YOU GUYS. How have I never read Le Carre before? I picked this up at ALA because I'd seen that a new film was coming out with Gary Oldman, and I admit, I am base and low, I read literature because it is made into movies with Gary Oldman. I got the gorgeous new Penguin edition which was a pleasure to hold and read. And did I read it. I did.

Le Carre is a real writer. The book has weight and it's serious, it's not messing around. The turns of phrase are delicious and original ("studs" of sweat on a man's forehead, an old woman retired from the service has "a low belly like an old man's.") The dialogue is almost painfully acute. Everyone says just the thing they would say, only one or two steps ahead of your expectations. Conversations are truncated, irony isn't footnoted for convenience.

"Sure you don't want me to come with you?" Mendel asked.
"Thank you. It's only a hundred yards."
"Lucky for you there's twenty-four hours in the day, then."
"Yes, it is."
"Some people sleep."
"Good night."

And the details--the old Christmas calendar hung in the call box, the crate of tonic water bottles in the back room of the safe house, the vain old man's gesture of pulling down the flesh beneath his chin between finger and thumb while he talks, the waiter in the cheap restaurant swinging the bottle of red like an "Indian club"--amazing. It's worth reading just as a study in economy and precision of detail, even if you don't follow all the intrigue. (I admit, I didn't follow all the intrigue.)

Smiley is an amazing character. He's pathetic and fallible in some senses, grim in others, lovesick and betrayed in still others--and he's so patient, so careful and dogged and polite as he does his job, teasing apart the knots. He's a moral man sidelined by an immoral world. He's just lovely.

Gary Oldman will completely rock the role. Movie opens Sep 16. I'll be there. And will probably be reading The Honourable Schoolboy as I wait for the curtain to go up.