Ouch! In a review that will surely be a candidate for the next “Hatchet Job of the Year Award,” Michiko Kakutani excoriates John  le Carré’s 23rd novel, A Delicate Truth, (Penguin/Viking; Penguin Audio; Thorndike Large Print), which releases next week.

Earlier, one of Kakutani’s colleagues, Dwight Garner, wrote glowingly about the author in  New York Times Magazine, under the headline, “John le Carré Has Not Mellowed With Age,” calling A Delicate Truth, “an elegant yet embittered indictment of extraordinary rendition, American right-wing evangelical excess and the corporatization of warfare. It has a gently flickering love story and a jangling ending. And le Carré has not lost his ability to sketch, in a line or two, an entire character.” And, in the UK, The Guardian reports that, with this book, the author returns in “top form.”

Kakutani admits that the book offers one worthwhile bit, in the form of its “atmospheric, movielike opening.” Hollywood sees a movie in it; film rights were sold before publication. It was announced last week that screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed ) has been hired to write the adaptation.

The book already has a movie-like trailer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 at 6:20 pm and is filed under 2013 -- Summer, Fiction, Thriller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.