Absolute Friends

Rating:
Summary: Literary thriller with problems
Review: This is indeed not your typical Le Carre story. It is more literary than commercial - hence some of the negative reviews here complaining of boredom. Don't read it if you want something fast-paced and suspense-full. The suspense in this one builds very slowly. What this story lives from is the study of two characters whose lives remain intertwined through the second half of the cold war until today, and in which they play some role in the big game of espionage. It is also a mini-study of political Germany of the same period. The achievement of this book is something I have never seen from an English-language writer before: true grasp of Germany's political culture, its language and people (I am German myself). It wasn't always like this: in earlier novels Le Carre, too, has misspelt words and names, and altogether given too shallow an interpretation of what was happening. This book however is a quantum leap in that sense. Le Carre's understanding of German radical leftist thinking, language and actual history is uncanny. This is perhaps the only chance you get to hear the voices of the far left speak in its original tone - but in English.
The greatest failing of this story is that it builds so slowly and then comes to a sudden, abrupt and not very convincing end. The American operation that leads to the protagonists' death in Heidelberg is absurd and could never happen in this shape. The Americans wouldn't try it, and German authorities would never allow it. Le Carre has tried to make a point of course, but I didn't feel he made it very well. The American intervention is just a little too blatantly evil to be believable.
I would, however, like to make one comment on the accusation that this book is somehow "anti-American". This is only true if any book that is critical of a specific German/French/Russian government's actions is "anti-German/French/Russian". In other words, it is not.


Rating:
Summary: Interesting characters, too much flashbacking
Review: This book has some interesting characters, but the plot description is slightly misleading. The first chapter is in the present day, but after that we get an overlong flashback which basically is a biography of our protagonist, finally getting back to the present at about page 300. The "biopic" format was unnessecary, the main focus should've been on the present day portion of the story, with maybe a few flashbacks bookending it ala Godfather II.

The present day storyline:

British ex-spy Ted Mundy is living in Heidelberg Germany, running an English language school. Estranged from his first family, he has a ready made second family in the form of a Turkish fiancee and her young son. But the school's business partner turns out to be a crook, so Ted has to get a crappy job as a tour guide. He is then reuinted with a longtime acquaintance, a German anarchist named Sasha. Sasha is working for a counter culture guru named Dimitri, and Dimitri wants Ted to reopen his school and turn it into a "Counter University". But Dimitri's money comes from questionable sources, which causes concern for Ted, and his old CIA contact Jay Roarke, who is convinced of a terrorist plot to destroy Heidelberg. Are Sasha and Dimitri really terrorists or is the shady Roarke setting them up? It all leads to a violent, and tragic, finale. Too bad it takes so long for this plot to get rolling.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Should be Left Out in the Cold
Review: David Cornwell, a/k/a John Le Carre' certainly has enough hits under his belt. He's made his literary bones big time. Why then, this recycling of cold war weltschmerz with an editorial and slap dash cartoon ending? Those of us who participated in the cold war in intelligence will wax reminiscent in the Sasha Mundy relationship, but Hell, it's been done to death already Mr. Le Carre'. You don't like American politics? Fine, but put your essays where they belong. And that "Gee, I'm sick of my own book, so I'll kill everybody quick," ending? Your readership deserves better, and no doubt you can do better.
Sometimes it pays to know when to throw in the typewriter and hit the showers. Maybe it's that time.

Rating:
Summary: Fine Le Carre!
Review: Le Carre at his best! I eagerly await the movie or teleplay.

Rating:
Summary: Run away from this book...swiftly!!!
Review: John le Carre used to write very good, suspenseful, exciting spy novels. I picked this book up to read on a cross-country flight. This book was nothing more than a horrendously boring, philosophically inept, left-wing socialist rant. It did have a few exciting pages when the two main characters were actively engaged in espionage, but this small, short-lived homage to John le Carre books of the past was overshadowed by the leftist, anti-American political diatribe that the rest of the book consisted of. I'll admit, I am a conservative politically, but I can't begin to see how even the most died-in-the-wool liberal/leftist/socialist could stand all the endless pages of drippy left wing philosophy and pseudo-intellectualism.

I highly recommend that when you see this book on the shelves, you very hurriedly turn and run the other way, "Absolute Friends" is an utter waste of time and money.


Rating:
Summary: Britain's most brilliant novelist
Review: John Le Carré has never been a simple spewer of mechanical little spy yarns. He has always been a fine novelist with a style and a point of view all his own. His Cold War novels are the defining literary monument of that period; quite aside from plot details and other entertaining minutiæ, they synthesise a world. And they do it with unforgettable brilliance.

In his latest undertaking, he relates the Cold War era to this age of single-superpower dementia. He does it with style and a point of view of his own. Like all great literature, ABSOLUTE FRIENDS holds up a mirror to reality-and some people don't like what they see. Too bad.

This is John Le Carré's NINETEENTH novel, and one of his best: as engaged and utterly himself as ever, he remains one of the most important writers of the last half century.


Rating:
Summary: Rage at the Machine
Review: This book is only partly a spy novel. It is more the story of a journey. That journey only begins when the main character Ted arrives in West Berlin of 1969 and pairs up with the student radical Sasha. Ted is not really so political, but rather taken up by the enthusiasm of those around him. After his years on military posts and British public schools the freedom of the Wohngemeinschaft must have been particularly liberating.

There is some brilliant imagery in this book - the snow-covered oval skywindow of Sasha's Kreuzberg loft; the cold, grimy reality of East Block cities of the late 1970's into the late 1980's; the person of Sasha himself who embodies much of the German spirit (not to mention its crippled modern history) that Ted finds so appealling.

Perhaps the greatest message that John leCarré gets across is his rage. The great ideals for which the Cold War was waged have been betrayed. Cynical opportunism and war profiteering, dressed in gaudy patriotic garb is the rule today. Even our history has been repackaged, deformed, perverted to provide support for mindless militarism. The betrayal of Western and US ideals, these same ideals that provided the necessary element for the greatest triumph of positive human will which brought on the end of the Cold War, is what fuels leCarré's rage imo. Contrary to what is sold to the American public today it was not US military power or Reaganism which "won" the Cold War, but the peoples of Eastern Europe themselves, who went out on the streets and freed their own countries, became actors in history. For obvious reasons this has been flushed down the old memory hole. It was the influence of America's ideals which mattered, the military and the intelligence effort played far lesser, supporting roles.

Today in their never ending wars against "terror", the enemy is faceless, unknown. The distinction between public and private, corporate and state, friendly and enemy have become hopelessly blurred. Pseudo Operations exist and with each outrage, one has to many times question the official version and simply ask "cuo bono"?

As a Cold War Intel Veteran I understand leCarré's rage because it is a rage we share.


Rating:
Summary: He ripped off G K Chesterton!
Review: The book feels like two and I didn't buy how he connects the two. The first part is cold war stuff recycled. The second is his diatribe against the war in Iraq. The glued together pieces of his story ultimately portray Islam as noble and stoic and the West as evil and probably deserving of what they got. The observant reader will undoubtedly see similarities in the story line with le Carre's other works such as "A Perfect Spy", "The Looking Glass War" and, yes, even "TSWCIFTC."
What really put me over the edge was le Carre ripping off lines from one of G K Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories. If you read the book and didn't catch it, it was the part about what the best joke is.
Don't waste your time on this book. If you want good reading, start with Chesterton. His books are easily and reasonably available from Ignatius Press.