Rating: 
Summary: Very thought-provoking
Review: This book will make you think. This is real literature. If you want mindless entertainment or something with a warm and fuzzy ending, get a Harry Potter book. At the core of this book is a mystery: What really happened in the last days of Tessa Quayle's life? We start with her death, then watch as her life story unravels and the real Tessa is revealed. Surrounding her is this question about a tuberculosis drug and the company that hopes to profit from it. It's David and Goliath, with this one woman and her loved ones risking their lives against this huge multinational corporation that promises caring concern for Africa but is really using the poor people of the continent to enhance future profits. Once I started reading, I had difficulty putting the book down because I wanted to get the answer to that central mystery. Once I was finished, I sat there for half an hour just letting it soak in. Overall, this was an excellent book.
Rating: 
Summary: impact of a real woman!
Review: I love Le Carre. The Constant Gardener has all the hallmarks of his great books of the past. The exception is the outstanding character development of Tessa. Le Carre's women (such as Leise, in the Honourable Schoolboy) are sex objects with none of the depth and the author conveys of his male subjects, and inspires a cynical opinion of the large drug companies, and has drawn my attention to the flood of news articles that surround drug companies and the developing world
This is a great spy story which is no surprise for Le Carre; it is a great human drama is always a pleasant surprise.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a feel-good experience
Review: This was my first Le Carre book, and likely my last. If you're in the mood for an honest by hopeful message, this book isn't for you. The dangers of the drug industry, the British foreign service, trusting seemingly good people--it was more gloom than I could stand. I came away feeling as if I'd swallowed a mouthful of dirt, rocks and all.
Rating: 
Summary: Bloody awful
Review: I left this book angry that I had invested so much time in it.
Rating:
Summary: As subtle as a five hundred page blow to the head
Review: It literally took me months to slog my way through the bulky and wordy nightmare that is THE CONSTANT GARDENER. There's virtually nothing present here that grabbed me, thrilled me, or even managed to make me want to read more than half a chapter at a time. The characters progress through the story at a maddeningly ineffectual snail's pace and there simply isn't enough plot or interesting filler to pad out the book's entire length. It's a predictable tale that signposts its plot developments so far in advance that one only has to read the first third to determine how the rest of the story will unfold. The main problem with THE CONSTANT GARDENER rests with the fact that the major mystery running through the first two-thirds of the novel is completely obvious, even to readers who ignored the back cover blurb that gave the spoiler away. Instead of a thriller in which we are as interested and as unaware as the protagonist, the audience has already figured out the plot and must impatiently wait for the characters to do the same. This leads us to an awkward and tedious situation, in which the reader has to remain in a holding pattern of dull padding for what feels like an eternity, while the main character catches up to the same point that everyone else reached two hundred pages ago. For literally that number of pages, I was begging for the protagonist to discover the responsible parties and to get on with the next part of the story. When the plot drags that far behind the reader's perception, the only result is a plodding and boring read. The characters present here are distinct, but none of their personalities are interesting to read about. After tragedy strikes the (eventual) protagonist, I did feel a little pang of sorrow for him, as the sections that deal with the initial crime are well written and invested with a lot of emotion. Unfortunately, this is not sustained for long, and we readers have to suffer through long sections that are neither enjoyable to read, nor do they advance the story. I can't for the life of me figure out what possessed the author to try to spread this story out into almost five hundred pages. The danger with padding what is essentially a one hundred page novel into a monstrosity about five times its ideal length is that it gives the reader the same facts over and over again. Even the most unobservant among us couldn't help but notice the clues that we are repeated hit about the head with. The fact that the main characters repeatedly don't pick up on the same hints makes them appear slow-witted and dull. Easily half of this book could have been removed and it would have tightened the pacing up immensely. The book attempts an epic feel by having the protagonist making multiple transatlantic journeys, but as many of them don't achieve anything at all, it makes the entire experience seem somewhat hollow and inconsequential. There's only so many times one can see a guy franticly travel to a location thousands of miles away from the previous spot and hear the same information from some shadowy figure before one starts to wonder whether one really needs to read the same thing again. THE CONSTANT GARDENER was one of the least pleasant reads I have ever endured. It's not as if the book is offensively poor or laughably inept, but it's a boring, plodding read with little to offer. I assume that the author wishes to draw attention to the pharmaceutical companies that literally get away with murder, and while I have a lot of sympathy for that point of view, he seems to have forgotten that he is writing a work of fiction. If this was a researched non-fiction book, I would be shocked and outraged by the political machinations. It relies far too much on merely copying the actions of evil multinational corporations, and it doesn't add anything new. By focusing the novel on small-scale side effects of the global giants, one doesn't get a sense of the power that these corporations possess. Not to say that concentrating on one affected person couldn't have turned out in a powerful and moving way, but when the reader feels little or no empathy for this person, the entire tale crashes and burns. I mean, I already know about the evil that unchecked corporations can do, but please give me either something original to read, or characters I can care about. THE CONSTANT GARDENER contains neither.
Rating:
Summary: a bee in his bonnet doesn't make for good reading
Review: So I'm staring down the barrel of a 36-hour plane ride, and wouldn't you know it, I left my book at the hotel. The Airport bookshop, of course, is long on low-end pop fiction and Lord of the Rings colouring-in books, but short on quality reading. But wait! when all seems lost, I spy (ahem) John Le Carre's new book snuggled away in a corner on the bottom shelf by, as if ordered by accident. This is more like it. Smiley. Bearskin-hatted border guards patrolling checkpoints. Espionage. The Constant Gardener is has to be. Well, despite a 36 hour kick-start, I took a month to finish the Constant Gardener. It's not especially long, and I'm not an especially slow reader. But it failed to grab me, and the last half was an effort to get through. Two main gripes: firstly, it's frightfully self-righteous. I can't stand books which preach, and Le Carre (via his poorly drawn characters) launches into sermons against multi-nationalism, capitalism and the 'fat god of profit' every ten pages. It's tiring enough when non-fiction writers do this; but when you're writing fiction - and explicitly disclaiming any resemblance to fact - it's completely pointless. And even when you grant Le Carre time on his high-horse, once he's in the saddle he's not even clever about it. You would think a writer this good has all kinds of literary and figurative devices at his disposal to gently infuse an unwelcome message into a skeptical head such as mine, but instead he beats me over the head with awkward dialogues in which the protagonists vent their consciences - or Le Carre's - in reasoned paragraphs. Thanks for the lecture, but I'll pass. Secondly as a story, it doesn't work. Without wishing to give too much away, by about half way through, it is obvious that there can't be a happy ending unless Le Carre is prepared to completely forgo credibility, and after another quarter it becomes apparent there's not going to be much of an ending at all. Within sight of the end, I found myself thinking, "how on earth is he going to finish this off in fifteen pages?" Answer: he doesn't. Astoundingly, Le Carre abandons the narrative altogether and rounds up the denouement, virtually in bullet points, over a page and a half at the end - rather in the style of a "based on a true story" TV movie which tells you, in captions, what happened next to the protagonists you have just watched, as if he finally tired of the whole project, or hit a deadline, and gave it away. After a month doggedly wading (paddling?) through this book, I felt a little short changed. To summarise: It's poorly paced, the characters aren't well drawn, the author is obsessed with hackneyed liberal causes that John Pilger has done to death, and it's not much of a yarn into the bargain either. If only I'd gone for that Lord of the Rings colouring-in book...
Rating:
Summary: spectacular book
Review: John Le-Carre is one of the most important writers of our time, to my opinion. He gives us the tools to understand the milieu of international relations in the world we live in - information that our leaders are trying to conceal from us in the name of "our best interest". This book has an added feature: The power of pharmaceutical companies, and the motives that will direct this power into action - beside the love of fellow human beings. According to Le-Carre, compared to the information he has, the industry that is portrayed in his book is "as tame as a holiday card". In a way I'm an insider, and I agree. You may care to get an idea of it.
Rating:
Summary: a novel reworked as a polemic
Review: Nothing wrong with polemics if you agree with the point of view of the polemicist... And, nobody seems to have picked up on the similarity of this book to Small Town in Germany, even down to the voluntary crucifixion of the hero at the end. The background and local color are informative and tend to reinforce the impression that Africa may not be a nice place to live but I wouldn't want to visit there.
Rating:
Summary: Great intrigue, masterful attention to detail
Review: This is an excelent read, Le Carré efforlessly moves the world around his characters, making them feel every new detail in their lives. Also, an excelent story written in a delightful manner.
Rating:
Summary: Not a Thriller
Review: I'm not sure what le Carre was going for here. Some read him for suspense. Others enjoy the riveting psychological portraits of his characters. I was looking for a bit of both and was also interested to see his take on Africa, since the book is set in Kenya. In the end, I felt cheated on all three counts. The storyline is banal, with none of the plot twists one might expect. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, with the possible exception of the protagonist. And Africa is little more than a stage prop. The few marginal African characters are either corrupt thugs or saintly sufferers. It seems that le Carre intended some sort of moral message here -- something along the lines of "big multinational drug companies are bad . . . really, really bad" -- and decided to wrap a story around his outrage. If that was indeed his intent, he failed on that score, too, because he just isn't convincing. The conspiracies he describes are a bit too over the top in their evilness and are filled with cartoonish bad guys, straining credulity. Those who already believe the worst about international corporations and their government co-conspirators will probably find validation in this book. But those looking for a good, old-fashioned thriller or a compelling character sketch are likely to be disappointed.
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