Absolute Friends

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Summary: In the pursuit of principle: Yesterday and Today.
Review: <P>
The U.S.-Iraq war has ended and dissatisfied with the British Government, Ted Mundy is betrayed by his English Language School partner, Egon. Egon has fled with the last of their assets, leaving him broke. Out of a job and business Mundy wanders the streets aimlessly. While at a café Mundy meets Zara, a young Turkish prostitute. Instead of taking her up on her offer, Mundy plays the Good Samaritan and offers her a meal.

Drawn to this neglected and abused woman, Mundy escorts her home, against her will. It doesn't take long for Mundy to establish himself as a father figure to Zara's eleven year old son, Mustafa, and soon enough within Zara's bed.

Although things change while Mundy is entertaining a multicultural group of English speaking tourists at Linderhof, a Bavarian Palace, where he works as a tour guide. Like a shadow from the past, Sasha shows up requesting a meet. Sasha is the son of a East German Lutheran Pastor and a middle aged double agent. Mundy agrees and follows Sasha to a secluded flat. Here Mundy's memories take over after the two men greet.

Recollections reveal who Ted Mundy really is, where he comes from, as well as his feelings. A boy born in Pakistan, an adolescent with an alcoholic father who refuses to clarify his mother's identity, and for most of life has associated himself with any cause encountered. From communism and socialism to his first meeting with Sasha in Berlin, when they were university students and at the height of the cold war.

Mundy himself is a flawed individual that has practically failed at everything: college, reporter, novelist, businessman, and radio interviewer. But has managed to succeed at one thing: a secret double agent.

John le Carré's book could be seen as "anti-American" if one chose to read into things and very easily find reason with phrases such as: Journalists, however, were blandly reminded that the United States reserved to itself the right to "hunt down its enemies at any time in any place with or without the cooperation of its friends and allies." Or "The easiest and cheapest trick for any leader is to take his country to war on false pretenses. Anyone who does that should be hounded out of office for all time."

But how far is America willing to go? How much are we, the people, willing to tolerate?

The war in Iraq, government deception and corporate misdeeds on an unsuspecting public are just some of what readers can expect. Absolute Friends is filled with engaging characters that guarantee to generate reader sympathy. The underlying layers and messages are sure to evoke much thought no matter how one feels of the ongoing war, 9/11, political views or President Bush.

Absolute Friends is an exceptionally powerful and spellbinding novel. Not only in its implications of democracy but also in how the threat of terrorism is being used, in our world of today. If you liked Fahrenheit 9/11, you'll like this book. This is one book you'll want to read or give as a gift to your favorite activist!

Reviewed by Betsie


Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: 300 pages of character development (of a character not worth developing), followed by 100 pages of sophmoric plot. I regret having wasted many hours of my life reading this book. Lamest ending I've read in a long time and definitely not worthy of le Carre.

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Summary: Thoughtful Spy Thriller Ends As A Shrill Polemic
Review: Absolute Friends is in some ways a typical LeCarre production: protagonist Ted Mundy is the son of a soldier of the British Raj, and former student radical who fails honorably at many pursuits but excels as a Cold War spy. He could be one of Smiley's people, one of the more eccentric denizens of the Circus. He has the ironic detachment and the shadows and sadnesses of LeCarre's best creations.

But Mundy is more ambiguous and interesting, and more appealing, than the typical LeCarre misfit. Brought up to think his mother, who died bearing him, was a member of the aristocracy, he learns that she was really an Irish servant. The discovery does not displease him: Mundy identifies with humble people and underdogs generally, from his love for the Pakistani Ayah who mothered him to his romantic attachment to a Turkish prostitute.

Like Smiley (and LeCarre himself), Mundy immerses himself in German at Oxford. There, he is radicalized by the left-wing beauty Ilse. His subsequent study in Germany brings him into contact with Sasha, an intense and radical student and a "weird little bugger," as Mundy observes toward the end of the book. Mundy's radical Berlin days, and apparently his friendship with Sasha, come to an end in a violent clash with the police. Afterward, Mundy tries and fails at many things, before returning to Britain to become an employee of a British arts council and to attempt a normal married life.

But Sasha comes back into Mundy's life when, as part of an international exchange, Mundy accompanies a troupe of actors into East Germany. Sasha has been seduced into the workers' paradise and has now, against his will, been recruited into the Stasi, the East German secret police. But the reader soon learns that Sasha is actually a double agent working with British intelligence.

Once the Berlin Wall falls, Mundy's career in espionage ends. But he cannot escape Sasha, who returns to Mundy's life with a new project. LeCarre here begins a more swiftly plotted but ultimately unsatisfactory story dominated by a sinister, paranoid, and ruthless U.S. bent on eradicating terror.

LeCarre clearly has strong feelings about the Iraq War, about Blair and Bush, and about the U.S. as a malevolent "hyperpower." If you are at all pro-Bush or pro-Iraq War you will probably not enjoy this book very much. This aspect of the novel did not bother me, as I have been an opponent of the war from the beginning. However, the book eventually descends into tiresome anti-American polemics, and the principal American character comes across as too relentlessly evil to be really credible.

I love LeCarre's work generally. I wanted to love this book, but only was able to admire it for its literary quality and deft craftsmanship. However, I am still looking forward to LeCarre's next.

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Summary: Global webs of intrigue and so forth . . .
Review: Don't listen to the silly, muddle-headed writer below: this is fine, well-written spy novel that, like all such books and films, stretches credibility at times, but still manages to wrap itself up nicely at the end with a climactic finish that is all the more thrilling because it is SO thoroughly BELIEVABLE. The novel makes it clear that LeCarre is a wise and broad-minded author who well understands the tangled mass of the new global media and its ramifications for international politics during times of War. Ultimately, his political message is nothing so crude and base as the "America is the root of all evil" line which the overly-defensive alarmist below accuses him of. Rather, this book is a sweeping, objective look at the ways people develop, act upon, promote, are blinded by, and ultimately fall victim to their own ideological fervor. Yes, at the end of the story America comes out looking bad, but let's face it: America is doing a pretty good job of THAT with or without LeCarre's help - He was simply smart enough to turn our recent follies into a genuinely good and wholly sincere work of fiction. A fun and thought-provoking read for readers of all political persuasions. Fans of The DaVinci Code take note!

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Summary: More of the same. Ho hum.
Review: If you've read, say, "The Honourable Schoolboy," then the atmosphere will be entirely familiar. Other than that, the Russians have been superceded by Arabs and multinationals. Nothing else has changed.

I really don't know why I bother buying his books any more. I think I'd probably get just as much from re-reading "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold."

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Summary: Not so lovable losers
Review: Is this book a satire on the whole Euro looney left? Seems like it. A long, but snappy and often funny backstory on how Ted becomes what he is in 2003/4 pokes fun at the 60's pink radicals and useless cold war intelligence games played by the Brits and East Germans. Le Carre just can't let go of Berlin and MI5/6/?? The ending gets a lttle confused and wraps up quickly with the USA religious right as the bad guys and le Carre siding with the Naomi Klein/Noam Chomsky - ites. And Ted and Sasha as absolute friends and not so lovable losers caught in the middle. All in all a good read!

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Summary: Absent friend
Review: John Le Carre's an angry man. Years of working at intelligence and writing of the spy's world, you'd think he'd earned a rest. But the lessons of the Cold War, ignored by the West's leaders today, fuel his creativity. So, in his seventh decade, his ascerbic pen [keyboard?] continues chronicling political fallacies. In a style harsher than most of his previous books, Le Carre confronts today's world even more forcefully than in the past. His command of language remains unmatched, but subtlety has been tempered with a new assertiveness.

In creating a new character, Le Carre depicts a long span of time in this book. Ted Mundy's early years as a student radical in Berlin establish the foundation for this story. There, Mundy encounters Sasha, who becomes friend and mentor. Mundy, not a revolutionary, has a vague notion of wanting a better world. Lacking Sasha's dedication, and being shipped back to Britain, Mundy's life becomes the image of a man shambling along a country lane. No purpose, no successes - the images of his childhood in Pakistan with a drunken officer father and Muslim Ayah [nanny] impinge on his consciousness. As do the tales Col. Mundy told of Ted's almost divine mother. In his wanderings, Ted's links with Sasha are lost. He's an absent friend.

After many frustrating years, some in America, Mundy returns to Britain. His wanderings and introspections have led him to create a series of "selfs" - Mundy One, Two and so on. A new one is created when he's recruited to become an agent. The "cultural" maven is an old ploy for snooping or running agents. Mundy seems to have a magic touch, not least because his primary contact is Sasha. Sasha, disillusioned with the absolutisms and hypocrisies of the communist regimes, is a double agent in his own right. Between the two, links are forged to give Mundy the highest accolades from his British masters. The collapse of the Soviet Union reduces much of Mundy's focus - he's already passed through a marriage and fatherhood.

Adding to his confusion is another appearance of Sasha, who had vanished with The Wall. Sasha has a project. A big project - one that will remake the world. The American invasion of Iraq has unbalanced Mundy and Sasha's proposal tips him further. What role could a tired, middle-aged former radical have in relation to the crusade of the Coalition of the Willing? Le Carre speaks through his characters to condemn the sham of a professed expansion of liberty hiding a new colonialism. He uses Mundy to act as a foil to hypocritical Anglo-American adventures. Mundy knows both worlds, and some beyond. He should be a valiant campaigner with Sasha as his partner and mentor. Can he meet and overcome this new challenge?

Le Carre's mastery of portrayal of the spy's persona has lost nothing with the passage of years. Ted Mundy is an entirely new character. He's not the dotty old uncle of George Smiley, nor the rambunctious adventurer of "Honourable Schoolboy". Mundy could be a neighbour, even a cousin or close friend. His stresses are internal, but not entirely closed off. Hiding your life's work in mundane employment is a soul-breaking role, and Le Carre has depicted it masterfully. A book to be enjoyed in reprise, even if the ultimate outcome remains in the hands of the Coalition of the Willing. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

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Summary: Viva, Le Carre, Viva the truth
Review: Le Carre makes great drama in "Absolute Friends," boiling entertainment in a frothy cauldron of fearful and uneasy tension. Well done, wise old storyteller! Le Carre distills the thick background of his prose so this book moves along much faster than most of his work. In this "for us or against us" world, you will find this one of Le Carre's most refreshing, courageous and entertaining stories. It is also chillingly believable because it is happening around us every day.

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Summary: Need a villain? Use the USA!
Review: The book is slow and dry for the first 2/3. Aimless page-filling for the most part, with a few interesting character descriptions. Then out of nowhere, an agent of the CIA is brought in by Britain's Intelligence Service, is given carte blanche to do whatever he pleases, full access to anything he wants, and then he disappears. He returns in the 11th hour of the book to set up a "plan" that no reader can believe, let alone a decorated intelligence spy, and then proceeds to murder the two heroes of the book. In Germany. With, apparently, the full agreement of both the German and British Intelligence agencies.
This was a ridiculous read. If you are naive enough to believe that America is the cause of all that is wrong with the world, you may just be barely naive enough to read this book without laughing out loud. LeCarre retired from British Intelligence something like thirty years ago. This book is so far out of the realm of the possibility that it isn't worth reading from a perspective of learning what the world is like. Unfortunately, the prose is so banal that it isn't worth reading as a full-fiction novel.

If you want to read LeCarre, read "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold," and then find someone else to read.

Rating:
Summary: An Unusual Spy Novel
Review: This effort by le Carre is as much literature as it is spy thriller. While dry and slow to get going, you will be rewarded if you stick with it. This is first-rate character development, better than anything else he has done so far. Well worth the price in paperback.