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The Naive and Sentimental Lover

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The Naive and Sentimental Lover

By: John le Carré
Narrated by: Sam Phillips
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Brought to you by Penguin.

Aldo Cassidy is a cautious man. He has a pleasant family, drives a safe, expensive car and wears luxurious clothes. But his soothing existence is upended when he meets Shamus and Helen - a dazzling, bohemian couple who are everything he is not. As he is drawn into their reckless and unpredictable orbit, all that Cassidy thought he understood about his orderly life begins to unravel.

Told with le Carré's lacerating wit and penetrating observation, The Naive and Sentimental Lover is an acerbic satire of middle-class hypocrisies.

'Splendid ... le Carré shows how endowed he is with the gift of storytelling' The Times

'Le Carré is the equal of any novelist now writing' Guardian

©1971 le Carré Productions (P)2025 Penguin Audio Classics Espionage Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Witty
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I am a massive fan of John Le Carré and his many excellent novels. This was not one of them. I suspect he was either trying to rationalise some kind of strange affair that he was having, or he felt that departing from the espionage genre would render him a more serious literary contender. This novel, I'm sure, didn't help with that ambition.

Apparently, it was panned by the critics, and several years later, in an interview with the New York Times, Le Carré admitted that he should probably have stuck to what he was good at, in other words, espionage.

I'm actually on a deep dive to read all of his works, most of which I have read already. I'm very sorry that this one had to be read because it was a chore rather than a pleasure.

Just what on earth was he thinking?

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Bought this on Audible to see if I had unfairly remembered it from reading many years ago. No, it's still ghastly.
Having started this review I realise I can't bear to think about it any more. I imagine the narrator felt the same, as he splits sentences at random points, which makes this drivel even less intelligible.

As terrible as I remembered

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