What do you think?
Rate this book
天真善感的愛人
三十八歲的卡西迪是成功的中年生意人，本科哲學的他卻靠著嬰兒車專利名利雙收。在準備於海佛當購買一棟華麗而年久失修的鄉間別墅時，卡西迪認識了自稱屋主的沙摩斯與海倫兩夫妻。外型與個性同樣神祕又迷人的沙摩斯曾出版過轟動一時的小說，卻受不了接踵而來的成名壓力而隱姓埋名，行為舉止充滿波西米亞的浪漫精神；而海倫美豔動人，卡西迪第一眼見到她便深受吸引。
「嗯，沙摩斯是天真的，」海倫回答得很謹慎，就好像想起一門學得很辛苦的課：「因為他活出生命，而不是去模仿生命。感受就是知識。」她試探性地補上最後一句。
「所以我就是另一種了。」卡西迪說。
「對。你是善感的。這表示你渴望像沙摩斯一樣。你已經脫離了自然狀態，而且變得……呃，身為文明的一部分，變得有點……腐化。」
卡西迪與沙摩斯人格上的互補，令兩人一拍即合，為鼓勵沙摩斯創作第二本小說，卡西迪也開始在金錢上資助作家。然而沙摩斯的喜怒無常、陰晴不定，與卡西迪對海倫無法自拔的迷戀，令三人的關係走入無可逆轉的僵局；卡西迪在妻子、同事、友人之間編造一個又一個謊言，也使他的處境幾乎就要難以收拾。當美麗的海倫無可避免地尋求卡西迪的慰藉，這段三角關係也終於得面對信任關係的最終挑戰……
這本「非類型小說」展現勒卡雷寫作的豐富手法與多樣才能，透過哲學性的書寫，勒卡雷引用席勒對於天真與感傷詩學的定義，以及追求天真與感傷之間的和諧。他賦予書中主角這兩種特質，也有自我描繪的成分──書中的人物在不自主的情況下身處險境，面對自己不希望遇到的狀況，其中展現的反諷、黑色幽默，非常呼應人生。
「嗯，沙摩斯是天真的，」海倫回答得很謹慎，就好像想起一門學得很辛苦的課：「因為他活出生命，而不是去模仿生命。感受就是知識。」她試探性地補上最後一句。
「所以我就是另一種了。」卡西迪說。
「對。你是善感的。這表示你渴望像沙摩斯一樣。你已經脫離了自然狀態，而且變得……呃，身為文明的一部分，變得有點……腐化。」
卡西迪與沙摩斯人格上的互補，令兩人一拍即合，為鼓勵沙摩斯創作第二本小說，卡西迪也開始在金錢上資助作家。然而沙摩斯的喜怒無常、陰晴不定，與卡西迪對海倫無法自拔的迷戀，令三人的關係走入無可逆轉的僵局；卡西迪在妻子、同事、友人之間編造一個又一個謊言，也使他的處境幾乎就要難以收拾。當美麗的海倫無可避免地尋求卡西迪的慰藉，這段三角關係也終於得面對信任關係的最終挑戰……
這本「非類型小說」展現勒卡雷寫作的豐富手法與多樣才能，透過哲學性的書寫，勒卡雷引用席勒對於天真與感傷詩學的定義，以及追求天真與感傷之間的和諧。他賦予書中主角這兩種特質，也有自我描繪的成分──書中的人物在不自主的情況下身處險境，面對自己不希望遇到的狀況，其中展現的反諷、黑色幽默，非常呼應人生。
606 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
221 people are currently reading
1772 people want to read
About the author
John le Carré
370 books9,454 followersJohn le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), was an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré had resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than 40 years, where he owned a mile of cliff close to Land's End.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 29 of 176 reviews
December 11, 2017
An excellent book. Le Carré fans will be nonplussed when they read this, there isn't a spy or a civil servant on the horizon. It's the author's only departure from the genre that he has made his own, and in his own words it "isn't everyone's cup of tea, to say the least". In fact there is hardly any plot: the book deals with an encounter between an eccentric writer, his girlfriend and a businessman going through a midlife crisis. But the prose is superb: the story is told through a series of subjective implications, hints, and half-facts, which show Le Carré's descriptive skills at their finest. As such it is reminiscent of The Honourable Schoolboy, but here he gives free rein to his mastery of the English language. After the book was discredited by reviewers, he seems to have abandoned any attempt to indulge in writing prose for prose's sake, which in my view has made some of his later novels rather formulaic.
Read
April 24, 2013This is not, like I have seen claimed in several places, le Carré’s first novel that is not a spy thriller (there is also A Murder of Quality, which although it features George Smiley as its protagonist is not about espionage at all, but is a murder mystery) but his first (and possibly only, I have not read them all yet) non-genre novel. It also seems the least liked of his novels, and while it would be easy to dismiss that as fans complaining that they are not getting their customary fare, I think there might be rather more to it in this case.
The basic story of The Naive and Sentimental Lover is a familiar one – it’s about a bourgeois male who is successful in his life but still suffers from its essential emptiness and finds himself seduced by the bohemian lifestyle (represented here by a married couple rather than the more customary single femme fatale) to which he eventually falls victim. And in the beginning, Le Carré’s novel does indeed look like a British retelling of Professor Unrat (by Heinrich Mann, most famous in its movie version, Der Blaue Engel, with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings). Things, and the reader’s assessment of them, start to change, though; and while Aldo Cassidy, the novel’s protagonist, appears to be the most unlikable of Le Carré’s characters so far (and that is saying something), by the end of The Naive and Sentimental Lover we might still not like him much but do feel some sympathy for him, while his Bohemian temptation, the writer Shamus and his wife Helen, has been thoroughly demystified and it is not all clear who in the course of events has fallen victim to who.
In fact, very few things are clear by the end of The Naive and Sentimental Lover, and it appears that the world of everyday life, of pram fastening design and business, of married life and extra-marital affairs, of bourgeoisie and bohemia is coloured in just as many shades of grey and possibly even murkier than the world of international espionage. With spy novels, there at least is some basic conflict and some sense that things matter - even if both should get debunked in the course of the narrative, they do give it some shape. And while it is perhaps unfair to compare The Naive and Sentimental Lover to something the novel does not at all aspire to be, to me it seems that shape is precisely what is missing from it. Shape, not structure – that the novel has, Le Carré is too good (and too controlled) a writer to just go rambling, and so we get a novel that is basically divided into three parts, each of them with the emphasis of another of its three protagonists (although Aldo’s remains the central consciousness throughout). But the novel’s events, the descriptions and character portraits hang slack on that framework, like clothes several sizes too big for their wearer.
The novel just seems to lack a purpose, a sense of going anywhere – it might have been a better book if Le Carré had gone all the way and let Aldo descent into ruin and madness, but in the end, stodgy English middle-class hypocrisy wins out and Aldo basically gets on with his life much like he did before – which is in all likelihood a point Le Carré wanted to make, probably even a valid point, but not one that makes for a good novel, at least not if one stays mainly with a realistic approach.
That is not to say that The Naive and Sentimental Lover does not have its flashes of brilliance, like Aldo’s business dealings which range from the satirical to the absurd, or the half-hallucinatory excesses of Aldo’s and Shamus’ trip to Paris – indeed the novel seems to be best where Le Carré not only leaves the spy thriller genre but goes a step farther and leaves the accustomed ground of realistic fiction altogether. He always returns to the solid ground of realism soon, though, and as a result the novel becomes dreary again; I for one wish it had stayed in the exotic climates of a somewhat more modernist approach for fiction longer, I probably would have enjoyed it more then.
The basic story of The Naive and Sentimental Lover is a familiar one – it’s about a bourgeois male who is successful in his life but still suffers from its essential emptiness and finds himself seduced by the bohemian lifestyle (represented here by a married couple rather than the more customary single femme fatale) to which he eventually falls victim. And in the beginning, Le Carré’s novel does indeed look like a British retelling of Professor Unrat (by Heinrich Mann, most famous in its movie version, Der Blaue Engel, with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings). Things, and the reader’s assessment of them, start to change, though; and while Aldo Cassidy, the novel’s protagonist, appears to be the most unlikable of Le Carré’s characters so far (and that is saying something), by the end of The Naive and Sentimental Lover we might still not like him much but do feel some sympathy for him, while his Bohemian temptation, the writer Shamus and his wife Helen, has been thoroughly demystified and it is not all clear who in the course of events has fallen victim to who.
In fact, very few things are clear by the end of The Naive and Sentimental Lover, and it appears that the world of everyday life, of pram fastening design and business, of married life and extra-marital affairs, of bourgeoisie and bohemia is coloured in just as many shades of grey and possibly even murkier than the world of international espionage. With spy novels, there at least is some basic conflict and some sense that things matter - even if both should get debunked in the course of the narrative, they do give it some shape. And while it is perhaps unfair to compare The Naive and Sentimental Lover to something the novel does not at all aspire to be, to me it seems that shape is precisely what is missing from it. Shape, not structure – that the novel has, Le Carré is too good (and too controlled) a writer to just go rambling, and so we get a novel that is basically divided into three parts, each of them with the emphasis of another of its three protagonists (although Aldo’s remains the central consciousness throughout). But the novel’s events, the descriptions and character portraits hang slack on that framework, like clothes several sizes too big for their wearer.
The novel just seems to lack a purpose, a sense of going anywhere – it might have been a better book if Le Carré had gone all the way and let Aldo descent into ruin and madness, but in the end, stodgy English middle-class hypocrisy wins out and Aldo basically gets on with his life much like he did before – which is in all likelihood a point Le Carré wanted to make, probably even a valid point, but not one that makes for a good novel, at least not if one stays mainly with a realistic approach.
That is not to say that The Naive and Sentimental Lover does not have its flashes of brilliance, like Aldo’s business dealings which range from the satirical to the absurd, or the half-hallucinatory excesses of Aldo’s and Shamus’ trip to Paris – indeed the novel seems to be best where Le Carré not only leaves the spy thriller genre but goes a step farther and leaves the accustomed ground of realistic fiction altogether. He always returns to the solid ground of realism soon, though, and as a result the novel becomes dreary again; I for one wish it had stayed in the exotic climates of a somewhat more modernist approach for fiction longer, I probably would have enjoyed it more then.
January 27, 2014
I rarely abandon books, and when I do, it is usually within the first chapter, and generally because I dislike the genre or the author's style irritates me. I persevered with this novel for almost 200 pages because I am trying to read all the Le Carres in order, and felt I needed to finish this in order to 'earn' Tinker, Tailor. However, I hated it so much that I felt I had to give up before it irrevocably coloured my view of Le Carre's work. My primary problem with the novel was that it just seemed so pointless, leading up to nothing (I know I didn't finish, but I flicked onwards and read other reviews). I have never accepted the snobiness against 'genre' fiction and in favour of 'literary' fiction, when this example has no plot! The characters are universally unlikeable, the women especially so, really emphasising Le Carre's weak female characters. The most generous interpretation I can take of this is that our 'hero', Aldo, is having a breakdown and hallucinates Shamus (a cringeworthy semi-pun) and Helen as manifestations of his suppressed wild side. I could not connect with the irresponsible Bohemians or the over privilaged rich guys, and I was just left feeling bored and irritated. Read it for completism, not pleasure.
January 12, 2015
The title is typically Iris Murdoch as too the themes - how will Mr Average deal with people outside his norm. And here lies the rub because altho this book is Murdoch co-authors with Joyce, it is in fact a novel by Le Carre; and judging by the comments & reviews the masses have told him he can only write about espionage.
The book has become quite dated & is very much a product of what I consider the bleakest period in 20th Century England - the late 60s & 70s. It might all be Carnaby Street & The Beatles, but it was also claustrophobic Coronation Street and Heath & Wilson. England was missing out on the prosperity that was obvious in America and even its colonies like South Africa and Australia. It was time of watching the European Common Market & dithering about joining or not.
So, we have a man entering middle age & wondering what he is missing. The excitement of starting a new business is wearing off and life with his wife and her friends have lost their shine, with unrelenting drabness stretching to death. Enter two bohemians and our hero gets caught up in their madness. These two are in the wrong age, and so it would seem ludicrous now, but judging from authors such as Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, they did exist up to the closing of the 2nd World War.
The hi-jinx are very Joycean in their hallucinogenic telling. I think current audiences would find it hard for people to behave this way on alcohol alone, but again, based on the likes of Joyce, this is not that far fetched. Shamus the writer is a complex manic depressive and narcissist, and at the climax shows how conventional, even patriarchal some of his personal views are.
The ending is somewhat of a let down, as we return to a level of suburban averageness: it is all right to play around, but one has responsibilities & must adhere to them.
This book is surprisingly autobiographical. Le Carre would divorce his wife the year of publication, and he knew a novelist very similar to Shamus: a Scotsman who wrote kitchen sink plays and novels (as discussed in the novel as very "modern", altho also very dull). He appears to be a bad boy, who died young of cirrhosis of the liver.
I was surprised the censors allowed the swearing in the book - there are some shocking 1971 words in there - and I was fortunate to have a '71 imprint, so they weren't added later.
If you are a fan of Murdoch, then you will enjoy this book, but if you are a typical fan of LeCarre, don't bother, you will givei t the one star, like others of your ilk. I for one, am pleased Le Carre wrote to suit himself and not the masses.
The book has become quite dated & is very much a product of what I consider the bleakest period in 20th Century England - the late 60s & 70s. It might all be Carnaby Street & The Beatles, but it was also claustrophobic Coronation Street and Heath & Wilson. England was missing out on the prosperity that was obvious in America and even its colonies like South Africa and Australia. It was time of watching the European Common Market & dithering about joining or not.
So, we have a man entering middle age & wondering what he is missing. The excitement of starting a new business is wearing off and life with his wife and her friends have lost their shine, with unrelenting drabness stretching to death. Enter two bohemians and our hero gets caught up in their madness. These two are in the wrong age, and so it would seem ludicrous now, but judging from authors such as Anthony Powell and Evelyn Waugh, they did exist up to the closing of the 2nd World War.
The hi-jinx are very Joycean in their hallucinogenic telling. I think current audiences would find it hard for people to behave this way on alcohol alone, but again, based on the likes of Joyce, this is not that far fetched. Shamus the writer is a complex manic depressive and narcissist, and at the climax shows how conventional, even patriarchal some of his personal views are.
The ending is somewhat of a let down, as we return to a level of suburban averageness: it is all right to play around, but one has responsibilities & must adhere to them.
This book is surprisingly autobiographical. Le Carre would divorce his wife the year of publication, and he knew a novelist very similar to Shamus: a Scotsman who wrote kitchen sink plays and novels (as discussed in the novel as very "modern", altho also very dull). He appears to be a bad boy, who died young of cirrhosis of the liver.
I was surprised the censors allowed the swearing in the book - there are some shocking 1971 words in there - and I was fortunate to have a '71 imprint, so they weren't added later.
If you are a fan of Murdoch, then you will enjoy this book, but if you are a typical fan of LeCarre, don't bother, you will givei t the one star, like others of your ilk. I for one, am pleased Le Carre wrote to suit himself and not the masses.
August 5, 2011
There's a passage from this book I've often wondered about:
My personal theory is closest to (b), but I'm surprised I haven't seen this discussed more.
"First there's foreplay," said Helen, speaking as though she were ordering dinner, "then there's consumation, and finally there's afterglow."As far as Helen's concerned, then, afterglow is just an integral part of sex. But not everyone agrees. For example, Galen of Pergamum seems equally certain of his facts when he says:
Post coitum omnia animal triste est.I find the contrast rather striking. Is it the case that some people experience afterglow, and others post coital sadness? Or do you get afterglow after good sex, and post coital sadness after bad sex? Or could they conceivably be different ways to describe the same thing?
My personal theory is closest to (b), but I'm surprised I haven't seen this discussed more.
September 22, 2020
I've read 60% of this book. Even so, I couldn't finish it!
3* Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1)
3* Smiley's People
2* The Constant Gardener
1* A Delicate Truth
2* The Secret Pilgrim
3* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
3* The Looking Glass War
3* The Russia House
4* O Alfaiate do Panamá
5* The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
2* The Naive and Sentimental Lover
TR Our Kind of Traitor
TR A Small Town in Germany
3* Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1)
3* Smiley's People
2* The Constant Gardener
1* A Delicate Truth
2* The Secret Pilgrim
3* Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
3* The Looking Glass War
3* The Russia House
4* O Alfaiate do Panamá
5* The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
2* The Naive and Sentimental Lover
TR Our Kind of Traitor
TR A Small Town in Germany
July 5, 2019
A bit of a slog to read, and yet undeniably a strong and even haunting book. While the episodes covering Aldo's drunken escapades with Shamus were way too long for my taste, I never contemplated dropping the book, because of its fantastic prose and sense of personal urgency. The son of a con man (Old Hugo), Aldo has made a success of his life as an entrepreneur in the baby pram business. Unhappily married to Sandra, Aldo falls under the spell of another con artist, Shamus, a novelist who is very much a has-been by the time Aldo meets him, squatting a luxurious rural estate Aldo covets to complete his transformation from self-made man to gentleman farmer. Shamus and his gorgeous wife Helen get under Aldo's skin and he finds himself unable to deny them anything, even when Shamus drags him into embarrassing and costly scrapes. The worse Shamus behaves, the more Aldo believes in his genius. Eventually Aldo sets up the couple in some sort of a penthouse, as if they were his mistress. Yet in spite of his homoerotic bond with Shamus, Aldo does become Helen's lover. The finale takes place in a country Le Carré knows intimately, Switzerland. There Shamus performs a mock-wedding ceremony between Aldo and Helen, with some of Aldo's bourgeois friends as unwilling witnesses. Shamus then once more extracts a hefty sum from Aldo, before the new couple leaves on their honeymoon. However, the relationship between Aldo and Helen breaks down even before they reach the railway station, and finally Shamus and Helen get back together and leave Aldo to resume his pampered, empty existence. The whole thing is related as if it was an extended nightmare, and the little I know about Le Carré's dodgy father Ronald Cornwell makes me thing that this book has a lot to do with him. I can't say I enjoyed this book which is exclusively peopled with more or less repulsive characters, but it's powerful stuff nonetheless.
April 24, 2013
I haven't read any other Le Carre books and perhaps that is why I liked this book so much. It is unnecessarily long, but is undeniably gripping. It's as charming and funny as it is bizarre.
My interpretation of it is that Helen, Shamus and Aldo are the three Freudian parts of the human psyche. Shamus - wild, child like and pleasure focused - is the id. The calm, rational and balanced Helen would be the ego. And Aldo, who never takes any risks, loves his creature comforts and always minds his P's and Q's is of course the superego. The question is can each of these wildly different elements truly ever be married together? Or are they too different to even be complimentary?
My interpretation of it is that Helen, Shamus and Aldo are the three Freudian parts of the human psyche. Shamus - wild, child like and pleasure focused - is the id. The calm, rational and balanced Helen would be the ego. And Aldo, who never takes any risks, loves his creature comforts and always minds his P's and Q's is of course the superego. The question is can each of these wildly different elements truly ever be married together? Or are they too different to even be complimentary?
dropped
November 28, 2024One day I’ll get back to it , but it’s so frustrating and boring . I do not see any thriller aspects at all. 🫤
April 1, 2025
Le Carré’s attempt at a “grand literary novel” results in a peculiar book: overwritten, over the top, and unnecessarily forced in its literary ambitions. Where his spy fiction excels in economical, sparse prose, here he seems determined to prove that he can also write a novel about midlife crisis and existential struggle.
Le Carré’s strength lies in subtlety, in conjuring an entire world with a single sentence. Here, he does the exact opposite: everything must appear grand, dramatic, and literary, but in doing so, it loses impact.
That said, it is still a decent book, and its themes are based on Schiller’s essay “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”. In this essay, Schiller distinguishes between two kinds of artists: the naïve and the sentimental. The book’s title could therefore reflect a contradiction within a single person—protagonist Aldo Cassidy—but it could also apply to two figures, Cassidy and Shamus.
The book is a curiosity within le Carré’s oeuvre, and for that reason, worth reading. But it does not match the quality of his earlier (or later) works.
3 stars.
Le Carré’s strength lies in subtlety, in conjuring an entire world with a single sentence. Here, he does the exact opposite: everything must appear grand, dramatic, and literary, but in doing so, it loses impact.
That said, it is still a decent book, and its themes are based on Schiller’s essay “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”. In this essay, Schiller distinguishes between two kinds of artists: the naïve and the sentimental. The book’s title could therefore reflect a contradiction within a single person—protagonist Aldo Cassidy—but it could also apply to two figures, Cassidy and Shamus.
The book is a curiosity within le Carré’s oeuvre, and for that reason, worth reading. But it does not match the quality of his earlier (or later) works.
3 stars.
January 1, 2013
I have read most of le Carre's work and this is the only one I have really hated. I was aware that it was a departure from his usual spy/cold war espionage genre but I had decided to re-read all his books in the order in which they were written.
I found this book almost impenetrable. It veered around so much and was so apparently hallucinogenic it felt the way I imagine an acid trip would feel.
One of the main characters, Seamus, is one of the most unpleasantly manipulative characters you will ever encounter. He seems to be modelled on Dylan Thomas but without Thomas's genius and he is simply egotistical and thoroughly annoying. Very hard to believe that the plodding businessman Cassidy would fall totally under his spell (and that of Seamus' nympho spouse Helen who is equally unattractive).
I kept wanting to leave the book unfinished but I kept persevering hoping it would improve. Alas it did not and I finished it with the feeling that I had wasted precious hours of my time and felt quite soiled by this truly awful read.
If you want to read the total le Carre output then get it. Otherwise don't bother.
Ps I wish le Carre would give more depth to his female characters.
I found this book almost impenetrable. It veered around so much and was so apparently hallucinogenic it felt the way I imagine an acid trip would feel.
One of the main characters, Seamus, is one of the most unpleasantly manipulative characters you will ever encounter. He seems to be modelled on Dylan Thomas but without Thomas's genius and he is simply egotistical and thoroughly annoying. Very hard to believe that the plodding businessman Cassidy would fall totally under his spell (and that of Seamus' nympho spouse Helen who is equally unattractive).
I kept wanting to leave the book unfinished but I kept persevering hoping it would improve. Alas it did not and I finished it with the feeling that I had wasted precious hours of my time and felt quite soiled by this truly awful read.
If you want to read the total le Carre output then get it. Otherwise don't bother.
Ps I wish le Carre would give more depth to his female characters.
October 14, 2012
Authors should not write while in the middle of a midlife crisis.
May 16, 2018
Parce que c'est un livre de John Le Carré, je me suis forcée à lire ce livre qui est d'un ennui assez remarquable.
Et finalement, j'abandonne après avoir lu plus de la moitié du livre. C'est déjà un exploit d'avoir lu 380 pages en me forçant.
L'histoire est quasi inexistante, les personnages sont déplaisants et il ne se passe pas grand chose.
Je vais plutôt me replonger dans ses livres d'espionnage.
Et finalement, j'abandonne après avoir lu plus de la moitié du livre. C'est déjà un exploit d'avoir lu 380 pages en me forçant.
L'histoire est quasi inexistante, les personnages sont déplaisants et il ne se passe pas grand chose.
Je vais plutôt me replonger dans ses livres d'espionnage.
January 25, 2025
Quando um empresario de sucesso se cruza com um par (casal) estranho e se torna amante de ambos, e de outras ... , muito acontece.
Um registo distinto da restante obra, marcado pelo sexo, mas tambem por referencias politicas e culturais vincadas.
Prevalece a magnificencia da escrita, sucumbe o interesse da trama.
Seguramente nao fica gravado na memória.
Um registo distinto da restante obra, marcado pelo sexo, mas tambem por referencias politicas e culturais vincadas.
Prevalece a magnificencia da escrita, sucumbe o interesse da trama.
Seguramente nao fica gravado na memória.
January 7, 2025
Should have stuck to the spy stuff
August 6, 2008
The only novel that LeCarre has written outside of the espionage genre, The Naive and Sentimental Lover is an exploration of the nature of love and obsession. The main character, Aldo Cassidy, is a stolidly successful businessman. When he goes to Somerset to look at house he is considering buying, he meets a couple who are squatting there: Shamus and Helen.
Shamus is emerging as a successful novelist, while Helen's main attribute is her beauty. In a complete reversal of his usual obedience to the mores of society, Aldo falls in love with them both. While he is under their spell, he becomes enchanted with a way of life that is very different from his own.
LeCarre wrote this book after the breakup of his first marriage. There is some evidence to indicate that it is at least in part autobiographical. Although it is a departure from his usual backdrop of the world of spies, this novel explores many of the same interior themes, and stands alone as the work of a masterful writer.
Shamus is emerging as a successful novelist, while Helen's main attribute is her beauty. In a complete reversal of his usual obedience to the mores of society, Aldo falls in love with them both. While he is under their spell, he becomes enchanted with a way of life that is very different from his own.
LeCarre wrote this book after the breakup of his first marriage. There is some evidence to indicate that it is at least in part autobiographical. Although it is a departure from his usual backdrop of the world of spies, this novel explores many of the same interior themes, and stands alone as the work of a masterful writer.
June 3, 2012
While totally different from le Carre's usual spy novels,he still presents interesting characters & exotic locations. He makes full use of the double entendre and the writing is filled with innuendoes...great fun. One can't help smiling at Cassidy's naivety as he befriends a pair of strange bedfellows and questions his earlier existence. What follows is an absolute romp. Very entertaining.
May 4, 2012
I read this many years ago and it has stayed with me all this time! I found it disturbing , liberating , sad and I am still not sure I understood it all ! Those Jaguar Drivers and Gerrads Crossers have a lot to answer for! I think I will have to revisit it .
August 7, 2012
This is such a well-written book that has nothing to do with spies, as most of le Carre's do. This book has to do with love, seduction, and the human condition. Something le Carre appears to know a lot about.
September 17, 2022
A bizarre outlier from the many books I have read by Le Carré. This might have been a pleasant change, but in this work Le Carré is not a shadow of his usual brilliance. It wasn’t easy to get through the more than 500 pages of drivel.
July 29, 2024
Actually didn't finish. This falls into the Garp/Rabbit category of middle-aged middle class dudes, their infidelities, etc. Like Irving and Updike, it's got some humor and pleasantries, but I am just not into this kind of fiction. Glad that he dove into the spy genre with aplomb.
Read
August 24, 2019I’ve never quit a book before finishing it in my life ... until now. This is quite possibly the worst book I have ever read
Read
March 1, 2025Try as I might, I can't easily take this book seriously. Le Carré himself is on record as having said it was meant to be funnier than it was received, and this time, at least, I saw the comedy more clearly. I have read Adam Sisman's biography and all the details about how the novel is semi-autobiographical. I find that sad. Ultimately, the character of Seamus is repulsive. He has bits and pieces that are charming--indeed he reminds me of an old friend of mine with whom I travelled sometime 40 years ago--but he's just too over the top. Helen, who at first seems to provide some balance between Seamus and Cassidy, goes rather rapidly from Helen of Troy to Helen with a couple of used Trojans. If Seamus is a genuine alternative to Cassidy's existence, if Cassidy is, as a successful entrepreneur, potential politician, married man in the midst of British commercial society, in desperate need of the kind of alternative Seamus provides, then Cassidy's comprehension of his own existence is also deplorable. And if Cassidy is based on Le Carré. . . . Again as Le Carré himself has said, elements of the later Magnus Pym ( A Perfect Spy) pervade the portrayal of Aldo Cassidy, and his father Hugo is very much another draft of Ronnie Cornwell. More or less officially the narrative defines Cassidy as the "sentimental" lover, but I can't help feeling that he is even more the "naïve" one, even if that means I am understanding the novel on a level different from the way it was intended.
August 19, 2025
Actually pretty good, although I can see why readers wanting more Smiley would be disappointed. The prose is incredible. I wish Le Carré stuck with literary fiction, imagine what he could’ve done on his third or so book.
August 4, 2019
Well below his best.
August 6, 2023
I was expecting a book about spies or even a singular spy, but to my surprise, this book had almost no mention of spies or even spying. NONETHELESS, I did enjoy this book quite a bit. I would not let the lack of espionage dissuade you from reading this entry from Le Carre.
November 24, 2022
Le Carre's only non spy book, tells of a threesome between a very vanilla/risk averse businessman and a couple of artists. Mirror's the author's own experiences. Very nice descriptive language, and emotionally touching, but drags on a bit.
November 21, 2023
Painful! Must stick to Le Carrè espionage.
April 16, 2021
This book is haunting as it is just about his only non-espionage, non-thriller.
Aldo Cassidy, the main character, is presented as a straight man to the wild and crazy guy I talk about below. And yet through him a great deal about the ennui of successful career and settled life gets explored. I feel that he must be a vehicle for Cornwell to express his own doldrums of all sorts.
But it is the secondary character, Shamus, who is written to steal the show. Forgive the binaries, this is just how Shamus comes across: one of the more annoying, fascinating, fun, obnoxious, relevant, and irrelevant characters I have ever read. Never too pretentious, I suppose. More so, he is intense. Bloody heck, he only pretends to be Irish, though all the time swilling enough whiskey for an entire Dublin pub on a karaoke Friday night. He certainly has an instinct not to get himself slowed down with draught beer sloshing around in him. By the way, the name would normally be spelled as Seamus. So he is, yes, a sham. What a fecking sham. Shamus remains so even in his hilarious moments exposing the English for their self-consciousness and staid conventions. The point of him is to mess with Aldo and us.
And you know Cornwell has him saying and doing the wildest, contradictory things: squatting in manor homes up for sale, calling Aldo"lover" incessantly, liberally enjoying Aldo's largess and spending account, encouraging then discouraging the tentative dalliance between Aldo and Shamus' lady Helen, commandeering Aldo on his trip to Paris, disappearing for long periods (always reappearing with a flourish), suddenly attacking Aldo and others, even performing a marriage ceremony for Aldo with Helen at Aldo's chalet in Switzerland. Buoyant mood always comes before a huge crash in which Shamus disavows everyone and everything. Throughout the novel, Shamus acts out and Aldo tentatively copies him. Is this self expression or destruction? Not sure. Actually, yes, I am, it is more of the latter. The antics can only be written during and situated in a time before real awareness of mental health conditions. Shamus drinks like a fish on his manic highs but I don't think anyone does any drugs, strangely. Even pot. Fear and Loathing this is not.
Actually, what this is, is a novel of a twisted love triangle, of an insufferably dated and sexist tortured writer character who also says some of the wittiest and worst things I've seen: (paraphrasing) 'it's not what you give in life but what you take,' a reference to Aldo's family meals as honourary members of the family themselves, rudely naming Aldo's wife 'the bosscow,' swiping at the 'Gerrard's Crossers' and 'many too many' out there (encompassing everybody but him who work for a living and have to show up somewhere without a dubious beret and leather jacket combo- I picture a Che Guevara wannabe), an apparently rigid belief that God is embodied in a cab driver named Flaherty in County Cork or Kerry.
Cornwell writes so beautifully, imagines the human condition with such vividness, that even a bizarre, manic and yet strangely square, incomplete, story attacking the conventions of those who have jobs, homes, families, normal wardrobes - through Cassidy's inner journey and Shamus' flouting - comes off all right.
It really does, somehow. If you absolutely love Cornwell's writing, especially keeping in mind that he passed away recently, it is a must read. Because of how exceedingly different it is from the George Smiley canon, if nothing else. I believe that great writers get to be goofy like this, and get away with it, but only because they're great.
Aldo Cassidy, the main character, is presented as a straight man to the wild and crazy guy I talk about below. And yet through him a great deal about the ennui of successful career and settled life gets explored. I feel that he must be a vehicle for Cornwell to express his own doldrums of all sorts.
But it is the secondary character, Shamus, who is written to steal the show. Forgive the binaries, this is just how Shamus comes across: one of the more annoying, fascinating, fun, obnoxious, relevant, and irrelevant characters I have ever read. Never too pretentious, I suppose. More so, he is intense. Bloody heck, he only pretends to be Irish, though all the time swilling enough whiskey for an entire Dublin pub on a karaoke Friday night. He certainly has an instinct not to get himself slowed down with draught beer sloshing around in him. By the way, the name would normally be spelled as Seamus. So he is, yes, a sham. What a fecking sham. Shamus remains so even in his hilarious moments exposing the English for their self-consciousness and staid conventions. The point of him is to mess with Aldo and us.
And you know Cornwell has him saying and doing the wildest, contradictory things: squatting in manor homes up for sale, calling Aldo"lover" incessantly, liberally enjoying Aldo's largess and spending account, encouraging then discouraging the tentative dalliance between Aldo and Shamus' lady Helen, commandeering Aldo on his trip to Paris, disappearing for long periods (always reappearing with a flourish), suddenly attacking Aldo and others, even performing a marriage ceremony for Aldo with Helen at Aldo's chalet in Switzerland. Buoyant mood always comes before a huge crash in which Shamus disavows everyone and everything. Throughout the novel, Shamus acts out and Aldo tentatively copies him. Is this self expression or destruction? Not sure. Actually, yes, I am, it is more of the latter. The antics can only be written during and situated in a time before real awareness of mental health conditions. Shamus drinks like a fish on his manic highs but I don't think anyone does any drugs, strangely. Even pot. Fear and Loathing this is not.
Actually, what this is, is a novel of a twisted love triangle, of an insufferably dated and sexist tortured writer character who also says some of the wittiest and worst things I've seen: (paraphrasing) 'it's not what you give in life but what you take,' a reference to Aldo's family meals as honourary members of the family themselves, rudely naming Aldo's wife 'the bosscow,' swiping at the 'Gerrard's Crossers' and 'many too many' out there (encompassing everybody but him who work for a living and have to show up somewhere without a dubious beret and leather jacket combo- I picture a Che Guevara wannabe), an apparently rigid belief that God is embodied in a cab driver named Flaherty in County Cork or Kerry.
Cornwell writes so beautifully, imagines the human condition with such vividness, that even a bizarre, manic and yet strangely square, incomplete, story attacking the conventions of those who have jobs, homes, families, normal wardrobes - through Cassidy's inner journey and Shamus' flouting - comes off all right.
It really does, somehow. If you absolutely love Cornwell's writing, especially keeping in mind that he passed away recently, it is a must read. Because of how exceedingly different it is from the George Smiley canon, if nothing else. I believe that great writers get to be goofy like this, and get away with it, but only because they're great.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 176 reviews