The Constant Gardener: A Novel [Paperback]

John le Carre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 27, 2004

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle -- young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well.

A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carré portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy, as Justin Quayle -- amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat -- discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

British diplomat Justin Quayle, complacent raiser of freesias and doting husband of the stunning, much younger Tessa, has tended his own garden in Nairobi too long. Tessa is Justin's opposite, a fiery reformer, "that rarest thing, a lawyer who believes in justice," whose campaigns have earned her a nickname: "the Princess Diana of the African poor." But now Tessa has turned up naked, raped, and dead on a mysterious visit to remote Lake Turkana in Kenya. Her traveling companion (and lover?), the handsome Congolese-Belgian doctor Arnold Bluhm, has vanished. So has Quayle's complacency.

Tessa had been compiling data against a multinational drug company that uses helpless Africans as guinea pigs to test a tuberculosis remedy with unfortunately fatal side effects. Her report was destroyed by her husband's superiors; was she? It's all somehow connected to the sinister British firm House of ThreeBees, whose ad boasts that it's "buzzy for the health of Africa!" John le Carré symbolically associates ThreeBees with an ominous buzz in the Nairobi morgue: "Over [the corpses], in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note."

The home office tries to take Quayle in out of the cold. He cleverly eludes their clammy embrace, turns spy, and takes off on a global chase to avenge Tessa and solve her murder. Le Carré has lost none of his gift for setting vivid scenes in far-flung places expertly described: London, Germany, Saskatchewan, Kenya. His sprinting thriller prose remains in great shape. And thanks to his 16 years in the British Foreign Office, his merciless send-up of its cutthroat intrigues and petty self-delusions is unbelievably good--or rather, believably so. This is global do-gooder satire on a literary par with Doris Lessing's The Summer Before the Dark.

But you want to know if The Constant Gardener is as good as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Very nearly. Africa's nightmare is more complex than the cold war chess match, and the world pharmaceutical circus is tougher to dramatize than the old spy-versus-spy-versus-spymaster game. Still, le Carré can write a smart, melancholy page-turner, and his moral outrage (the real subject of his books) burns as brightly as ever. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

As the world seems to move ever further beyond the comparatively clear-cut choices of the Cold War into a moral morass in which greed and cynicism seem the prime movers, le Carr 's work has become increasingly radical, and this is by far his most passionately angry novel yet. Its premise is similar to that of Michael Palmer's Miracle CureDcynical pharmaceutical firm allied with devious doctors attempts to foist on the world a flawed but potentially hugely profitable drugDbut the difference is in the setting and the treatment. Le Carr has placed the prime action in Africa, where the drug is being surreptitiously tested on poor villagers. Tessa Quayle, married to a member of the British High Commission staff in corruption-riddled contemporary Kenya, gets wind of it and tries in vain to blow the whistle on the manufacturer and its smarmy African distributor. She is killed for her pains. At this point Justin Quayle, her older, gentlemanly husband, sets out to find out who killed her, and to stop the dangerous drug himselfDat a terrible cost. Le Carr 's manifold skills at scene-setting and creating a range of fearsomely convincing English characters, from the bluffly absurd to the irredeemably corrupt, are at their smooth peak here. Both The Tailor of Panama and Single & Single were feeling their way toward this wholehearted assault on the way the world works, by a man who knows much better than most novelists writing today how it works. Now subject and style are one, and the result is heart-wrenching. (Jan. 9) Forecast: Admirers of the author who may have found some of the moral ambiguities and overelaborate set pieces of his last two books less than top-drawer le Carr will welcome a return to his best form. There is a wonderfully charismatic and idealistic heroine, which will bolster female readership, and the appearance of the book shortly after the release of a movie of Tailor (starring Jamie Lee Curtis) is bound to create an extra rush of media attention. Be prepared for the biggest le Carr sales in years.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (January 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743262433
• ISBN-13: 978-0743262439
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (188 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,225,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John le Carre was born in 1931. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, secured him a worldwide reputation, which was consolidated by the acclaim for his trilogy: Tinke, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; The Honorable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People. His novels include The Little Drummer Girl, A Perfect Spy, The Russia House, Our Game, The Taileor of Panama, and Single & Single. John le Carre lives in Cornwall.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tautly Written, Exquisite Read, August 31, 2005

By 

Candida Eittreim (Sacramento, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Constant Gardener: A Novel (Paperback)

Having been a long time reader of John Le Carre's often bitter ironic take on the life of Britain's intelligence community, I looked forward to reading The Constant Gardener, as it promised to be a departure from his usual cloak and dagger novels. It exceeded my expectations in ways I did not anticipate.

The Constant Gardener at its heart is a love story. Justin Quayle, a minor British diplomat, is stationed in Africa, rumored to be his last posting. He has met and married a younger woman, Tessa, the subject of much gleeful and often malicious speculation amongst the diplomatic community.

The story opens with the horrific news that bodies have been found by Lake Turkana and are believed to be those of Tessa and her driver. The other occupant, a much beloved man by the name of Dr. Arnold Bluhm, an African civil rights activist, long rumored to be Tessa''s lover, is missing.

As the tale unfolds, myriad people who knew Tessa, some loving her, others despising her youth and high ideals, struggle to cope with her loss, and their own hidden fears. Many hold Justin Quayle in semi-contempt as an overfond and doting fool, more involved in his plants, than keeping a rein on his young headstrong wife.

The writing is taut and exquisite, as carefully, Le Carre exposes the reality behind the masks worn by so many of the people around Tessa. Tessa herself, using both recollection and the reflections of Justin Quayle, begins to emerge as something much greater than anyone ever gave her credit for being.

Justin, trying to deal with the huge emotional wound his wife's death opened, begins on his own, to investigate just what Tessa had gotten herself involved in. He finds finally, something more precious, more valuable than he could ever imagine. In the process, he faces his own shortcomings when it comes to dealing with the bigger issues of our time. And in this discovery, he finds himself coming up short in comparison to Tessa, who never ran or shirked her role in battling the truly nasty, vile things facing Africa.


This book is filled with a passionate concern for the welfare of the African peoples. Le Carre spares neither the UN, his own government nor the people on the ground, supposedly trying to help bring Africa into the 21st century. The role of the giant pharmaceutical company's, and what they have done is mercilessly depicted.

The Constant Gardener is one of the best Le Carre has ever written, and well worth reading. It is both thoughtful and deeply troubling, given the times we live in. But the insights into people, the depiction of the UN aid effort, and why it often fails to reach the people needing it most, make this a timely and absorbing read

81 of 87 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An emotionally powerful new novel from John le Carre, December 16, 2000

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Constant Gardener (Hardcover)

Too often a commercially successful novelist -- especially one identified with a particular genre -- falls into the easy routine of writing in essence the same book over and over again or, at best, cutting corners to quickly finsh off yet another manuscript to be shipped off to the printer in time for the annual publication date. But that is not John le Carre. His work almost always shows a progression in his exploration of theme and technique. Certainly there are echoes of his most recent works from "Our Game" through "Single & Single", but in "The Constant Gardener" we are drawn even more deeply into an identification with the central character during his lonely odyssey. I cannot imagine how anyone could read this novel without being strongly emotionally affected.

73 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent tale from the spymaster, December 14, 2000

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Constant Gardener (Hardcover)

In Kenya, someone rapes and murders activist Tessa Quayle, wife of a mid level British diplomat while the victim's traveling companion Dr. Arnold Bluhm has vanished. Tessa and Arnold protested the inhumane practices of the global pharmaceutical companies. They bitterly complained about the use of locals to test new products and the selling of expired medicines that would be flushed down the toilet in the West.

The police blame the missing Arnold for the crime as evidence surfaced that they were lovers. Tessa's sedate, older spouse Justin wonders if something more sinister led to his wife's death. Even as his superiors want to place a lid on a major scandal, Justin begins to make inquiries starting with the time Tessa spent as a patient in an African hospital where he believes she discovered something top secret. He also believes that someone felt she deserved to die to keep all hidden skeletons buried so the public doesn't know.

Many recent novels have anointed the giant drug companies as the replacement to the Soviet Union as the enemy of the common person. With THE CONSTANT GARDENER, espionage thriller guru John Le Carre comes out of the cold and joins the ranks of writers starring a serene David battling against the pharmaceutical-government complex who will kill for profit. The story line is fast-paced and no one does locality scenes better than Mr. Le Carre does as he shows with his vivid tour of Kenya's Lake Turkana region. Fans of his great tales will welcome the author's switch, as this is one of his better entries in recent years and is one of the sub-genre's superior crafted tales.

Harriet Klausner