PENGUIN The Night Manager

A problem that faces successful novelists is an inability to edit their work effectively so that their books get longer and longer. This is clearest in the turgid prose of Rowling's overwritten Harry Potter series that renders them almost unreadable. le Carre has also fallen prey to this ailment. His greatest novel 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold' and the first and third volumes of the Carla saga are normal length novels (the abysmal 'The Honourable Schoolboy' has other problems as well!) but his work gets longer and longer. 'The Night Manager' is cleverly plotted although articulates his traditional tropes, the sacrificial hero and the sluts that make up his female charcters but includes interminable sections in which le Carre indulges his contempt for the rivalry of his espiocrats in Whitehall and Langley.In his afterword le Carre has the good grace to acknowledge the success of TV and film adaptations of his novels. Certainly the amended 'The Night Manager' is an outstanding work of televsion drama while the BBC's Carla sagawith Alec Guinness astutely omit the pointless 'The Honourable Schoolboy'. Feature films of 'The Constant Gardener', 'The Tailor of Panama' and 'The Spy Who Came in From the Cold' also work well although the recent film adaption of 'Tinker Tailor . . .' is elkss sucessful because the novels need the extended playing time of a TV series.An average sort of read, too often dull in parts and lacking credible characterisation. The TV series is much better.

The author has created an excellent baddie (the wealthy arms dealer Richard Roper), who together with his henchmen (particularly the marvellously wicked Major Corkoran) crisscross the planet in luxury in the furtherance of their ruthless trade. To bring him down we have Jonathan Pine, the haunted son of a soldier and night manager of a Swiss hotel.As the story progresses it brings in the government agencies of Pure Intelligence and Enforcement --the author avoids the mention of MI6 by name, instead using the term ‘The River House’. Indeed, considering how much of the plot involves the inner workings of the British government, little mention is made of explicit departmental or Cabinet roles. A minister is involved, but of which department things remain vague. For the American input, however, there is little such ambiguity.Prepare to be propelled into a viscerally rendered backdrop of Caribbean islands, superyachts, Egypt, drizzly Whitehall, Swiss mountains, the Cornish coastline, and Ireland during the Troubles.Pine’s motivation is a combination of his loyalty to country and his love for two beautiful women, both of whom are the lovers of wicked men.The narrative viewpoint is omniscient, yet with character-based prose appropriate to each of the several lead characters. (As the plot progresses, one could almost forget about poor Jonathan.) One pitfall of this authorial virtuosity is the risk it runs of feeling like a story told by an impressionist. Apart from a passage near the end with a cod Cornish tone, my robins, the narration is successful and kept this reader turning the pages.The dialogue is brilliant throughout. The ending, by comparison, suffers a little from the weight of bringing all that has gone before together. The eschewing of cliché is to be admired, but some of us mortals struggle to hear the melody when it is so faintly played.

I enjoyed the television mini-series many years ago (and sufficiently that I later bought the DVDs), so when I found the book available here I decided to enjoy that too.Unfortunately, although the story follows much along the same lines as the filmed version (and I find it impressive that the author refers to the filmed production, and comments on his opinions of it, at the end of this edition of the book) the book feels dull, flat and uninspiring by comparison.There are many stories which were written as books and then later filmed which I have enjoyed both versions of (even lengthy works such as Lord of the Rings), but this is not one of them.Maybe it's simply because I've not read any of le Carré's other works, so I wasn't prepared for his plodding and cumbersome style, but the book really didn't work for me. It certainly isn't an encouragement to try reading anything else of his, until I've run out of other authors I know are better.In summary, get the DVDs (B01BPBQ1SC on Amazon, should be well under £10; it is at the time of this review) and spend six hours appreciating a screenplay writer's talent, instead of working through several more hours of digesting the original author's inspiration for what could be turned into a good production.I appreciate greatly that John le Carré's personal review of the filmed version, included at the end of this edition of the book, is extremely complimentary.

I was a bit late to The Night Manager party; so late that BBC had pulled it from the iPlayer and it seemed that I would have to shell out for the blu-ray if I wanted to see it. So upon seeing the book on sale for £1.99, it seemed a no-brainer. I have been reading John le Carré's work in publication order, but this seemed a worthy book with which to break the pattern (having thus far made it as far as The Honourable Schoolboy).The book is superb. It has jumped to the top of my list of favourite le Carré works, nestling comfortably alongside The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I would also classify this as the most accessible le Carré novel that I've read to date. I have to confess that my last outing, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, had me frequently searching the internet for annotations and chapter revisions as I desperately tried to keep pace with its myriad plot intricacies. The Night Manager is far less dense, whether you see that as a positive or negative in its favour, making it more of a page-turner for me as a result. It's also easy to see why it was chosen for adaptation; as the author remarks himself in the afterward, it is a novel that is 'eminently filmable'.That segues into one final point I'd like to make, something of a caveat to all the above praise. Following the conclusion of the story, le Carré treats us to a retrospective on his experiences of having his novels adapted for the big (and sometimes small) screen. It's a fascinating insight into the world of book adaptations and the role of the author. The narrative builds towards his perspectives on the production of The Night Manager, and this is where I took issue: in describing his thoughts, he comments on the ending of the BBC adaptation, painting a pretty vivid picture of the climax. That would be fine if the book and show shared the same climax, but evidently they do not. As someone who has yet to see the show but fully intends to, it was a massive spoiler.Overall, superb piece of fiction, but if you intend on watching the show straight after reading, then give le Carré's essay a wide berth until you've seen it.

John le Carre is considered a modern great. A must read. A genius of spy fiction. He reminds me more of ageing university professor, trying to remain relevant by constantly reminding you how clever he is and making you feel small and stupid.Probably like many people, I decided to read the book because of the BBC television series. My roommate had told me he had attempted several times to read the book and failed, so we decided to read it together.It quickly became apparent to me that I would need to read the book in accompaniment with a dictionary after one of the many unnecessary descriptive tangents that felt more like a vocabulary lesson coupled with Shakespearian level word invention. After several failed attempts to look up words which I had no idea how to pronounce, let alone, understand, I decided to give up and choose for myself what they meant.I won’t spoil the plot of the book as it is somewhat different to the TV series but I will say that the ending left me angry, deflated and quite frankly annoyed with the time I had wasted in wading through the quagmire that is a John le Carre novel. I probably won’t attempt another.My 3 stars reflect the initial intrigue and pretty decent characters.