice that I've posted almost exclusively book reviews for absolutely ages. That isn't because I haven't been writing, but rather because I haven't been particularly interested in writing about writing, at least not my own. And also haven't felt remotely inclined to make much of my work public for a while, and I've been perfectly happy with that state of affairs.

There are people who seem to treat writing like a competition, feverishly throwing up every fictional word they write for the world to see as if their lives - or more realistically, egos - depend upon it, as if people knowing that they are writing, and lauding them on the basis of quantity rather than quality, is more important than the writing itself.

Being recognised for the quality of your work is one thing. Clamouring for attention like a spoilt child is quite another.

I don't want to be one of those people.

Equally, I notice that there are some people who are perfectly well able to talk about and post their writing without the obvious subtext of 'Look at me, I'm writing. Aren't I special and superior?' My (former) colleague Shirley, for example, is a good example of someone who can talk about writing with a real, infectious enthusiasm and a genuine interest in other people's work. We've had many a discussion about writing, generally when we were supposed to be, you know, doing actual work, and not once, not ever, has there ever been even a hint of 'showing off' from her. Just excitement and curiosity and insight. 

So with that (rather than the attention-grabbing tosspots) in mind, I'm going to force myself to post some bits of my own work now again, and to talk about writing just a little bit more. Mostly, this is because I'm doing an Open University course in Creative Writing at present and - although I consider this something of an imposition, frankly - we seem to be expected to submit assignments to a tutor. For him to read. And judge. And not only that, but each piece of fiction or poetry we submit has to be accompanied by a commentary explaining our writing processes and how we developed the piece, what our influences were, why we decided to write the piece the way we did... ugh. In other words, I need to get used to not only letting people read my work again, but also to writing about my writing. Once I've had my first assignment marked, I might post it here. If I'm happy with the marks I get.  Because hey, I'm not going to post something that's been formally designated a pile of shite.

I'll still be posting book reviews too, though. Next book on my list, since it's Halloween, is Adam Nevill's The Ritual.  

The Blackhouse by Peter May

I'll be honest and say that the setting was what attracted me to Peter May's The Blackhouse. I love the Scottish Western Isles more than anywhere else in the UK, possibly the world, and loved the idea of a creepy thriller set against the backdrop of the bleak beauty of the Isle of Lewis. And it would be unfair of me not to admit that May's portrayal of the island is extremely well-observed and atmospheric (albeit not particularly complimentary). Although a great deal of meticulous research has clearly been done, May never throws in detail for the sake of demonstrating this; there is no description or piece of island history that doesn't add something to our understanding of Lewis. It would also be unfair of me not to admit that it's extremely difficult not to keep turning the pages of The Blackhouse: I really did race through this book, which alternates a standard police whodunnit plot with first person flashbacks to Fin Macleod's largely unhappy Hebridean childhood as he is called back to Lewis from Edinburgh to investigate.

Ultimately, though, The Blackhouse just didn't quite deliver. To begin with, I struggled to believe in some of the characters. Fin Macleod is a grieving father whose eight-year-old has been killed only four weeks previously, but simply doesn't seem to remember this with anything like the frequency I'd expect, and although many of the characters are undoubtedly three-dimensional, they seem to move very rapidly from idle chitchat to shocking revelations in a way that I simply don't find credible. Peter May, apparently, begun his writing career in television, and I think perhaps this shows in the way he has written this novel - character development that might have been convincing on screen, portrayed with the right acting and direction, is simply too fast and too jarring here. A subtler, more organic approach would have been more successful. I also found the third-person sections, dealing with Fin's return to Lewis, a little lazy with regards to some pretty basic things like point of view. 

The first person narrative is considerably more effective and also far more believable, perhaps because we're given the chance to see characters grow over time. Beginning with Gaelic-speaking Fin's first day at school, where he's told he must learn and speak English every day, and building up to his climactic rites of passage joining the sinister guga hunt, an annual trip to cull gannet chicks on a tiny barren rock of an island forty miles into the North Atlantic, these chapters are far superior to the police procedural plot strand, and certainly give the reader a fascinating insight into an island childhood and the odd claustrophobia of living in a tiny community. Fin's simultaneous dread and awe during the guga hunt (which is a real annual event for the Isle of Lewis) is evoked with particular skill.

However, when the two threads finally come together and the links between Fin's past and the brutal murder of the present become clear, again, we're back to a pace which makes it all seem rather cursory and rushed. There's a jaw-dropper of a plot twist, for instance, but it all seems to be thrown at us in something of a hurry.

There are many good things about The Blackhouse, but just a little more care and attention with character, plausibility and pace would have taken this book from a three-and-a-half star read to a five-star one. It appears, however, that this is to be the first in a trilogy, and I rather wonder if, as Fin's story continues, I'll find the things that I felt were missing from The Blackhouse. Despite The Blackhouse's faults, I suspect I'll still want to pick up the sequel for a long plane journey.