How does someone who has made a living creating fictional narratives truthfully reveal himself or herself? For an author, as well as for a spy, it seems only natural that the idea of truth would acquire a certain haze after a time. And for someone who has been both, it’s likely that haze would be even harder to penetrate. As perhaps, veteran spy novelist John le Carré points out, it should be.

le Carré rose to prominence via bestsellers such as THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY. His memoir, THE PIGEON TUNNEL, is a collection of anecdotes, including a number of incidents that could have been plucked from his previously published pages. Many of them have informed his fiction, and many more explore the writer’s personal proclivities and reflections on his life.

These anecdotes range from experiences tagging along with war journalists and meeting world leaders to interviews with gangsters and shoulder-rubbing with Hollywood’s elite. Many of the more appealing and interesting snippets are of le Carré’s encounters with lesser-known individuals. He is at his most charming when describing the disconnect between perceptions from the outside and the reality of being on the inside --- whether it is the inside of a spy agency or the inside of a relationship between two lifelong friends.

"Many of the more appealing and interesting snippets are of le Carré’s encounters with lesser-known individuals."

Although pleasant and amusing, the book does not leave one with a particularly strong vision of its author. It seems to conceal as it reveals. And le Carré’s insistence on maintaining his surprise at being considered adept at anything becomes more tiresome than relatable as the collection progresses. Though reminiscent of a joke about an old man saying he has no idea what he’s doing, one would think that a writer with such noted ability to imagine his characters’ motivations would be more able to recognize his own. It’s a bit of a puzzle to write a book with the professed intention of illuminating its author’s inner life and do anything but.

But perhaps this expectation is the result of a misunderstanding; understanding le Carré as an author may not in fact be the book’s intention. As it happens, the individual who looms largest, at times eclipsing le Carré himself, is his father. Ronnie, a con man who spent his life cooking up schemes small and large, is never far from the story at hand. Introduced before the book has technically begun only to be exiled to its end, the impression left is of a life dominated by a force it continuously both denies and points to as justification.

The father’s shadow clearly looms large over his son, despite attempts to demonstrate otherwise. It’s interesting how, despite a life first as a spy and then as an author, certainly two identities far more compelling than “son,” le Carré still finds his origins more fascinating. What he’s uncovered here is the same as elsewhere: everyone has a preoccupation, and it’s not always what it seems at first glance.