Customer Reviews

Absolute Friends

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

As the other reviews to date indicate, you will love this book or hate it according to your particular political and religious prejudices. Broadly, committed Republicans and fundamentalist Christians will hate it and seek to dismiss it as rubbish, Democrats and liberals will see it as an attempt to alert the world to what is happening before our eyes. The five stars show where I stand. There is too much evidence of the 'war of lies' and the people behind it for the plot to be anything but dangerously credible. The denouement of the book hits like a sledgehammer.

Standing back from the politics, the plot and the narrative are as gripping as his best previous work and his command of the detailed build-up of atmosphere remains quite stunning.

ABSOLUTE FRIENDS is perhaps John le Carré's most elegant construct in some time. By its conclusion, it also reflects the author's anger against America's and Britain's overt justification for their current involvement in Iraq, i.e. as the front line in the war against Muslim terrorism. I doubt if it will be preferred bedtime reading for George Dubya or Tony Blair, just as CONSTANT GARDENER wouldn't find favor with pharmaceutical company CEOs.

The hero of the story, and its ultimate patsy, is Edward "Ted" Mundy, born in Lahore of a British officer in the Indian Army and a native nursemaid to an aristocratic English family on the very night that the Raj formally splintered into India and Pakistan. Ted's mother dies during childbirth. His father, the "Major", subsequently joins the new Pakistani Army, but is eventually sent back to England in disgrace after striking a brother officer. Over the decades, the younger Mundy plays cricket, drops out of Oxford, becomes a Berlin anarchist, is expelled from West Germany, and becomes a minor functionary in the British government and an MI-6/Stasi double agent. Then, after German reunification, Ted fails as an English language teacher in Heidelberg, becomes a tour guide at one of Mad King Ludwig's castles in Bavaria, and meets his final destiny as an apparent Muslim sympathizer who's fallen in love with a Turkish ex-prostitute. Mundy's largely directionless life is characterized by a lack of entrenched commitment to anything political, and, like a leaf, is blown from cause to cause by girlfriends, wife, mistress, intelligence handler, circumstance, and, above all, his "absolute friend" Sasha, a stateless, radical visionary/philosopher/anarchist, whom Ted originally meets during his youthful anti-establishment period in West Berlin.

As with any le Carré offering, all of which compulsively stress character and plot development, the reader seeking action and thrills need not open the cover. To my mind, the author's greatest triumphs were the two George Smiley novels, TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY and SMILEY'S PEOPLE, both of which were made into superb television miniseries by the BBC and starring Alec Guinness in the title role. Here, Mundy, in his own way, is as engaging a protagonist as Smiley. However, I must ultimately knock-off a star because I, while no uncritical supporter of George Dubya and his Iraqi venture, somewhat resent being presented with an entertainment opportunity that becomes, in the end, simply a vehicle for the author to grind an ax, albeit cleverly done. John must be getting cranky in his old age.

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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

Strong friendships in the spy business are allegedly rare and even deemed impossible to maintain. Who can you trust? What is truth? On which side is the other? Who is the enemy, yesterday, today and tomorrow? In this latest endeavor to explore the spy thriller genre beyond the cold war, Le Carre explores these and other questions. First of all, this is the story of two unlikely friends: one English, with a strong colonial background, the other German, with an East German background. They first meet in Berlin during the late 60s student rebellion. From then on they get drawn together by circumstance or design over years and decades after, until ...

The story's centre is Ted Mundy, an unidentified narrator follows him and seems to view the world more or less from the same perspective. Mundy's on and off reflections of his increasingly complicated life expose him as an accidental spy. He feels like he's having multiple personalities. Drawn by a sense of responsibility toward his student friend, he gets enmeshed deeper and deeper in political intrigues even long after the Berlin Wall comes down. Why does he continue despite the alternative of a fresh start and a small piece of personal happiness? Does he have a real choice?

Sasha, his friend and German counterpart, incorporates traits of young German rebels of the day. He also typifies a certain type of former East German refugee in the West who is torn between dream and reality: anti-west as well as anti-east. The question keeps arising whether he has any real moral standing or is a floater, a prime candidate for the double agent. Several other players who stand out in their respective roles surround the two main characters. There are several attractive women, of course, and English and American spymasters. While all are a bit shady, the "honest" spymaster remains, not surprisingly, the Brit.

Le Carre knows how to draw people and create situations. His description of life in a student commune in Berlin of the time is brilliant in its accuracy and atmospheric depiction. Ted's childhood in India, then Pakistan, is conveyed through images that explain its influence on him, his ongoing nostalgia for the place and the people. A major strength of the book is these images and the characterization of Mundy as a result of all his experiences. Being familiar with the events of the time, especially in Berlin, I was captured by the story. For me Absolute Friends is more than a spy thriller - the core thriller only starts more than halfway through the story. While the first half is a build up of the two main characters for the later events, it also sets the stage for the ongoing exploration of friendships and the complexities of human relations. The final drama of the book has led to criticism of Le Carre. However, while unlikely in reality, within the context of the story it was a logical conclusion.

Absolute Friends has attracted friends and foes. Those interested in the European scene up to and beyond the fall of the Berlin Wall will find the story especially interesting. Those looking for the traditional spy thriller may be disappointed in the length it dedicates to the characters and their interactions. [Friederike Knabe]

I've read every one of le Carre's books and this is his weakest effort. A good story, I kept turning the pages but the story left me with the impression that it was a political statement with a plot wrapped around it. I couldn't agree more with the political statement, but it would have been better as a non-fiction book reading directly about le Carre's opinions.

Okay, le Carre's last book, The Constant Gardener, was marred by too much anti-capitalist pontificating, and the ending of this one declares its post 9/11 ideological leanings in a very blunt way, but don't dismiss le Carre as a crank: Absolute Friends is a first rate novel by a first rate writer working near the top of his form.

In this book le Carre fuses two of his main preoccupations: the inner lives of spies and the patched-together moral systems of men living on the crumbling fringes of the British Empire. Ted Mundy is the son of a disgraced soldier mustered out of the British Army in Pakistan. Ted's father takes him back to England where he endures the rainy, inhospitable life of a down-at-the-heels English schoolboy. His love of the German language and its literature carries him to Berlin during the sixties, where he falls in with a left-leaning tribe of radicals and anarchists. It's here that he meets his lifelong friend, Sasha, the renegade son of a German Lutheran pastor.

Sasha, both street-smart and hopelessly romantic, jumps over the wall to East Germany, where he becomes as disillusioned with ham-fisted socialism as he had been with exploitative capitalism. Ted, now back in Britain, shepherding art groups on tours through Iron Curtain countries, meets his old friend again in East Berlin. Sasha, under the guise of recruiting Mundy as a German spy, becomes in turn a double agent for the Brits. This is familiar turf for le Carre, and he mines it for his usual insightful explorations of individual identity. Ted has to deal with who he is, both in the existential moments of deception, and during the dead times when it's just him and the left-over bits of personality that he's kept out of the day-to-day masquerades.

The crumbling of the Soviet Empire puts an abrupt end to Ted and Sasha's spy careers. Ted is rewarded with a language school in Germany that eventually takes a financial nosedive. Sasha wanders in the wilderness as an itinerant radical lecturer until he meets Dmitri, a man with a murky past and a messianic vision for the modern west. Sasha finds Ted and enlists him in yet another scheme to redeem the world from error. What happens next is what might occur if America were run by a dogmatic, not- very-bright leader who happened to be fronting for people opportunistic enough to use the threat of terrorist attacks as a means of consolidating their power.

Sasha and Ted are immensely sympathetic characters who have compassion in abundance, a sense of history, and a belief in the world's inter-connectedness. What makes them different from Smiley and le Carre's other spies is that they're only intermittently propped up by their sense of historical imperative; otherwise they're forced to improvise, and it's this combustible mix of idealism and improvisation that leads to tragedy.

Le Carre burns with moral outrage, but he doesn't let his beliefs outrun his literary judgment. The pacing here is masterful, the prose precise, and the characters nuanced in their feelings and reactions. At a historical moment when the very idea of nuance is under attack, we need more writers who have the drive and talent to make us ask what it means to be a socially responsible human in this particular time. Such writers are a necessary counterweight to those politicians who use current events to ram home their political agendas.

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.

If you can ignore a totally forced and therefore poor ending, quite uncharacteristic for LeCarre, you can still find this a delightful reading experience.

LeCarre has the gift of engaging and finely wrought narrative down cold. He can probably do it in his sleep. And here, he delivers such a gift with some depth of human content and feeling, following his hapless hero Ted Mundy and his "absolute friend" Sasha through the third world and through an absolutely hilarious account of radical 60s Germany. This comes across marvelously authentic and one suspects it is vintage first hand observation stored up for years from the author's early agent days in that era. It alone is worth the price of the book, and merits 3 stars all on its own, without a care for the rest of the book.

Frankly I don't think my country is the Great Satan so I'll let the ending pass. LeCarre simply has never understood Americans very well. But we're big enough to take it. It works plotwise up to a point and is not a total spoil. It is certainly possible, sure -- as possible as Tony Blair and George Bush coming out of the closet and getting married, though highly unlikely. Well, taking a pie in the face of this sort comes with the territory of what we have become. You don't have to either buy the neocon line, either, to dislike it, and being anti-war shouldn't cause you necessarily to endorse it, either. It just exposes the guy as a little on the bender, somewhat off his balanced center, under the influence, whatever. But great writers are entitled to occasional screw ups, and this book delivers a lot else in terms of character and dead-on observation anyway.

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]

Unlike most of the negative reviewers, I am fairly sympathetic to Le Carre's basic message in this book--that the US has far overreached in the "war" on terrorism and that European governments have cynically gone along with the US.

But I found the book overwrought and unsubtle, which is surprising from the creator of Smiley's world where what was not said was more important than what was said. In Absolute Friends Le Carre takes off on radical cants and screeds from the late 1960's and early 1970's that last for dozens of pages and lead absolutely nowhere. The words he puts into his characters' mouths in the commune in West Berlin or Sasha's later "conversion" period read as if taken from the script of a really bad movie--stiff, hyperrevolutionary, unreal. I was active in the radical left in that period, and while the concepts and words he uses were tossed around in print and in a few beer-sotted discussions in dark bars, no one talked that way all the time or took themselves that seriously.

Saddest for me was that Le Carre made his main characters--Ted and Sasha--so blind as to be stupid. The reader has so much more insight into events than the main characters that we wind up wondering how they could be such blind idiots, how they can miss what is so obvious to anyone else. This disrespect for the characters was a major drawback to my enjoyment of the book. In the Smiley novels, there was plenty of self-ignorance, as there is in all of us, and this made the characters human. But in Ted and Sasha, we get cartoon characters who do not see the anvil balanced on the door they are about to open. It just does not ring true.

So, bully for the message, but I wish it had been contained in a better missive. One can only wonder what Alan Furst would have done with this material--likely far more subtle, quiet, and disquieting.