The Master of Stasis has returned, driving his dense herd of auxiliary words to the glue factory. John le Carré is back again with the same novel as before….

Le Carré has to be an Olympic-class sprinter but not a distance runner. In those stretches of [Smiley's People] which are the nub and reason for his story, he is brilliant. He is a gifted short-form writer who has decided that the longer form could be more rewarding…. Smiley's People seems to me to have been meant to begin at what is now Chapter 11. Before that we have the same embarrassing fill as in the first 90-odd pages of The Honourable Schoolboy—the short-form writer, worried that his novel won't be long enough for the marketplace….

Le Carré's stories are not what they seem to be about. They are about a world inhabited entirely by registered masochists. Le...