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El amante ingenuo y sentimental
Aldo Cassidy es un hombre prudente. Tiene una familia agradable, conduce un coche seguro y caro y viste ropa de lujo. Pero su apacible existencia se ve trastocada cuando conoce a Shamus y a Helen, una pareja deslumbrante y bohemia que nada tiene que ver con él. A medida que se ve arrastrado a su mundo irreflexivo e impredecible, todo lo que Cassidy creía haber aprendido de su ordenada vida empieza a desmoronarse. Con el humor corrosivo y la aguda capacidad de observación propios de le Carré, El amante ingenuo y sentimental es una sátira ácida de la hipocresía de la clase media.
544 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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1798 people want to read
About the author
John le Carré
243 books9,578 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.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 179 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
February 12, 2023
You can see why this was his only non-spy genre novel.
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.
October 3, 2024
John le Carré's venture into straight "literature" was not a considered a success at the time, nor does it sit well within recent (or past) memory today. A natural writer, le Carré's prose (in general) rarely suffers from poorly constructed sentences, paragraphs and phrases, however the author too often choses the most colloquial and esoteric words, phrases and scenarios in order to express an idea or story point. In the case of "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover: A Novel," le Carré appears to have written "a novel" catered to a specific readership of unknown origin, whose enigmatic tastes were only matched by an unlimited patience.
In both short, and long, "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" left an unhappy and unpleasant taste after reaching and reading the book's final page. That the author consistently offered up a challenge to the reader in every single one of his novels (that I have read so far), I readily accept. That John le Carré's flair for words didn't always rise to the level of his exceptional story ideas was fait accompli to those dedicated to exploring his works. Yet this book, this "novel," seems to exist on path of self-destruction.
At first, I found myself intrigued by "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover." Story has relatively young pram chassis innovator-wealthy businessman protagonist, Aldo Cassidy, in the midst of a mid-life crises. Stuck in a dead end marriage, with two young boys, Cassidy is rich beyond his dreams, and couldn't be more detached and discontent. To the rescue comes...a fantastical or idealistic (?) young married couple consisting of one lovely lass named Helen, and one eccentric, sensitive, cruel, abusive, spoiled, indulgent, alcoholic, whoring, horrible, out of control, selfish artiste writer named Shamus.
You see, the conceit of "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" is that despite him being a childish arsehole, both Helen and Cassidy love him, do everything they can to support him, enable him, and makes excuses for every horrible, destructive action that Shamus consistently indulges in. In return, Shamus constantly calls Cassidy "Lover," and more often than not treats Helen like shite. So the book works on the platform that Shamus is a brilliant, genius writer, who must be allowed to do whatever he bloody well wants because he's special, because he's enchanted, because he's the muse that makes Cassidy feel wanted, feel respected, feel loved, the muse that validates Helen's insecure existence. Neither Cassidy nor Helen could survive without the compass of Shamus's north star...he is the deity hovering, loving, and entrapping them both.
...and WHY, you ask? Why do both Helen and Shamus do little more than follow Shamus's path, his cryptic commands, his tireless and violent outbursts, his egomaniacal, narcissistic proclamations ad infinitum?? Because Shamus is an important artiste, his writing is nothing short of an overgenerous gift to mankind, thus his everything must be tolerated, accepted and worshipped. Drinking, insulting, assaulting, whoring, vice-after-vice-after-vice...horrible abuse followed by swift and sincere apology....and for what, and more importantly...why? WHY this story?
WHY would John le Carré write a book about a successful yet somehow spineless, reactionary, co-dependent bloke who latches on to those more resolute in their ways of life and living? Well, not to pry, yet it sure sounds like the author simply was going through something both in his professional and personal life, and thus expressed his predicament via surrogate characters and fantastical, sometimes sexual, scenarios. Sometimes "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" reads like a soft-core sex magazine, or movie, never for the good. Other times "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" seems to infer a deeper subtext than it actually has.
In several ways, I hated "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover," and got to the point where I just wanted to finish the book, get it over with and move on. The reason? It wasn't so much the novel's lackluster story that sickened me, it was the characters. After finishing the final page this morning, I realized there was not a single character in the book that I cared about. Cassidy, Shamus, Helen, Cassidy's wife Sandra, Sandra's friend Heather, Cassidy's secretary Angie (was that her name?), the whole lot of 'em...I couldn't stand. For a book featuring a whole lotta "love," there was no one to even like.
In both short, and long, "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" left an unhappy and unpleasant taste after reaching and reading the book's final page. That the author consistently offered up a challenge to the reader in every single one of his novels (that I have read so far), I readily accept. That John le Carré's flair for words didn't always rise to the level of his exceptional story ideas was fait accompli to those dedicated to exploring his works. Yet this book, this "novel," seems to exist on path of self-destruction.
At first, I found myself intrigued by "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover." Story has relatively young pram chassis innovator-wealthy businessman protagonist, Aldo Cassidy, in the midst of a mid-life crises. Stuck in a dead end marriage, with two young boys, Cassidy is rich beyond his dreams, and couldn't be more detached and discontent. To the rescue comes...a fantastical or idealistic (?) young married couple consisting of one lovely lass named Helen, and one eccentric, sensitive, cruel, abusive, spoiled, indulgent, alcoholic, whoring, horrible, out of control, selfish artiste writer named Shamus.
You see, the conceit of "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" is that despite him being a childish arsehole, both Helen and Cassidy love him, do everything they can to support him, enable him, and makes excuses for every horrible, destructive action that Shamus consistently indulges in. In return, Shamus constantly calls Cassidy "Lover," and more often than not treats Helen like shite. So the book works on the platform that Shamus is a brilliant, genius writer, who must be allowed to do whatever he bloody well wants because he's special, because he's enchanted, because he's the muse that makes Cassidy feel wanted, feel respected, feel loved, the muse that validates Helen's insecure existence. Neither Cassidy nor Helen could survive without the compass of Shamus's north star...he is the deity hovering, loving, and entrapping them both.
...and WHY, you ask? Why do both Helen and Shamus do little more than follow Shamus's path, his cryptic commands, his tireless and violent outbursts, his egomaniacal, narcissistic proclamations ad infinitum?? Because Shamus is an important artiste, his writing is nothing short of an overgenerous gift to mankind, thus his everything must be tolerated, accepted and worshipped. Drinking, insulting, assaulting, whoring, vice-after-vice-after-vice...horrible abuse followed by swift and sincere apology....and for what, and more importantly...why? WHY this story?
WHY would John le Carré write a book about a successful yet somehow spineless, reactionary, co-dependent bloke who latches on to those more resolute in their ways of life and living? Well, not to pry, yet it sure sounds like the author simply was going through something both in his professional and personal life, and thus expressed his predicament via surrogate characters and fantastical, sometimes sexual, scenarios. Sometimes "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" reads like a soft-core sex magazine, or movie, never for the good. Other times "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover" seems to infer a deeper subtext than it actually has.
In several ways, I hated "The Naïve and Sentimental Lover," and got to the point where I just wanted to finish the book, get it over with and move on. The reason? It wasn't so much the novel's lackluster story that sickened me, it was the characters. After finishing the final page this morning, I realized there was not a single character in the book that I cared about. Cassidy, Shamus, Helen, Cassidy's wife Sandra, Sandra's friend Heather, Cassidy's secretary Angie (was that her name?), the whole lot of 'em...I couldn't stand. For a book featuring a whole lotta "love," there was no one to even like.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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.
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