#ReadThis #WhomYouKnow #TheLittleDrummerGirl #JohnleCarre #leCarre The Little Drummer Girl by JOHN LE CARRÉ @lecarre_news @PenguinBooks #LondonPeachy #EnglandPeachy Highly Recommended by Whom You Know
As you know, we celebrated our 24,000th post with this author's story: Whom You Know Celebrates Our 24,000th Post with AMC's The Night Manager Which Earns Our Highest Recommendation #HistoryofWhomYouKnow #SmallScreenScenes #WhomYouKnow @NightManagerAMC @AMC_TV @lecarre_news #TheNightManager http://www.whomyouknow.com/2018/09/whom-you-know-celebrates-our-24000th.html#.W61RzGhKg2w
The le Carre hit parade shows no sign of stopping, and in light of the next big hit on AMC which shows across the pond sooner, The Little Drummer Girl:
we feature the book today.
We understand that le Carre himself has a cameo as a waiter; we want to review THAT restaurant.
We deemed it absolutely essential to first read the book.
The Little Drummer Girl centers upon a young actress named Charlie, struggling in Europe trying to make it big. (Why didn't she come to New York?!?!) Published way back in 1983 when you were also probably preoccupied with Cabbage Patch Kids, The Little Drummer Girl in print is making a huge comeback in response to this upcoming television drama, done by none other than le Carre's sons we understand. July 1982 marks the foreword by le Carre, and he updates the work with an introduction in April 1993, both published before the actual story begins and absolutely worthy of reading first. He concludes the latter with: "My sadness is that, with few changes, the story could be played today, tomorrow, or the next day, and Charlie my heroine would still come out of it, as I did myself, torn to pieces by the battle between two peoples who both have justice on their side."
This centers on the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
The writing is the cream of the crop, and as we read, we learn. Le Carre does set the standard for letting the verbs do the work, and the details of everything are additionally phenomenal. He is the master of showing not telling and every sentence is executed at luxuriously high verbiage. Unless you got 1600 on your SATs and we did not, you might need a dictionary to read anything he writes. We believe this is the fifth le Carre book we've published on, and they ALL should be turned into television dramas and movies.
One particularly brilliantly written passage: (p. 304)
"And she remembered the landing in London, more alone than she had ever been in her life; and the smell of English sadness that had greeted her even on the runway, reminding her of what it was that had turned her towards radical solutions in the first place: the malign sloth of authority, the caged despair of the losers."
Taking place in Europe, The Little Drummer Girl has a dark German open and then shortly after, much sun and fun in Mykonos. Touring with her acting team, young Charlie becomes largely distracted and further intrigued by a certain someone, which is the foundation for the story. The chemistry is magic and it's not all that meets the eye. We hope they are able to do it as well on television.
Charlie is a hot sketch as a character; we liked her spunk and sense of humor quite a lot. Did you know anyone that kidnaps her is a friend for life? Casting has never been like this before...and we hope Mark Twain is reading up there - there is a Joan of Arc reference he'd appreciate. We understand his work on Joan was his personal favorite. As the general media says, the future is female.
Though this book has strong political themes, regardless of where you personally stand on the spectrum politically, you will appreciate this book and the tremendous amount of research le Carre did into both the Israeli and Palestinian sides to paint a most accurate fictional narrative. (Most accurate from our view in New York; we do not profess to be experts on the Middle East.) Twists and turns characteristic of le Carre are to be found strategically for you to enjoy. They will not be revealed by us.
Stay with the logic of the fiction. Join the party! Read with smoked salmon and a bottle of wine.
At over 500 pages, The Little Drummer Girl is not a quick read; it is a work you should devote yourself to: as in perhaps, do it all weekend. This weekend.
The Little Drummer Girl is Highly Recommended by Whom You Know.
We can't WAIT to see what le Carre does next and we would love to see him in Manhattan.
John le Carré was born in 1931. After attending the universities of Bern and Oxford, he taught at Eton and spent five years in the British Foreign Service. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, his third book, secured him a worldwide reputation. He divides his time between London and Cornwall.
Last year, John le Carré’s A LEGACY OF SPIES was a literary sensation, landing at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and named one of the best books of 2017 by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, among others. A LEGACY OF SPIES was the first novel in over twenty-five years to feature George Smiley, le Carré’s most famous and beloved character, and, as Kirkus Reviews put it, “the miracle is that the author can revisit his best-known story and discover layer upon layer of fresh deception beneath it.” On May 1st, A LEGACY OF SPIES will be published in paperback by Penguin Books.
In A LEGACY OF SPIES, le Carré interweaves past with present so that each character may tell their own intense story, and has spun a single plot as ingenious and thrilling as the two predecessors on which it looks back: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Peter Guillam, staunch colleague and disciple of George Smiley of the British Secret Service, otherwise known as the Circus, is living out his old age on the family farmstead on the south coast of Brittany when a letter from his old Service summons him to London. The reason? His Cold War past has come back to claim him. Intelligence operations that were once the toast of secret London, and involved such characters as Alec Leamas, Jim Prideaux, George Smiley and Peter Guillam himself, are to be scrutinized under disturbing criteria by a generation with no memory of the Cold War and no patience with its justifications. In a story resonating with tension, humor and moral ambivalence, le Carré and his narrator Peter Guillam present the reader with a legacy of unforgettable characters old and new.
For more than fifty years John le Carré has written novels that have come to define our age, from his extraordinary Cold War novels to his powerful depiction of the War on Terror in his novel, A Delicate Truth. He is one of only a handful of writers whose novels have been successfully adapted for the big and small screen and whose characters have been interpreted by the greatest actors of their time: in the 1960s by Richard Burton; in the 1970s by Alec Guinness; in 2005 by Ralph Fiennes; in 2014 by Philip Seymour Hoffman. In 2016, The Night Manager aired as a six-part series on AMC and became an award-winning critical hit. This fall, AMC will air the six-part TV adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl, directed by legendary filmmaker Park Chan-Wook in his television debut, which stars Alexander Skarsgård and Michael Shannon.
