The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life
Ratings8
Average rating4.3
“Recounted with the storytelling élan of a master raconteur — by turns dramatic and funny, charming, tart and melancholy.” –Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times The New York Times bestselling memoir from John le Carré, the legendary author of A Legacy of Spies. From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War, to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before and after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, le Carré has always written from the heart of modern times. In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive, reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth; visiting Rwanda’s museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide; celebrating New Year’s Eve 1982 with Yasser Arafat and his high command; interviewing a German woman terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev; listening to the wisdoms of the great physicist, dissident, and Nobel Prize winner Andrei Sakharov; meeting with two former heads of the KGB; watching Alec Guinness prepare for his role as George Smiley in the legendary BBC TV adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People; or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in The Constant Gardener, le Carré endows each happening with vividness and humor, now making us laugh out loud, now inviting us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood. Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer’s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.
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A fantastic memoir spread over some 30 different stories from David Cornwell's life. If you ever doubted the quality of Cornwell's prose, his ability to turn a phrase or illustrate a scene so well you imagine yourself there, this collection of stories will leave you with no disbelief in the fact that he was one of Britain's best 20c/21c writers.
Short Review: Occasionally fascinating. Sometimes boring. I think for most people, I would recommend reading more of his novels. But if you have read a number of his novels then you may enjoy reading this. There are a number of stories about where a character or scene or book was inspired by. And the end about his father was really good. But some of the rest was just okay.
Most of the time I was actively engaged as I was reading. But I would put it down and then not be super interested in picking it back up again.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/the-pigeon-tunnel/
I have just finished reading/listening to The Pigeon Tunnel. There are other, better and longer reviews of the book itself, so I'll mention a few of the things that struck me after or during the read. Listening to his mesmerizing voice makes for such a personal, intimate experience—I highly recommend springing for the audiobook as well. I listened to some of it while reading the book, and other times just listened, as if I were sitting at a table sharing a drink, or more likely, at a nearby table in a pub, overhearing his conversation. His talent for story telling comes through just as much here as it does in his novels. One thing I wasn't prepared for is his talent for mimicking various accents (American, French, Russian and others). That shouldn't surprise us, given his talent for rendering dialog.
He is self-deprecating, sincere and funny, about himself and others in his long life. However, again not surprisingly, it's clear he has a drawn a curtain, a line beyond which we are not allowed into his life, whether to protect the innocent, the guilty, the unsuspecting, or most likely all of the above. He openly mentions difficulties in his first marriage but does not go into any details, and really why should he? But, perhaps in self defense or as an inherited trait, you the reader get the feeling that you will never truly penetrate below the top layer. It's such a rich layer, it's enough, and will have to be. Perhaps at some point we'll learn more from his sons in the future. Until then, I'm happy to read the origin stories behind some of the characters and stories that I love so very much.
I'll go back to reread this memoir—more slowly, savoring the language and art as much as the stories themselves—but it also very much makes me want to read Sisman's biography of him. Perhaps, despite the subject, Sisman may have managed to illuminate some of the corners a little more.
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