Tinker, Tailor

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a 1974 spy novel by British author John le Carré. I remember when it was made into a TV mini-series when I was in high school. It wasn’t anything I was interested in at the time. Then it was made into a movie last year staring Gary Oldman as the lead character. Anything with Gary Oldman is worth consideration. I heard an NPR interview with Peter Straughan, talking about the process of turning this book into a screenplay with his wife. She died before the release of the film. The screenplay was nominated for best adapted screenplay.

All of the Oscar adapted screenplays looked interesting so I went off to the Kindle area of my local library and put this book on hold.

This was not an easy book to read. It wasn’t as hard as late 1800’s book but it was challenging. The word usage and spy slang made it hard to follow. I should have had the wikipedia page open to the film so I would understand what the jargon meant.

I slogged along hoping that it would all make sense at the end, that the story would come together even if I didn’t follow all of the story threads. There were so many characters that I had trouble connecting who was who.

At the end, I did understand the story, did follow the main characters even if I didn’t quite get all of the nuances of book. I wonder if I could have followed it better if I listened to it instead? Maybe I’m not a spy genre kid of girl? But I do want to see the movie id it’s on HBO.