Le Carré's 'Perfect Spy' And How Does An Author's 'Intent' Affect A Novel?

John Le Carre´'s 'A Perfect Spy' - what does a novel aspire to be? The question of whether Le Carré is a writer of literature or of genre is what it is. That question is hovering around a different matter - the question of intent. What is a book trying to do? A book that is trying to do something simple, is a simple book. When done well, simple books can have a specific beauty. A thriller, a page-turner, whether it be of a British soldier in Iraq, a serial killer in California, or as sometimes in Le Carré's case a Cold War spy, is trying to do a simple thing and often to some elements of formula. The limitations to a page-turner are in its intent and its description - page-turner. A writer cannot step out of the action, particularly the action, for if he does the pages cease to be turned. And some people can read nothing but page-turners, we know this. 

And then there are the writers who try to do something more than the simple. They may not be better, but they are different. If Le Carré has been trying to write good page-turners elsewhere, and been confined by the necessities of the genre, A Perfect Spy intends something different. It frequently stops in mid page-turn and examines people. And the 'stopping' is not added-on 'background', it is directly linked to the page-turn action and it is the main point of the book. Here lies the detail inside the lives of people, what makes them do what they do, and here lie a few of the several reasons why some people betray. Of course the reviews show that the book, because it's got the word 'spy' in the title, is often picked up by page-turning types, and this is the last place they should be. Le Carré's A Perfect Spy is a huge and, importantly, not a simple but a complex achievement.