A perfect spy -- or a perfect bore?

[uvula_fr_b4]

I've been intermittently reading John le Carré's 1986 novel A Perfect Spy since October; I'm up to p. 458 (almost to the end of Chapter 13) in the trade paperback edition (which has eighteen chapters and 590 pgs.), and I am more than ready to be finished with it.

Despite the big-love blurbs from the New York Times and Philip Roth (whose work I'

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Re: spies, lies, and counterfactuals

[uvula_fr_b4]

The one Philip Roth book I do intend to read is The Plot Against America; probably should read Portnoy's Complaint (or at least "Portnoy Darns His Socks," ha-ha) and Goodbye, Columbus at some point, but I'm in no tearing hurry to do so. I think I've tucked enough Harlan Ellison under my belt to have absorbed Roth's sexual preoccupations by osmosis any way.

For all my kvetching about A Perfect Spy, I am glad that I'm reading it; I'm just annoyed that it's going so slowly for me, far more slowly than any of the Karla Trilogy (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honourable Schoolbooy; and Smiley's People; my review of the trilogy is here, BTW) did. I have a major complaint about the book's structure as well, but I'll address that if I post a review of it. (I'm snatching time on the family computer, as my desktop and laptop are both kaputt; pretty depressing setting up a LinkedIn account when you don't have a Facebook account to auto-populate it with "contacts.")

Good luck with Inherent Vice (a remaindered copy of which I also own); I made it a little over halfway through Against the Day before finally stalling out a few years ago. Thing is, I could probably pick it up where I left off and not really miss anything, since the plot was such a dog's breakfast -- no reference to the book's "Worst Sex Scene of 2006" intended. Some good to near-great writing, but a cohesive novel it really wasn't, I'm afraid. (Still intend to tackle Gravity's Rainbow and V some fine day, but I may have to re-read The Crying of Lot 49 to remind myself just why I flipped for Pynchon in the first place.)

Le Carré seems to be a rather adaptable writer, based on the excerpt of his latest novel, A Delicate Truth, that Harper's Magazine ran in its April 2013 issue; I was interested in the excerpt, but somewhat ambivalent about le Carré writing more á la Ellroy, if you follow.

I found myself regretting not knowing French when I read an article about Gérard de Villiers, a rather louche-sounding pulp novelist with an alarming amount of connections to actual employees of several countries' intelligence agencies. You would probably have far better luck laying hands on some of his books in your current location than I would in the wilds of the Upper Midwest, setting aside my language barrier. (I don't believe more than a handful of the books in his SAS series have been translated into English, based on the dekko I had on Abe Books' site last year.)