A Gem of book...it started slowly. I feared it might have a repetitive them but no, the story packs a punch. If you are an audio read, David Cornwell does the reading. He is a story teller and keen reader, to be sure. I became captured by the plot, a true tragedy.

Flawlessly crafted, Our Game is the master of espionage at the top of his game.

Le Carre weaves a brilliant story populated by characters brimming with complexity and internal conflict. As the main plot advances our retired spy protagonist colors in the riveting backstory in perfectly portioned suspenseful pieces. Le Carre writes with surgical precise, chapters feel cut with a scalpel.

It's surprising Our Game has not received more fanfare. It is a must-read if you are a fan of the genre but should be recommended even to those who usually do not usually lean toward spy novels. It's a love story, a mystery, a political thriller, a masterclass in tradecraft, perfection in pacing, prose, tone, atmosphere. You will be stunned to the last page.

Not up to his usual standard, with a particularly unbelievable ending

The gut-wrenching journey of a retired spy consumed and transformed by jealousy, set in the tragic mess of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Such a sloooow start. I've put it to one side, as I have so many other books to read.

The reviews on here for this book are mostly insane. No, this isn't 'classic' Le Carré, it's a beautifully written book about love and desolation. There are some weird jumps in the narrative towards the end, but it isn't really about the mystery of where Larry has gone, it's about the narrator's absurd notions of his relationship with a friend and a lover being dismantled and replaced by nothing. It's a great book.

Le Carré by the numbers, this is a poor addition to a magnificent body of work. When on form, Le Carré is one of the greatest novelists of his age, however in this outing he falls too easily into his familiar tropes without ever making them interesting enough to care about. The central character, Tim, is a rich, middle-aged very upper-middle class former spy (four ticks on the Le Carré bingo card) who is being cuckolded by his friend and unreliable former agent (two more ticks).

The story meanders, the characters interact with implausibly plummy dialogue which no person would actually conceivably speak (he simply never knew how to write working-class people, I'm increasingly convinced he never actually met one). The women are either harlots who betray or clucking mothers, none ever feel or speak like a real person. The adventure takes in Paris, Bath and Russia before slouching to a finish which feels more like a paragraph break than a conclusion.

This lacks the righteous anger of The Constant Gardener, the suspense of Tinker, Tailor and the enjoyable journey of The Night Manager. He has written much, much better.

2.5/5

I got caught by the intrigue the first half of it and completely lost interest at the end. All the historical/political views on Eastern Europe were interesting but in the end I felt like drowning under all the stories and anecdote. At the end, this book was quite frustrations because I never felt like reading a thrilling spy book but rather a random thriller story about an old and boring spy who after the Cold War.

tw: death, racism, homophobia, n-word.