Book Review - A Small Town in Germany by John le Carre

A Small Town in Germany by John le Carré
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Revisited A Small Town in Germany

Bonn isn’t pre-war, or war, or even post-war. It’s just a small town in Germany. You can no more slice it up than you can the Rhine. It plods along, or whatever the song says. And the mist drains away the colours.

This is not strictly an espionage novel, more of a political treatise, ending up like something Leon Uris would write about the Nazi era. But it is worth reading for le Carre’s exquisite literary turn of the phrase

Mickie Crabbe, a ragged, leaky-eyed man permanently crippled by a hangover.‘Rather,’ Crabbe muttered. ‘Rather,’ and his voice trailed after him like the shreds of his own life. Only his hair had not aged; it grew dark and luxuriant on his little head, as if fertilised by alcohol.

An adoring wife rhapsodizing over her husband’s Anglophilia - echoes of Amithabh Bachchan

‘Karl-Heinz is fantastically strong for the English,’ the little doll said. ‘He eats English, he drinks English.’ She sighed as if the rest of his activities were rather English too. She ate a great deal, and some of it was still in her mouth as she spoke, and her tiny hands held other things that she would eat quite soon.

The Security Chief chortling over espionage euphemisms used by diplomats

He does research but you put him down as a technician. Your technicians on the other hand are all engaged in research.

Rather verbose at times and not a patch on The Spy Who Came In from the Cold and George Smiley's exploits.

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