Well, here we go with a new year and we have to look forward to what it may bring. Maybe an end to Covid-19 ? Personally, I would like to see it bring an end to people trying to look for the differences between us and instead focussing on how similar we all are. There are some things we will have to be without and for me one of the things I will miss is looking forward to the next novel from John le Carre who died in December.
Many regarded him as the finest ever writer of spy novels but he was so much more than that. Not for him the outrageous, over the top characters like James Bond. Le Carre's characters were much more like real people. They all had their own failings which made them human. He wrote characters who were all manipulated by a system where political, and, in some cases, financial gain were all important.
His early novel "A Murder of Quality" showed his disdain for the Public School (private school to our American cousins) system that educated him. In Absolute Friends, he showed how perfectly innocent people can be caught up in the intrigue of a system which has to create villains in order to justify its existence.
Probably the only thing you could guarantee was that in a Le Carre novel, not all the characters would live happily ever after. I will miss putting his latest offering at the top of my Christmas list.