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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780743455800
ISBN number: 0743455800
Label: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 416
Printing Date: December 01, 2002
Publishing house: Scribner
Release Date: November 26, 2002
Sale Popularity Level: 213103
Studio: Scribner
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
John le Carré's classic novels deftly navigate readers through the intricate shadow worlds of international espionage with unsurpassed skill and knowledge and have earned him -- and his hero, British Secret Service agent George Smiley -- unprecedented worldwide acclaim.
Rounding off his astonishing vision of a clandestine world, master storyteller le Carré perfects his art in Smiley's People.
In London at dead of night, George Smiley, sometime acting Chief of the Circus (aka the British Secret Service), is summoned from his lonely bed by news of the murder of an ex-agent. Lured back to active service, Smiley skillfully maneuvers his people -- 'the no-men of no-man's land' -- into crisscrossing Paris, London, Germany, and Switzerland as he prepares for his own final, inevitable duel on the Berlin border with his Soviet counterpart and archenemy, Karla.
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Rated by buyers -
You cannot read this book on it's own. Instead, it's crucially tied to "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "The Honourable Schoolboy" that preceded it in Le Carre's canon. In fact, I'm not sure that you'll understand this book without reading those.
If you're new to Le Carre or are thinking about picking up this book as a one-off read, find a used copy of "The Quest for Karla" which includes the previous two books in addition to this one. In that compendium, this book takes its appropriate place as the third part of a series. Like "Return of the King" in the Lord of the Rings series - not that I'd suggest that such an analogy is appropriate, but imagine reading "Return of the King" without having read the others.
If you're a Le Carre fan, be sure to read those two before this one. Better yet, start with a used copy of the trilogy that includes the very first three: Call for the Dead, A Murder of Quality and the Spy Who Came in From the Cold. (You can still find this compilation from various used booksellers on Amazon.) That way, you really understand Smiley, his relationship to Ann, and other details that you may find confusing in this book.
Regardless, you'll find that this is a typical Le Carre book. Not lots of "James Bond" action, although it does have its moments. Some confusing episodes. Still, an altogether satisfying conclusion to the Karla trilogy. And I, for one, really enjoy the flashback to the Cold War era that dominated the world from WWII until 1990 or so.
But you have to read the two other books to really get this one. Again, and I can't stress this enough, don't buy this book on its own unless you've read the other two. Find a used bookseller with "The Quest for Karla" to get them all, including this one.
Rated by buyers 
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thiS book was given to me as a gift and was highly recommended
i really hated it
there is no surprise no action
very predictable
and the author style is annoying like when he says : " she's 31, or was she 21?" how the hell should now? you're the one telling the story
i hoped that in the end there will be some action to compensate the 22 chapters of emptyness but unfortunatly even the end was disappointing
i don't recommend this book
Rated by buyers 
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Sadly, I only read half the book - couldn't stomach any more than that. Yes, the book has some good stuff in there: a few flesh-and-blood characters, bright moments of tension, a decent plot underneath it all. But my god, this book PLODS, and after 190 pages I coudln't take it. Where's a good editor when you need one?
My gripes:
1) Way too much irrelevant description - about people's faces, their clothes, cityscapes, trees, apartments - AAAAH, we don't need to know!!!
2) Too many irrelevant details about the characters' personal lives. I don't CARE about Smiley's relationship with his wife or girlfriend Ann, let alone to have the same details restated fifty ways.
3) Le Carre has an annoying way of taking forever to get to the point. This technique is fine as long as there is tension, but this book lacked it.
I tried skimming for a while, but who wants to skim a spy novel? So I quit. FRUSTRATING!
Rated by buyers -
Smiley's People was a bit beter for me than the others in the Karla trilogy.
But the trouble with it, like the others, is 1) its set in the cold war, in a dreary time for England (the malaise of the 1970s) and 2) its is devoid of setting.
The books don't have a reference - a way of "framing" - the setting. Its Smiley, plodding through the past via convoluted conversations with ex-Circus people that take pages and pages to get through. The fact that it lacks "action" is not by itself bad, but combined with the lack of setting it makes for a tedious and in some parts miserable read. It really just does not stimulate the reader - I wonder how many people have been turned off to serving their country by reading these books:)??
It needs more ancillary characters, more players; and less retirees.
These books do, of course, have a place in literature - but they are not for the average reader. More of a s-l-o-w drama than spy fiction...
Rated by buyers 
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Le Carre picks up the thread of Smiley's pursuit of Karla as it was at the end of Tinker, Tailer . . . , the very first book in the series, with barely a reference to the second. And like the first, this is a return to the spare, taut writing that makes Le Carre's best writing classic, without the overplotting and "literary" touches that marred the second.
Le Carre writes with omnipresent omniscience, getting in every character's head, selectively, sometimes pulling the story forward, sometimes pushing it forward, a style that works best with Le Carre's spare prose. And the last 100 pages push the reader forward inexorably, having reached that tipping point of good suspense or mystery writing beyond which the reader must finish without interruption.
My plan now is to stop reading Le Carre now and double back to the Vollman novel Europe Central (see my review here)
Europe Central
which retrospectively covers the same ground and see if there are touch points of similarity, congruity, or extreme difference that cast light on the time and place.so central to the history of the 20th Century but so fast fading in the distant rear view of the 21st.
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