Sam Brigger

you rehabilitate the character of Anne, George Smiley's wife.

In your father's books, Anne is almost always offstage, having very public and multiple affairs, being unfaithful to Smiley.

And in fact, in Tinker Taylor, she's sort of a pawn in a huge betrayal of Smiley.

And so when you read those books, like, it's hard not to think of Anne as a kind of villain.

But you turn that on your head in this book.

One of the things that I find so sad about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is that George spends the most amount of his time trying to figure out two people.

Like one is his nemesis Carla in the KGB, but the other is Anne, his wife, and they're both mysteries to him.

That's not a positive view of marriage, I guess I would say, too.

We'll talk about your dad's family life a little bit later.

But before we get to that, how did you approach the language of this book?

It seems to me that you're emulating your father's style of writing, which I think is quite different from your own instincts as a writer.

Like, your father tended to write...

Pretty straightforward, elegant, but simple sentences.

And I think when I read your previous books, I feel like you tend to be playful in the structure of your sentences.

They're almost Victorian in their complexity.

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a roller coaster and...

The pleasure is sort of watching the daring of the sentence.

And there's like humor almost embedded in the sentence structure.

So how did you go about writing more in your father's style?

So, Nick, you grew up really during the height of your father's career.