Absolute Friends (Lecarre, John (Large Print))

Rating:
Summary: Sad and unrealistic.
Review: Don't waste your time one this book.
Starts out fairly well and progress okay.
But then just gets stupid/ sad.
I must be brain washed but, the major themes seem silly.

Rating:
Summary: Your Resume Is Your Fate
Review: In the beginning of Absolute Friends, I found myself wondering why Mr. Le Carre had put together such an unusual resume for his main character, Ted Mundy. Be patient with those details because Mr. Le Carre uses every one of them to develop his most intricate plot ever. This book will continue to surprise you with its plot twists and will reward careful reading. Those who have a very cynical view of the motives behind the invasion of Iraq in 2003 will love this book.

Brought up without a mother and with a distant father whose life was on the skids, Ted Mundy found himself looking for emotional connection. With a strong sympathy for the underdog and the oppressed, he finds himself some unusual friends among the radical community of his youth. Made of stern stuff, he willingly engages in helping them and becomes closely involved with antiauthoritarian Sasha in West Berlin. That unexpected connection becomes the central pivot of his life from then on. Try as he might to avoid it, he and Sasha are permanently linked through that youthful friendship. In essence, Ted Mundy's life becomes a resume that others are willing to interpret as supporting their views . . . and he finds himself unexpectedly draw into the espionage battles of the Cold War. Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mundy's past becomes valuable to those who want to create new perceptions today. In the process, Mundy finds his good intentions and friendship unintentionally subverted.

The jacket copy for this book is misleading. It suggests that the story is mostly about the mysterious Dimitri, the idealistic billionaire who wants to recruit Ted Mundy. Except for a brief introduction, that section of the book comes only at the end. Most of the book deals with a flashback into Mundy's life before meeting Sasha and his involvement with Cold War spying. A lot of the action occurs behind the Iron Curtain, and pieces of the book will remind you of Mr. Le Carre's marvelous stories about espionage into East Germany.

The book has an Achilles heel though in that Mr. Le Carre needs such an unusual combination of characters that the plot builds on what seemed to me to often be dense, unrealistic details. I kept wondering why he was making up such preposterous backgrounds for his characters. In the end, all became clear . . . but the story's eventual ending could have been told without all the background. The book feels like two books, loosely bound together by a limited tether three-quarters of the way through. Without the last section, this could have been a five-star Cold War book. With a simpler development of the last section, this could have been a four-star book about political chicanery. I found the way they were bound together was just too big a stretch for me. I found myself focusing on the author's plotting, rather than just accepting the story. I do, however, admire the mind that could put all these pieces together.

If you are like me, the ending will leave you stunned and feeling queasy. Mr. Le Carre has a powerful message for us about the dangers of believing that everything is what we are told. Be skeptical!

As I finished the book, I wondered again about the proper balance among our responsibility to ourselves, our loved ones and our loyalties to greater causes. Mr. Le Carre seems to suggest that we shouldn't be so idealistic . . . the price is too high. But isn't our idealism what makes us noble and admirable? Perhaps he means nothing more than that we shouldn't abandon all else for our idealism.

Rating:
Summary: One of Le Carre's best books
Review: Le Carre's latest masterpiece spans three historical periods. The hero, Ted Mundy was born in Pakistan when the British Empire was crumbling, got a public school education in a changing England, went to Oxford and then on to Berlin where he met his fellow radical Shasha, forming an "absolute friendship". He and Shasha eventually formed a highly successfull spy pair during the Cold War, a period of ideological clarity as to what was right or wrong. After the fall of the Berlin war Ted finds himself a partner in a language school and, after this fails miserably, he works as a tour guide in one of Mad Ludwig's castles in Bavaria. Shasha reappears and they find themselves involved again, this time in a war-in-Iraq related operation. Only now things are not clear as to what is right or wrong. To quote Shasha "..the coalition has broken half the rules in the international law books, and intends by its continued occupation of Iraq to break the other half". Le Carre is [rightly so] highly critical of what the coalition is doing in Iraq, his thoughts full of the wisdom of a man whose life spans the same periods with the book's hero. This is not only a superb story of friendship, a historical novel, a well written spy thriller but also a cry of anguish of an educated citizen of the world caused by the post 9/11 state of world affairs.