Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

There are so many things to like in the work of John le Carre. As a stylist, he can hold his own with almost anyone. As a plotter, a storyteller, he is masterful. He is positively brilliant at creating characters that are generally believable, human, and likable. He is, unequivocally, a great writer. And "A Delicate Truth" is, unequivocally, a very bad book, primarily in that he has turned character into caricature and nuance into polemic. Of the many truly bad guys in this book, not one has any real hope of engendering a sympathetic response from the reader (it should be obvious I don't mean sympathetic in that you love him or excuse him; I mean sympathetic in that you understand him). While le Carre's early books left little doubt about the author's stance on the moral exigencies of spying, they did offer an appropriately ambiguous moral universe that enabled the reader to see both sides of that particular dialogue. But there is no ambiguity here, and the book descends into the realm of satire and farce (an American defense contractor called "Ethical Outcomes" -- as the snarks of the world would say, "puh-leeze!" or "Really?"). All of his American characters are grotesques in this novel, which would bring smiles to the faces of those who share his views but have zero place in a serious novel. (Perhaps he should try to write a satire or at least a comedy.) I say this with regret because I am a big fan of le Carre's work and have read every novel of his but his rage, his incendiary rage, at America, at British imperialism, and at amoral capitalism, has transcended his ability to write novels. He has become a polemicist and that is the death of the novelistic endeavor.