Books & Literature

Book Review: The Pigeon Tunnel, by John le Carré

The Pigeon Tunnel is not an autobiography but rather, a random collection of reminiscences from the life of author, John le Carré.

The Pigeon Tunnel is not an autobiography but rather, a random collection of reminiscences from the life of John le Carré. Le Carré is the pen name of David Cornwell and he enjoys being able to hide behind the persona he has created, rarely giving interviews and not appearing at literary festivals.

The stories are not in chronological order and the author warns that, while not everything in the book is strictly true, as events or people may have been enhanced or embroidered, nothing is actually falsified. Le Carré speaks of his love of writing, even the physical act itself as he writes longhand, choosing “to remain with the centuries-old tradition of unmechanized writing…[enjoying] drawing the words” (page 8). These stories cover a diverse range of people and events but there is a little too much name dropping for my taste.

For example, in the first story Don’t be beastly to your Secret Service, the author is at a private party and he refers to, amongst many more: Denis Healey, now Lord Healey, former Defence Secretary; Allen Dulles, retired Director of the CIA; Sir Maurice Oldfield, former Chief of the Secret Service; Sir Alec Guinness, who is about to star in a TV production of the author’s book Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Kim Philby, a Soviet spy who was head of MI6’s counter-intelligence; and the author Graham Greene. Le Carré clearly delights in being part of the inner sanctum of the Secret Service and asserts: “Spying and novel writing are made for each other. Both call for a ready eye for human transgressions and the many routes to betrayal.” (page 23).

The author had plenty of experience of human transgressions and betrayal as a child and it is easy to see why he believes people with unhappy childhoods learn to reinvent themselves, as he has done through Le Carré. His father, Ronnie, was violent towards his family, a conman and fraudster, spending time in prisons all over the world. His mother believed she had married beneath her, as the saying went, and Olive walked out of her son’s life when he was only 5 years old. It was twenty one years before le Carré saw his mother again. His father popped up in the most unlikely places, such as at a publisher’s lunch on the author’s first trip to New York, and almost always wanted money to bail him out – both literally and figuratively.

I like Le Carré’s novels very much and particularly enjoyed The Constant Gardener, his 2001 novel about corruption and conspiracy in the international pharmaceutical industry, but I found The Pigeon Tunnel a real slog. His life stories have none of the vigour of his fictional works and I suspect that putting the chapter about his father, details of which he tantalises the reader with in the Introduction, is an attempt to persuade readers to persist through to the end to read the most interesting chapter in the book.

Reviewed by Jan Kershaw

Rating out of 10:  5

Released by: Penguin Australia
Release Date: September 2016
RRP: $45 hardback, $32.99 trade paperback

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