Absolute Friends

Rating:
Summary: The Man of Gray Turns Black and White
Review: Samuel Goldwyn famously chastised a screenwriter, "If I want to send a message, I'll use Western Union." That, in a nutshell, is what is wrong with "Absolute Friends"--the novel is a message thinly disguised as a story, and not a good story, at that.

I discovered Mr. le Carre a few years ago, and so count myself among his newer initiates. After I read a brief essay by Mr. LeCarre in The New Yorker, I picked up "The Constant Gardener", and was absolutely taken. Here, I thought, is a man who sees the world through his own eyes. Soon after, I read "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", the Smiley Trilogy, and "Little Drummer Girl". All were excellent. "Smiley's People" is one of the greatest novels I have read.

Mr. le Carre's great strength in all of these novels was his ability to underscore all of the painful ambiguities of the world in which we live, of the perpetual struggle between societies and civilizations. To call these novels activist fiction, or "message books" would be crude and inaccurate; Mr. LeCarre tells a great story, first and foremost. His message has never been clear. That's the point. Mr. le Carre's world is colored with shades of gray. It is a world in which--all too often--the only way to defeat your enemy is to become, in some sense, worse than your enemy. The outcome may be desirable, but the means are disgusting.

Granted, "The Constant Gardener" represented a bit of a departure, insofar as the book is a clever and subtle attack on globalization and its excesses. In this regard, "The Constant Gardener" falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum that links "Absolute Friends" with the rest of Mr. Le Carre's works. It is not a political tract disguised as a novel, but it hints at some crystallization--or petrification--in Mr. le Carre's worldview, a diminution of the ambiguity of his earlier fiction.

"Absolute Friends" features a compelling character--one can hardly imagine Mr. le Carre failing to creat a compelling central character--but, as a story, it fails in every other respect. The problem here is that, whereas le Carre's "message"--insofar as he has ever had one--has always emerged from the story, in "Absolute Friends" the story is contructed around the message. Mr. le Carre would have been better off writing a political tract, one to be placed on the shelf next to Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Paul krugman and other authors who share his views.

The author's central failure is his inability to construct an adequate narrative to support the polemics in the book. The plot is pointless and transparent, a sort of after-school special designed to impart a clear and noticeably unambiguous view of the world: don't do drugs, don't talk to strangers, don't support Bush.

As to Mr. le Carre's views themselves, "Absolute Friends left me with a heretofore unimaginable, and yet unmistakable impression: this is the work of a political naif, of someone who sees the world in the same simplistic terms that he finds so roundly disgusting in Mr. Bush. It is a view that will ring true with many around the world, but not one that provides useful insight into what is really happening, nor will it contribute meaningfully to the current discourse. Indeed, Mr. le Carre's stark and uncompromising views preclude discourse, and are devoid of the nuance and ingenuity that informed his prior works. Whereas the works of his earlier years provoked thought, inviting the reader into an internal conversation, "Absolute Friends" is a lecture, one side of a shouting match between a parent and his rebellious teenager, the hasty work of an angry old man. Mr. le Carre's best work is certainly behind him.

Rating:
Summary: One of His Best Post-Karla
Review: If your agenda is to justify the Iraq war, don't read this book. You will be tempted to write a hateful review. If you are too young to remember 1968 and are not interested, don't read this book; you will find the story too fanciful.

For the rest of us, Ted and Sasha are real figures; there are millions of them. Like us, they lived on through the sobering reality, and felt betrayed by current events. The bitter ending is a powerful (perhaps unfitting) epitaph for the generation, delivered by the writer who possibly shares the pathos of 1968. Or perhaps, Le Carre's literary geneius knows too well how to connect. As such, "Absolute Friends" may not survive the test of time, but what does?

The book surpasses "Secret Pilgrim" in its bitterness, and is far more compelling than his recent books including "Taylor of Panama" or "Constant Gardener."

Rating:
Summary: Stunning
Review: This stunning book by John le Carre is probably his best work. I'd imagine the reason some people are a bit turned off by it is that le Carre doesn't pull any punches. His characters are real, the settings are real, and he give us, the reader, enough credit to allow us to make some jugdements for ourselves. Not everything is neatly wrapped up. There are no sermons. It's all there, brilliantly written, and with no rose colored glasses to block the glare.

Also recommended: Catch 22, Life of Pi, Bark of the Dogwood

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely hypocritical
Review: Le Carre has lost his way in a book that is more a political statement than an espionage novel.His sympathetically idealistic character Sasha, described on the book's jacket as "seeker after absolutes" labels Israel's creation a "monstrous human crime" but doesn't want to be called anti-semitic.. He lambasts the Colation of the Willing's bombing of innocent Iraqis buts says nothing of Sadam's torcher and executions of hundreds of thousands of his own people.

The author is clearly trying to make a statement but in so doing destroys what could have been one of his better books. The nuance and artfullnes of his previous books is replaced with the author's own obvious disdain for America, Israel and the war.

The reader should be cautioned. If you cherished the Smiley trilogy, The Perfect Spy, The Little Drummer Girl and his other works as I did, do yourself a favor and don't read this book. You may become as disillusioned with the author is as the author is with us.

Rating:
Summary: First Rate Le Carre - Bravo!
Review: Many reviewers have already documented the premise of this book, the charcters,ideology and the story line. As a devoted reader of John LeCarre I felt this was an important book. LeCarre's characters always maintain a certain aura of mystery and it is left to the reader to deduce the careful planning of these characters in the whole scheme of the book. If you are not willing to know "his people" as they lead their lives and the intertactions that forge such a bond, or the minds of rationale of their beliefs, then you are doing LeCarre a great injustice.

I found this a particularly interesting book and highly recommend it. I regret that some thought this book too political when, in fact, it is not as politically damning as it could have been had Mr Le Carre wove even more of the truth of the state of our world into this book of "fiction."

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read
Review: Another great le Carre book. If you liked The Honorable Schoolboy or The Spy Who Came In From the Cold you'll love this one. It depicts a world which has changed so much over the last 50 years, but sadly in many ways has not changed at all. It's not for everyone, but if you don't like where the world is heading you should take a look at this.

Rating:
Summary: An Absolute Five For This Absolute Friend!
Review: When a master artist sharpens his pen, his words can cut to the quick. In Absolute Friends, le Carre has done just that. This haunting story leaves us not with the famililar and therefore comfortable le Carre ambilvalence about the morality of his characters, their profession, and their actions, but with a stark vision of the terrifying reality in which we live today.

Perhaps its starkness is why some reviewers here seem disappointed with this stunning work. Other reviewers perhaps found the novel's inherent critiques and probing questions too deeply troubling. Still others, unaccustomed to storytelling of this caliber, may have become impatient with the amount of backstory required to bring Ted and Sasha, Amory and Jay to such vivid life that the novel's end could feel so heartbreakingly devastating.

For myself, I might have preferred this dramatic tale to end on a note of hope for the future of our society, but no. Instead, our absolute friend Mr. le Carre has offered us the greater gift of a heartfelt wakeup call--and a priceless mirror reflecting how we in the West are viewed today by the vast majority of people around the globe.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute Balderdash
Review: There's only one solution. Put Le Carre in the ring with Clancy and let these two relics have at it. On the left, John's slipped his moral and ideological moorings altogether but he can still land an actual English sentence. On the right, Tom is so punchdrunk in his latest he needs a designated typist. One woozy sentence from TIGER tells the whole story: "The sun rose promptly at dawn."

And the winner? The evil of two lessers.

Rating:
Summary: Not anti-american, pro-individualism
Review: I am not surprised many Americans don't like this book. Too close to an unpleasant truth. But it's a good one, athough not his best.
Le Carré is not anti-American: like the hero of this book, he has supported America when it was the country that everybody looked at as the symbol of freedom and individualism: like him, he's frightened and worried now that some leaders and corporate powers seem keen on imposing a New Order to their benefit, disregarding thruth and freedom.
Many of us share the same concern, all over the world; but only a few can transform it in such good writing.

Rating:
Summary: Not quite as good as usual
Review: I'll admit, up front, to being an "America-hating liberal" who agrees with about every statement Mr. Le Carre makes in this book. I'm a card-carrying dubya-hater and sometimes think I would love to move to Canada. That said, this is not Mr. Le Carre's best work. It is a rant disguised as a novel. Which is precisely what Le Carre intends, but if readers pick it up looking for his usual nuance, subtlety, and moral shadings, they will find it lacking. The first 300 or so pages are vintage le carre, as they trace protagonist Ted Mundy's life from birth through a shadowy cold war spy-land. But the last 150 pages are an excuse for the author to vent his spleen, which doesn't come naturally. It's rushed, poorly plotted, and disappointing. However, on the whole the book is a fairly good read, a good story, and thought provoking, and I'd recommend it- even to a conservative.