The Honourable Schoolboy (George Smiley Series Book 6)

6. The Honourable Schoolboy: A George Smiley Novel (George Smiley Novels Book 6) (Jun 7, ). by le Carré, John · out of 5 stars (). $ Sold by: .
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Either way it makes this book a pleasure. The final third is less good than what comes before, and the one main female character is too much of a damsel-in-distress, who has really no reason except convention for falling for our antihero. View all 14 comments. I'm a longtime reader of the espionage genre --beginning as just a lad--and although I massively enjoyed all of John LeCarre's earlier works and particularly his George Smiley series--I must call out "The Honourable Schoolboy" for especial recognition.

This penultimate work of that series is really the triumph of LeCarre's career; the point at which he reached the full breadth and scope of his powers. Afterwards--although he enjoyed further achievements--I suggest that he never again eclipses th I'm a longtime reader of the espionage genre --beginning as just a lad--and although I massively enjoyed all of John LeCarre's earlier works and particularly his George Smiley series--I must call out "The Honourable Schoolboy" for especial recognition. Afterwards--although he enjoyed further achievements--I suggest that he never again eclipses this colossal, supreme effort of authorship.

I name it the single greatest espionage novel ever penned. Pound-for-pound in any one-on-one matchup versus any other 'stand-alone' title it has no peer. Read on if you wish to learn why. Prose honed by two decades of LeCarre's experience with the novel form. Every chapter is liquid, supple, silky. His best writing in a long time. Splendidly restrained, tempered, calm, and observant throughout. It's a sustained exercise in pacing and suspense which exists nowhere else in the genre, handled as finely. But here [as always in leCarre] it is supported by an enormous array of warm, chewy, savory characterizations.

More than he's ever tried before, I think. And certainly--just as in any novel of intrigue--there's a web of interlocking relationships uniting all these creations. But these characters don't just sit around in offices as they do in some of LeCarre's earlier works. The story bounces and ricochets all over the lawless by-ways of early s Hong Kong.

It explodes over the pages. Now, in his protagonist: Jerry Westerby, foreign correspondent; the eponymous 'schoolboy'. Affable, courageous, cynical, seasoned. But Westerby is not 'dead inside', not a 'shell'. He has the passion and idealism which the bitter and deflated Leamas completely lacked; he is the ideal sort of 'reckless' figure to support a 'journey-narrative' as LeCarre gives us here. He doesn't just skulk sullenly around Mayfair or Brighton.

He is one of those Britons who tramps all over the globe, TE Lawrence-style.

And that theme is grandly unfurled. You'll see immediately that the plot is set not just in Hong Kong--as bookcovers might suggest. Events and incidents in 'Schoolboy' range all over SE Asia. This is a startling, refreshing, and welcome change from the usual trenchcoat-tales which always feature dreary Berlin and London.

Not since Eric Ambler, had any author made 'international' settings the backdrop to a tale of treachery. LeCarre merges Ambler's 'fun' format with his own introspective, deeply-psychological storytelling--which is very different even than what Graham Greene does. And as you can immediately see, LeCarre really 'stretches all-out' with research for this sprawling yarn. Combat was still ongoing when he visited the East; and he captures some of the best ever visual imagery from that landscape. You will be wide-eyed at the descriptions of war-torn South Vietnam.

This is some of the most vivid Vietnam-era prose you will ever encounter. It's also a gesture of homage to the grand days of the Far East under British rule. There is all manner of foiled schemes and collapsed lives; abandoned hopes and tainted ideologies. So this is far more than mere 'espionage'. It's a rummage-bin of motley, worn-out, subjects-of-the-Queen, all struggling with agonizing inner concerns--their duties, obligations, and lusts. And they're set off against a caustic, dispiriting, new frontier of money, injustice, and murder. Thus, it's a timely novel by any measure.

That's in addition to laying a new cornerstone in British spy fiction. For that's what it is. This is the lone title to judge all others by. But now, only Len Deighton's ' Game, Set, Match, ' series a trilogy, mind you can favorably compare in depth and breadth to just this one, extraordinary LeCarre masterpiece.

I'm not done yet. I can--and shall--go on with my review. The praise I've ladled out so far may sound extravagant, but I've hardly scratched-the-surface. Let me put it this way: A sweeping statement from me; but yes, it is that superb. And I'll explain why. Its partly because Le Carre writes about society from a unique perspective unavailable to most authors. He has Dickensian attention to detail and theme you can say this about other moderns too, of course. But only in the same way that Charles Dickens portrayed his own era of Britain by describing--from top to bottom--institutions like law, labor, industrialization, banking, or prisons, can and does LeCarre express our own time by addressing the world of espionage and conspiracy.

This is the lodestone for our era as nothing else is; and LeCarre writes as an insider. Its partly also because LeCarre doesn't offer us just 'conventional' characters from the 'covert' world the fetter of far too many of his competitors. His espionage is an all-embracing literary device.

His characters speak from knowledgeable positions within all of these spheres. They represent a Greek chorus which can only be enlisted by John LeCarre's special kind of storytelling; his singular flair for narrating 'institutional psychologies'. He illuminates these dynamos for us--all these engines of our era--from the inside. Who else was better positioned than LeCarre, to describe the fading rays of English colonialism? Who else there to witness the long decline and fall? Who else to sum up the whole postwar epoch?

Who else to delineate the new era of geo-maneuvering? From the highest corridors of political power, down to the dullest middle-class drudges of London's suburbs, down to the meanest, alley-scrabbling police informant, he roves his eye. No, there's really no surpassing 'The Honourable Schoolboy' either as a spy novel or a novel-of-the-modern-world-at-large. Think of 'Schoolboy' as John LeCarre returning in triumph to the compacted, ultra-pressurized motifs which made ' The Spy Who Came In from the Cold ' so potent, and re-igniting everything contained there, on a now-enormous scale.

It's not just a spy story, it's a document of colonialism and empire. LeCarre is the only man who can make sense of it all. It's what we're all crying out for in this frightening age of government mandarins and official denials. I label it the best reading experience of our time, the best description of our grim, continuing-to-crumble, post-WWII era. View all 11 comments.

View all 3 comments. It's for want of a present. Perhaps, the greatest spy trilogy ever. While more people focus on the first book, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy , I personally love this one more. Conrad's ghost floats and haunts almost every page of this wonderful, beautiful, and sad spy novel.

View all 10 comments. May 04, Mizuki rated it it was ok Shelves: One of the few bright spots is how the author wrote the s colonized Hong Kong, I also enjoy how the author described the international spy network and how those spies work, but all the good things I have to say about this book end here. The characters are rather flat, the plot and the war among spies slow paced and uninteresting.

In the end I don't care what might happen to any of those characters. So it's a disappointed 2 stars. Anny Exactly how I felt! Sep 16, All I know is that I got sick of reading about Jerry. I got sick of the female characters—including Connie—portraye Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a tough act to follow, but I must admit I was expecting more. Smiley himself, he was a changed man in this. Still, the story had its good moments, and when it was good it was oh, so very good. The ending with its rebirth almost reassured me enough to forget all my troubles with this book.

Clandestinity just makes spy battles much more psychologically complex. Not enough breast to nurse a rabbit, and worst of all a fierce eye for arithmetic.

Le Carré adaptations: six of the best

They said he found her in the town: From the first day, she had not let him out of her sight. Clung to him like a child. She walked with all her fingers locked round his arm and her cheek against his shoulder, and she only let go of him to pay out meanly from the purse she now controlled. When they met a familiar face, he greeted it for both of them, flapping his vast free arm like a Fascist. And God help the man who, on the rare occasion when she went alone, ventured a fresh word or a wolf call: Hard pressed, he had gone to the pedlars rather than file a nil return.

He had fixed himself a side-deal with the local Cousins. Or the local security services had blackmailed him—in Sarratt jargon the angels had put a burn on him—and he had played the case both ways in order to survive and smile and keep his Circus pension. A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.


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Nov 21, Bryan Alexander rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is one of the greatest spy novels I've ever read. It's a powerful, ambitious, satisfying sequel to the very great Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The plot concerns the Circus British espionage unit tracking down a Soviet operation in the far East.

Smiley rebuilds the shattered agency and hurls it into the fray. Without spoilers I can assert that The Honourable Schoolboy takes place largely in south and southeast Asia, with long stretches back in London, and an ultimate focus on Hong Kong. E This is one of the greatest spy novels I've ever read. Every locale is sharply drawn. The Asian plot plunges into major stories of former Indochina, namely the fall of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge and the conquest of Saigon by the North Vietnamese.

Those chapters would have been a standalone novel for any other writer; le Carre works them into the depths of this single book beautifully, integrating tones, themes, and action. One affecting scene has the book's lead agent, Jerry Westerby the title is his code name , confronting an American spy right after the fall of Saigon. The somewhat terrifying, utterly depressed American demands that the Brit shake his hand: The United States of America has just applied to join the club of second-class powers, of which I understand your own fine nation to be chairman, president, and oldest member.

Or as an epic of moral compromises and attempted redemptions note the plural. Or a thick slice of a thin moment in Cold War history.

The Honourable Schoolboy - Wikipedia

The details are extraordinary, from the micropolitics of inter-governmental lobbying to the intricacies of a city quarter to many minor characters. Honourable is gorgeously written, with passages that range from lyrical to brooding, snarling to contemplative. I've been noting and reading aloud bits from throughout the novel: The tiny ponds outside the high-rise hotels prickled with slow, subversive rain.

If they stab me in the back, then at least that is the judgment of my peers. To be single-minded in defense of our disparity. Sometimes you did it to save face, thought Jerry, other times you just do it because you haven't done your job unless you've scared yourself to death. But mostly you go because the others go - for machismo - and because in order to belong you must share. Westerby chooses Conrad over Voltaire, just before heading into the fall of republican Cambodia.

An American spy compares one account to espionage fiction, to "something out of Phillips Oppenheim " When I finished the book I reread the last two pages several times, teasing out implications, savoring phrases, and letting the mixture of triumph and melancholy wash over me. Then I started to read the whole book from the first chapter, and only now have forced myself to stop in order to write this review. I really, really want to read Smiley's People , the next book in this sequence, but am going to let some time pass in order to give The Honourable Schoolboy richly deserved space to breath in my memory and imagination.

View all 4 comments. Jun 13, Bradley West rated it it was amazing Shelves: When I first read the book 35! The Hong Kong of the early s in the book wasn't very different from the Hong Kong I encountered in the early s. Many, many fewer skyscrapers than today and much less prosperity, but the same feverish pace, crowding and squalor outside Central persisted.

No one does atmosphere like le Carre, and that's further evident when the author takes us to Cambodia-under-fire at the end of the Vietnam war, then up country to northern Thailand where Westerby is on the trail of Ricardo, an absent aviator and romantic rival. Meanwhile, le Carre unfolds the principal espionage plot beautifully.

There's a gold seam out of Indochina, then the whiff of Karla and, perhaps, a mainland KGB spy who is seeking to escape China. Smiley's and Connie's scenes are strongly written, with the gradual unveiling of the mole leaving me whipping through the side stories in order to get back to the latest information on the deep penetration agent. Jerry's infatuation with Lizzie struck one of the only discordant notes. Le Carre invested a lot of effort fleshing out Jerry's character, and considerable time on Lizzie's, too.

Lizzie's actions rang true, while Westerby always seemed a bit off even the second and third time through the book.

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So the ending wasn't wholly satisfying, but that mild disappointment wasn't enough to reduce the rating. So rather than nitpick, I'll conclude by saying that it's a great spy novel, a fantastic tour of Indochina and Hong Kong, and a pretty good character analysis of an unhappy middle-aged spy trying to do the right thing. May 25, Michael rated it it was ok. I love le Carre, and I love the other two books in the Karla Trilogy, but for some reason this one didn't do it for me. I found the writing flat, devoid of le Carre's usual angry incisiveness, and the characters seemed more like wooden dolls than people.

Maybe I'll revisit it some day, but let's just say, I'm in no rush. Dec 29, Stuart Ayris rated it it was amazing. Yet it is my favourite by far. The main character is not George Smiley although he is present in much of the novel but Jerry Westerby, one of the Occasionals as they are referred to - foreign correspondents who do a little spying on the side. As such, it is altogether more human than either Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy or Smiley's People - the reader is engaged on an emotional level even though it is perhaps the most complex of the three books in terms of plot.

There are large passages of inaction throughout. This device serves two functions - one, it exacerbates the impact of the action - and two, it gives time and space for the author to describe in incredible depth every character in the book. It is a masterful exercise in the writing of people. The ending, which had a sad inevitability about it not in terms of disappointment but in the way the world turns is almost inconsequential due to the sadness you feel in just not having these characters around any more.

Why this hasn't been made into a dramatisation is beyond me. Perhaps it is the complex nature of the plot, maybe there just isn't enough goodness in the novel - for the novel displays every weakness of the human condition. I love this book and highly recommend it. I also subsequently loved the film adaptation directed by Tomas Alfredson, which I saw in the cinema, and rewatched recently.

I have read the series, up until ' The Honourable Schoolboy ', in quick succession… ' Call for the Dead ' A really intelligent, beautifully written novel, and a great introduction to the Smiley books which I know will only get better and better. Beautifully and economically written, and dealing in politics, intrigue and what it is to be human. A bold claim, but all life is here. It's palpable, and often hard to read, but remains grimly compelling throughout. It is also the first of the Karla Trilogy. A joy from start to finish.

And so to ' The Honourable Schoolboy ' It's and George Smiley - following his exposure of Bill Haydon as the mole - is the new acting chief of the Circus where he, and analysts Connie Sachs and Doc di Salis, look into investigations unreasonably suppressed by Haydon. They discover that Sam Collins's investigation of a money laundering operation in Laos could point to involvement by Karla.

It felt incredibly long, overlong, and full of unnecessary detail, although there is also much to enjoy too. As usual, the Smiley parts are excellent, his sections crackle with excitement even when they are confined to discussions in meeting rooms. He is a character who never rings true. Why does he do what he does? Nothing about him is clear or plausible. Oct 04, Leelas rated it it was amazing Shelves: This is the second volume in the Karla trilogy, and as such is the direct sequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Do not expect more of the same, however.

This is, after all, John le Carre, and he rarely, if ever, writes the same novel twice. The le Carre novels that I have read tend to make use of two general frameworks. These are, effectively, murder mysteries dressed up in espionage clothing. The Honourable Schoolboy has elements of both categories. It is definitely an operational story, following an offensive by the Circus aimed at capturing a high-ranking Soviet agent.

At the same time, an air of mystery hangs over the whole procedure, and it has all the investigations and interrogations of its predecessor. The story is told via two main characters. Smiley has a dark, ruthless side to him which tends to come out when he plays a supporting role. This side is evident here, but not dominant. The second main character is Jerry Westerby, the 'honourable schoolboy' of the title, and the Circus's man on the ground in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia.

The psychological contrasts of these two characters are central to the story's development and conclusion. The best part of the story by far, aside from the magnificent and tragic conclusion, is Westerby's sojourn through Southeast Asia. The story takes place between and , and Westerby visits Phnom Penh, Battambang, Saigon, and Vientiane, witnessing life in these cities under siege on the very brink of the Communist victories.

For these passages, the mysteries are put on hold, and the adventure kicks into high gear, with Jerry risking life and limb on the front lines as he pursues and interviews the lost souls that make up the novel's supporting cast. As a Southeast Asianist and a fan of le Carre, this book is personally a dream come true for me. I recommend it to anyone looking for a good spy novel, or interested in the events that shook Southeast Asia and the world in the mid s.

Oct 25, Nilesh rated it it was ok. The Karla Trilogy is not a true trilogy but a marketing spin and this book proves it in more ways than one.

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To start with, this book has little connection with the Karla-Smiley story of Tinker, Tailor. Yes, Karla is mentioned as linked to the spies being chased but with no other role whatsoever. Smiley next reappears as a minor but pivotal character in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , his third novel. Smiley is revealed to have come back into the service of The Circus as the top aide to Control , Maston's mysterious successor as the Circus' chief. It's revealed that, following the events of Call for the Dead, Smiley and Guillam succeeded in turning Mundt, the sole survivor of the spy ring, into a British double agent, and sent him back to East Germany.

Fearing that Mundt's cover is about to be blown, Smiley and Control manipulate agent Alec Leamas into posing as a defector and sending him to Germany under the assumption that he's going to orchestrate Mundt's death. Along the way, Smiley learns that Leamas blew his own cover to his girlfriend, a nineteen-year-old communist sympathizer named Liz Gold, and arranges to incorporate her into the plot.


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Although Liz's unwitting role ultimately ensures the mission's success, it also results in her death, prompting a grief stricken Leamas to commit suicide by cop at the Berlin Wall as Smiley attempts to extricate him. He appears sporadically throughout the book as a liaison to The Department, a military intelligence agency, which attempts to surreptitiously conduct a dangerous and unnecessary operation without the Circus' knowledge. Smiley's appearance here is notable in that War is the only book of the series to depict his and Control's personal relationship in great detail.

Smiley ultimately plays a pivotal role in the climax of the novel after The Circus learns the extent of the Department's activities, and Smiley is dispatched to end their operation and ameliorate the damage they've caused. During this period, Smiley's position in the Circus comes to be threatened by his contemporary Bill Haydon , proteges Toby Esterhase and Roy Bland, and ambitious newcomer Percy Alleline.

Alleline develops a personal feud with Control due to the latter's class and ethnic prejudice against Percy's Scottish heritage , prompting factions to form within the Circus, with Control, Smiley, and Peter Guillam on one side and Alleline, Haydon, Esterhase, and Bland on the other. When Control is eased out of the Circus in late after the capture of agent Jim Prideaux in Czechoslovakia , Smiley too is forced out.

The Circus is taken over by Alleline, with Haydon running "London Station", a branch overseeing all of the service's spy networks. In September or October , the events of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy take place, with Smiley successfully managing to expose Haydon as the long-term Soviet agent, or "mole", codenamed "Gerald" and reporting directly to Smiley's nemesis, Karla, head of Moscow Centre.

Following the revelation, Alleline is drummed out of the Circus for his failure to identify Haydon himself and for permitting such a breach of national security to occur on his watch. Smiley is installed by Whitehall as the new head of the Circus and tasked with both tying up loose ends left by Haydon's treachery and launching a successful espionage mission to prove the organization's viability.

The Honourable Schoolboy , set in , finds Smiley having assembled a new team, made up of former colleague Connie Sachs; Doc di Salis, a Jesuit priest who's an expert on Communist China; Guillam; and a rehabilitated Esterhase. After learning that Karla has been making exorbitant payments to a heretofore unknown Chinese source, Smiley tasks agent Jerry Westerby with going to Hong Kong disguised as a reporter and identify the spy.

Although Westerby identifies the man as Nelson Ko, the brother of a prominent Triad , he also falls in love with the man's wife and attempts to betray the Circus. Realizing Westerby's treachery, Smiley orders his bodyguard, Fawn, to assassinate him; concurrently, the CIA takes Nelson into custody, cutting off Circus access to him. The incident prompts Smiley's dismissal as Circus boss, with Guillam contemplating the possibility that Smiley permitted the CIA to succeed to get himself removed from the position.

Smiley's People , set in late , finds a retired Smiley launching an investigation into the death of an elderly Estonian general, nationalist activist, and erstwhile Circus agent. A convoluted trail leads Smiley to discover that Karla has an illegitimate daughter whose existence he has gone to great lengths to protect, and who he is attempting to smuggle into France to receive desperately needed treatment for a severe case of schizophrenia. Smiley uses his knowledge of Karla's daughter to blackmail him into defecting, and in December he greets him at the Berlin Wall as part of a contingent of Circus agents including Guillam and Esterhase.

Karla is taken into British custody with Esterhase congratulating Smiley on the accomplishment of a lifetime, though he reproaches himself for the methods used to achieve it. He re-surfaced for a penultimate time in when he appeared in The Secret Pilgrim , enjoying a happy retirement and in better spirits than his protege, the novel's narrator Ned, has ever seen him.

Ned reveals that, shortly before the events of the book, he temporarily returned to the Circus to chair the "Fishing Rights Committee", a body set up to explore possible areas of co-operation between British and Russian intelligence services. The end of the book finds Smiley politely requesting that he never be brought out of retirement again, and departing for a vacation in Oceania.

At the end of the novel, which explores fallout from the events depicted in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold , Smiley meets with the novel's central character, Peter Guillam. He is now living in Freiburg , Germany , where he lives in a small apartment and conducts research at a library. The novel portrays him as still visited occasionally by his wife Ann and in touch with his old associate Jim Prideaux. Speaking with Guillam, he contends that his work had ultimately been for the benefit of Europe.

This was a time when critics and the public were welcoming more realistic versions of espionage fiction, in contrast to the glamorous world of Ian Fleming 's James Bond. Smiley is sometimes considered the anti-Bond in the sense that Bond is an unrealistic figure and is more a portrayal of a male fantasy than a realistic government agent.

George Smiley, on the other hand, is quiet, mild-mannered and not at all athletic. He lives by his wits and, unlike Bond, is a master of quiet, disciplined intelligence work, rather than gunplay. In The Honourable Schoolboy it becomes clear that he is not as adept at bureaucratic manoeuvring as the duplicitous Sam Collins and Saul Enderby, who are able to use even a great success to force him into retirement. Also unlike Bond he is not a bed-hopper; in fact it is Smiley's wife Ann who is notorious for her affairs.

When Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was published, the reviewer of The Spectator described Smiley as a "brilliant spy and totally inadequate man. Smiley is depicted as an exceptionally skilled spymaster, gifted with a prodigious memory and a talent for getting people to talk. His subtle interrogation methods, derived from psychology and experience, he imparts to his understudies, such as Jerry Westerby and Peter Guillam. These are depicted as far superior to the heavy-handed tactics of the CIA , who are called "the Cousins" in Circus jargon, and whose appearance in a story is usually a precursor to violence.

Smiley, by contrast, offers him cigarettes to gain his trust. A student of espionage with a profound insight into human weakness and fallibility, highly sagacious and incredibly perceptive, he is very conscious of the immoral, grisly and unethical aspects of his profession.


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  7. At the same time he works to inculcate loyalty and discipline into his pupils, and a sense of moral obligation to the espionage service, and to the country. Smiley has no patience with the political niceties of Whitehall and their distaste for classical espionage tactics, including bribery, blackmail, and turning enemy agents into British double agents. On the other hand, he is not one of the "hawks" who are given to the sharp, militaristic attitudes of "the Cousins". Despite his series of retirements, Smiley's own unflinching loyalty to and support for his people inculcates loyalty in them.

    Thus, whether in or out of the Service he is able to maintain an extensive range of aides and support-staff, extending even to "retired" police officers, former and present Service members. Gary Oldman , in an interview with Charlie Rose promoting the film adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , said that this description is "the key" to Smiley. This accords with the later chronology. Vivian Green —a renowned historian and author with an encyclopaedic knowledge. Nobody who knew John and the work he was doing could have missed the description of Smiley in my first novel".