A Perfect Spy

I absolutely love the portrayal of a deeply flawed character thrown into the murky world of espionage. For me, Magnus Pym epitomizes the double standards of British and American society, desperate to protect themselves during the Cold War while revealing the inner conflict between self, family, and country.

I also love how the tension builds and builds as Pym, the double agent, rises through the Secret Service and risks everything.

So, yeah, I saved the big gun for last. I read a lot of Le Carré in high school before I was ready to understand the full texture of his stories, but the vibes have stuck with me to this day.

Magnus Pym both embodies and subverts many tropes from the spy fiction genre, and experiencing this book as a teenager helped me start to make sense of the very personal real-world tensions between “who I am” and “who I appear to be” and “who I want to be.”

I still wrestle with those questions, but my reasons for doing… show more.

Magnes Pym is a British intelligence officer and double agent. He’s had perfect training for the job from his con artist father.

Le Carré deftly balances Magnes’s urge to lie like his father, and his yearning for meaning and principle in his life. It is very difficult to make a con artist likable and le Carré succeeds brilliantly with Pym’s father. At the same time the father steals from his victims, he gives them the kind of support and appreciation that they long for.

The dialogue is brilliant and you can’t help but love these eccentric characters. 

This twisty tale of a British spy and double agent Magnus Pym is also a thinly disguised portrayal of his early life. Before turning to writing, John Le Carre worked as an intelligence officer for both MI5 and MI6. Unlike Fleming's glamorous portrayal of spies, his heroes were often depicted as lonely, tragic figures. The fact he knew the inside of the system gives his books extra gravitas.

Some people think spy novels are literature; most people don’t. But if there’s one spy novel that nearly everyone in the English-speaking world would agree is a great work of art, it’s John Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy. It is (like most of Le Carre) about a middle-aged denizen of the English intelligence service. He seems a model spy, but a few small doubts arise about his loyalties. It turns out that he does have divided loyalties, but not in the usual, expected way. This main thread of the story is gripping enough, but interwoven with it is the… show more.