Book Tease: Long Walks into John Le Carre’s Dark World

 By Elizabeth Hemmerdinger 

 Saturday is the beginning of the weekend, and what with the world being simply way to much for us to sort out at the end of five days in a financial House of Horrors, this is just the time to cuddle up with a good book. 

And I’ve got a doozie: John Le Carre’s A Most Wanted Man
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I’m not much of a fan of the spy novel; but Le Carre’s newest gives us  very specific characters, with dilemmas they create themselves as we hurtle through the story.  There’s weird romance, hot war/cold war issues, trust, betrayal, a grown son left in a muddle by his father, who made a deal with a double-dealing Russian spy decades ago.  Now the spy’s crazy, son-of-a-tribal mother, lurches into Hamburg (a breeding ground, you’ll remember, for suicidal terrorists). 

I happen to be reading this one as an audio book, on my iPod… and I can’t wait to get back to it. It’s dark out now, and past the dog’s bed time, but I think I can seduce her into another walk – so I can hear another chapter in Le Carre’s warped world.

 

Elizabeth Hemmerdinger is a born-and-bred New Yorker as well as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. She is the founder of “Behind The Scenes at Tisch,” a program dedicated to developing new works by new writers at New York University, where she received her MFA in 2003. Her plays have been presented in a number of venues in New York and Los Angeles as well as at the Williamstown Theater Festival and The Denver Center. Her full length piece Squall is available through Playscripts, Inc., which is also publishing a volume of her short works this fall. She is currently working with Larry Gatlin on a musical about Rosie the Riveter. Hemmerdinger is a founding board member of Dancing Dreams, a program specially designed for children with physical challenges that focuses on establishing an environment where children, aided by a teenage volunteer, participate in the art of dance, giving them the chance to experience the pure joy of movement. She is affectionately known as “Grambo” to her five delicious grandchildren.

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