The Constant Gardener

Rating:
Summary: More a Polemic than a Novel
Review: Very nicely written thriller, with wonderful characterizations (Justin, Ghita, and Tessa - unfortunately, mostly offstage) and the inevitable spook (with his advanced mishealth perhaps a metaphor for the current state of the British intelligence services). But - do not read further if you haven't read the book - I found the ending unsatisfactory and ultimately frustrating as Justin's death leaves a lot of loose ends - not least of which is Three Bee's antagonists still running rampant over sub-Saharan Africa. Plus you wonder why this intelligent fellow more or less presents himself to his enemies on a silver platter when the war has barely started. Is the message that the pharmas are still out there? If the answer is yes, then the book is less of a novel and more of an anti-pharmaceutical pamphlet - and is the worse for it.

Rating:
Summary: Another direction for Le Carré
Review: I've always loved John Le Carré's books for their in-depth plots and characterizations, for their issues, and for the careful way the stories unfold - qualities other commercial novels often lack. THE CONSTANT GARDENER is no exception. While at times I felt the progress of the story was a little plodding (some of the interrogation scenes, while realistic, were tedious, and some small points were made too often), most of this novel drew me into its depths.

I won't summarize the plot here because so many reviewers before me have done so, but I will say Le Carré's taking on of the pharmaceutical giants is timely and bold. He brings up issues in the course of his mystery/thriller plot that we should all consider, even if we disagree with his portrayal of these companies (the ThreeBees, the fictional company here, in particular) as ultimately evil. The reader is led through the Third World in the form of Kenya and shown its lower class status in the eyes of industrialized nations. Here, lives are expendable, in the interest of profit. Not until a high-spirited and morally driven Englishwoman is murdered do the main characters in this book begin to see how deep the greed and lack of respect for life run.

I know many people in this forum have called this book a page-turner, but the plot unfurls too slowly and with too much complexity to earn that label from me. This isn't a criticism, however; I relished the slow reading of this book, hanging onto ideas and twists as I put it aside for the day. Always, though, I looked forward to returning.

THE CONSTANT GARDENER is well-written, engaging, and thought-provoking, and deserves to be a hit with the reading public.

Rating:
Summary: The Constant Suspence, Excitment and Shock
Review: Of all the old guard Cold War novelists, John Le Carre has made the transition to the new world order a good thing for his writing. Le Carre brings globalization in all its might and terror, with all its good and evil to life in this novel. Rather than being weakened by the fall of Communism, Le Carre has been changed for the better. Ludlum and Clancy are left behind when compared with the likes of The Constant Gardener.

The setting is Africa, specifically Kenya and at times civil war torn Sudan- though the main character, Justin, becomes something of a globe trotter in his quest for justice. After his wife is murdered while working to bring a conspiracy to light Justin emerges from his Foreign Office apathy and sets forth to bring her killers and their agenda into the light. It is espionage writing at its best. All the characters are believable and well rounded; some you will come to love and others hate.

John Le Carre's distinct style is also well suited to this novel, and as the story progresses you will be drawn further and further in. It is a story of good versus evil, of ordinary people rising to the challenge and standing for all that is good and true. I also suspect that the story is based in more fact than fiction- the cycle of third world poverty and exploitation, for one, is something that plagues us to this day. The Constant Gardener is not to be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Better than most, but not his best
Review: I read eight of Le Carre's "cold war" novels with fascination and delight as they came out (missed a couple). Perhaps I was foolish, but I felt that I was exploring the fringes of reality as I wandered into the lives of Smiley and his associates. (Histories of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia make me think that the evils of that time were not imaginary and can only be matched by the horrors of Sierra Leone, Colombia, Nicaragua, Rwanda, Cambodia, etc, more recently!) The Cold War ended. Le Carre shifted his focus. This is the first Le Carre novel I have read since "The Night Manager" (a work about drug dealing which disappointed me.) I was nervous. Would it succeed any better? I came away with mixed feelings and assessments. ----- The writing, characterization, description, and style are as good or better than ever. And I came away with my dread of Africa undiminished. (It seems bent on remaining the fun-house mirror to a corrupt world.) But I could not buy into the "evil pharmaceutical company fobbing off a dangerous drug" thesis. (Frankly I was surprised that Moi and his crew, though mentioned, were only tangential to the plot of this novel. Moi is yet one more example of the banality of evil!) Le Carre admits, in his afterward or "author's note", that "with one exception nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world..." Then he states: "As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard." That upset me! I wish he had written a novel about the reality of the "pharmaceutical jungle", instead of this "tame" story! Mr. Le Carre could have crafted one heck of an adventure written about that jungle instead of those of northern Kenya. As I read "The Constant Gardner", I kept feeling "this could have been so much more!" On the other hand, this is a perfectly respectable novel. It's just that -- though worth reading once -- "The Constant Gardner" is not a book I will go back and re-read again, as I sometimes do with his Smiley works...

Rating:
Summary: Africa- The forgotten battleground
Review: I applaud Mr. Le-Carre (the author) for choosing to set his plot in Africa, and to open the debate on practices of the pharmaceutical industries on that continent, albeit in fiction.

Maybe his book will increase the awareness of the Western rich, to the plight of the African.

The book is multi-layered and looks into African issues in a wide spectrum. Foreign interests, such as arms trade, and drug trade, local government corruption, genocide (such as Sudan is conducting against non- moslems), famine, hunger, aids and other afflictions found in Africa, as a background to the narrative.

Yet again the author is successful in creating charachter that the reader can identify with and indeed feel the heartbeat of the main charachters.

Like the bible, the author builds weaknesses into the charachter to humanise them and make them credible, just like some people we know. The story is full of twists and turns, and is woven like a fine fabric of plots and subplots to enhance the experience of the reader.

I recommend the book to those who like to read realistic contemporary novels with a view to expand their knowledge, and perhaps develop a compassion for the less fortunate.

Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: Le Carre acquits himself well with the Kenyan locale. It is a page-turning book that is the best thriller since Craig Furrnas' THE SHAPE. Murder and intrigue in East Africa is as British as they come, and this Le Carre novel has set down a first-rate British thriller with the CONSTANT GARDENER.

Rating:
Summary: Another hit by John Le Carré
Review: Once more, Le Carré launches a great hit, destined to success along his other novels. This is not just a non-fiction piece, as it contains a great deal of thoughts, insights and more. Can John Le Carré be the Dostojievski of the XX or XXI century ? For sure, with this book he places himself along our time's great novelists such as Umberto Eco, Maurizio Giuliano, and Dario Fo.

Rating:
Summary: Serious mismatch between author and subject
Review: This is the first le Carre book I have given less than 5 stars as he is one of my all-time favourites. And let's face it, bad le Carre is better than most other authors' best efforts. Difficult to sum up the varied reactions this book produces in a single review, but here goes:

1. Good points. Usual flawless prose, excellent characterisation, a real sense of scene (but see below) and a good pace throughout. No one does interrogations better than le Carre and that skill is on display here.

2. Bad points. The villain/antagonist is a complete straw man and trendy-left rubbish. It is no secret by now that le Carre has, for reasons best known to him, gone after pharmaceutical companies. His criticisms as expressed in this book (and its non-fiction afterword) are naive and uninformed. Andrew Sullivan in a review in the Sunday Times pointed out that only 1 of 5,000 drugs invented in the laboratory even make it to clinical trials, and only 30% of those that pass clinical trials earn back their development costs -- and Sullivan, as someone with AIDS, is very grateful to the pharma boys for coming up with his (expensive but) lifesaving drugs. The NGO whiners who criticise commercial operations like this and whom le Carre admires so much have no alternative. I always like to suggest that critics of this type start their own pharma company, garment factory or whatever with their own money and run them on what they think are proper principles as an example -- not just try to force others to obey their unelected and unaccountable selves. (If this seems like misplaced criticism of a work of fiction it is because of le Carre's afterword attempting to ground this novel in 'fact' and inviting donations to a German NGO critical of pharma companies and his articles in the Times, Telegraph and Spectator allegedly factual which accompanied publication of this book.) And it doesn't work as fiction either -- the villains he attempts to create are straw men without credibility.

Summary: A great potter working with third-rate clay. If you're new to le Carre don't start with this book -- read the Smiley books first then this one. However, if you know le Carre already and can put up with the major structual flaw and not laugh out loud at times you will enjoy this book -- as, for all its flaws, I ultimately did.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Le Carre¿s Work Sets The Standard
Review: Mr. Le Carre has written a collection of novels that can stand as the equal of virtually any Author, and generally his work towers over most. He is one of living legends of the genre he occupies, and in this, his 18th novel he demonstrates the elegant writing, the intricate story, and the diverse characters that have won him such respect as an Author. This novel, "The Constant Gardner" brings back the Author who brought sweeping novels like "A Perfect Spy", and the stories of Smiley and his people to readers.

Many Authors, who were dependent upon The Cold War for material, stumbled when the wall came down. Many recovered to various degrees; many others deservedly have faded, as their limited area of expertise became History. Still others try and concoct storylines from the former USSR, but the results are as fragmented as the Former Republics.

Mr. Le Carre never paused, as he is a writer, not a one trick hack. With, "The Constant Gardner" he has once again delivered a novel that is sweeping in scope, attentive to detail, highly relevant, and thankfully a work that takes its time. This Author does not write books that are meant to be skimmed. He writes thoughtful, cerebral, and often introspective work that takes time to read. He can write, so he does not need to fill his books with mindless violence, every techno-gadget real and imagined, or absurd and irrelevant love polygons.

The central player in this book is hardly computer literate. Not many Authors could pull this off without it reading as farce. However if you are tired of the banker/lawyer turned super-hero that assembles a massively parallel computer from 2 soup cans and his watch, this book is for you. If you like writing that can take the death of a single innocent person, and create more emotion from the reader than the writer who kills thousands while you yawn, again this is for you.

What extremely sparse and intelligent criticism of this book I have read can be remedied in the 4 page Author's note at the end of the book. This Novel is so close to the edge of non-fiction that the notes will surprise you. This is not a medical textbook, this is about very large international pharmaceutical companies and the impact they have. If you want detailed knowledge about drug testing, go to the Centers For Disease Control Website. This is not a short book; it would be impossible to create what this writer produced if satisfying the attention span of a gnat was the goal. Thankfully as many books get shorter and more repetitive, there are Authors who can still take the time, and have the talent to write a work of length. A work that is neither shorter nor longer than it need be.

If this were a movie it would run 3+ hours in length. This is not a pre-packaged insipid screenplay, designed to produce a sound bite movie that can be run the maximum number of times at the local Cineplex. There are brilliant writers of short stories. Penelope Fitzgerald, Julian Barnes, and John Banville produce more impact in a couple of hundred pages than many Authors can produce in one thousand pages, and half a dozen books. However like Mr. Le Carre they use the space they need, they use the space their talent allows them to use; their work's length does not indicate quality. They are writers not some former occupant of a profession, turned wannabee novelist that runs off yet another Xeroxed bit of mediocrity.

This is an important work that uses the novel to bring very real issues to an audience that an Author of Mr. Le Carre stature commands. That he chose to do this, as opposed to another version on a tired theme is a tribute to him as an Author a person, and to those he believes will be the readers and the beneficiaries of this book.

A book does not have to have a message of critical contemporary relevance to be important. This work does, and as such is not only a book to be read for entertainment, but a work that asks some very tough questions after showing very disturbing realities.

Rating:
Summary: Le Carre becomes a crusader
Review: It is a fascinating coincidence that John Le Carre, greatest of spy fiction writers, and Elmore Leonard, who is in the first rank of detective fictions writers, have both turned to Africa in their latest works.

Le Carre has chosen Kenya as the locale for "The Constant Gardener" and a multinational pharmaceutical company to replace the evil empire as its villan. Tessa, the beautiful young wife of a middle-aged British foreign service officer is murdered while she is gathering information on the deadly side-effects of a new and hugely profitable treatment for multi-resistant Tuberculosis. Her companion, a handsome black doctor, who is widely thought to be her lover, has vanished. Her husband, Justin, who, we must believe, knew almost nothing of his wife's crusade to expose wrong-doing by KVH (the drug company)embarks on a quest to retrace her steps and recover the missing information.

In the process, the reader is given a short course in the ways multinational drug companies fiddle drug testing, bribe the medical profession, and stifle dissent. The lectures are fitted into a fast-moving plot in which the grieving Justin must elude attempts by his own superiors to keep him under wraps, as well as murderous pursuers who dog his steps from continent to continent. Along the way, Le Carre manages to skewer the foibles of the Foreign Office just as effectively as he did the British intelligence service in his Smiley books. He also creates a gallery of unforgettable characters -- more fully realized than in any previous novel.

Leonard's protagonist in "Pagan Babies", Father Terry Dunn is still haunted by the massacre in his church during the genocide in Rwanda five years before. One of the perpetrators asks Fr. Terry to hear his confession and gets a stiffer penance than he counted on. Fr. Dunn returns to his native Detroit, ostensibly to raise funds for his mission. In typical Leonard fashion we are treated to a delicious farrago of con and counter con, cross and double cross. Yet the image of forty-seven bodies lying hacked and shot to pieces in his church pursues Dunn and the reader like Banquo's ghost.

Le Carre is more obviously a crusader in his book than Leonard is in "Pagan Babies". "The Constant Gardener" is as darkly pessimistic as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold". Leonard's detached style in "Pagan Babies" is cool to the point of being cold. One roots for both authors' protagonists to overcome the bad guys, but afterwards feels a little guilty for likeing Father Terry so much.