Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. Dominated by a father who is also a confidence trickster on an epic scale, Pym has from the age of seventeen been controlled by two mentors. It is these two, racing each other and time itself, who are orchestrating the search to find the perfect spy...
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Magnus Pym, ranking diplomat, has vanished, believed defected. The chase is on: for a missing husband, a devoted father, and a secret agent. Pym's life, it is revealed, is entirely made up of secrets. Dominated by a father who is also a confidence trickster on an epic scale, Pym has from the age of seventeen been controlled by two mentors. It is these two, racing each other and time itself, who are orchestrating the search to find the perfect spy...
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Add this copy of A Perfect Spy to cart. $5.61, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2000 by Penguin Books Canada, Limited.
Add this copy of A Perfect Spy to cart. $37.37, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1987 by Penguin Books Canada, Limited.
Truly absorbing on all levels, but especially on the narrator's early life - his childhood relationships and the way they form him into being, as the title names him, the perfect spy; that is someone thoroughly insecure, eager to conform to conflicting interests and socially adaptable as well as highly intelligent.
The quality of the writing is flawless; so many apt, diamond -like expressions - really on every page, so that you constantly go back to capture them. This, with the compulsive urge to move on, creates a tension of its own.
I believe this book represents le Carre at his best' It's a work of genius.
Steve S
Mar 21, 2013
Le Carre's most personal book
In an introduction to the Kindle version of this book, John Le Carre refers to this as his favorite among his books, at least until the much later CONSTANT GARDENER. In that introduction he describes his relationship with his own father, who was something of a con-man. I found the book profoundly moving.
