Absolute Friends

This was the first le Carre book I read, and I thought it was amazing. It's not exactly a spy book, and it's not exactly an edge-or-your-seat thriller. The story spans the cold war to present, following the main character as he goes to many countries and watching him change with the times. Espionage just happens to be part of what occurs, but it is not really even central to the story. What is central is the character, and the changes of history. The book is written in the first person, so the readers know only what the main character knows, which I think is the best way to write a novel like this. I read The Spy Who Came in From the Cold after I read this, and I was disappointed to find that The Spy used a narrative style that let you see into the minds of more than one person, and it didn't let you know all of the thoughts of even the main character. For that and other reasons I liked Absolute Friends better. With such a great story, I was a little bit surprised to find that the ending was a bit far-fetched. However, I'm still going to give it five stars because the rest of the book is so good. To be fair, the ending of this book is better than that of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which I found even harder to swallow.

Ted Mundy was born in India, in what later became Pakistan. His father was a British soldier who drank too much. His mother died in childbirth. Father and son return to England where Ted goes to school till he drops out of Oxford. He goes to Berlin, falls in with leftist anarchists and meets his absolute friend Sasha. He saves Sasha's life during a student demonstration and is beaten for his trouble, then whisked out of Germany by British diplomats. He eventually gets a job leading goodwill tours of British artists behind the Iron Curtain and he seems to be a happily married member of the British middle class. Then he gets in trouble because a bunch of clueless British drama students try to smuggle a Polish actor from Poland through East Germany and into the West. Sasha, now an agent of the East German secret police, steps in and saves Ted from the Stasi and now Ted is pulled into a double spy game in which both he and Sasha pretend to spy on England, when their real goal is to pull down the East German regime they both despise. They remain double agents throughout the Cold War, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ted is out of the spy game and they drift apart. They don't see each other often, but the bond between them is strong and apparently eternal. Ted divorces, drifts to Germany, gets a job as a tour guide in Germany, moves in with a Turkish prostitute, becomes sort of a surrogate father for her son Mustafa, gets a dog and appears to finally be happy. Than Sasha returns to his life. Pulling Ted into a scheme of founding an open university that will liberate Western thought from the corporate imperialists. This scheme is funded by a mysterious character named Dimitri, a renegade billionaire who denounces the recent invasion of Iraq by the Americans as "a criminal and moral conspiracy." He goes on to claim that the war has been, "dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty...launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy. Yes, the book is a bit political, le Carre seems to feel that he has to get his views about Bush, Blair and the Iraqi War into popular print. Still it's a heck of a story with an fatalistic ending that reminded me of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." This is a character driven book, excellently written and it swept me away, but I suspect that if you are a strong supporter of the current administration in Washington, that your political views will cloud your judgement of this fine story which is, in my opinion, one of John le Carre's best. Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

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

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".

Ted Mundy was born in India, in what later became Pakistan. His father was a British soldier who drank too much. His mother died in childbirth. Father and son return to England where Ted goes to school till he drops out of Oxford. He goes to Berlin, falls in with leftist anarchists and meets his absolute friend Sasha. He saves Sasha's life during a student demonstration and is beaten for his trouble, then whisked out of Germany by British diplomats. He eventually gets a job leading goodwill tours of British artists behind the Iron Curtain and he seems to be a happily married member of the British middle class. Then he gets in trouble because a bunch of clueless British drama students try to smuggle a Polish actor from Poland through East Germany and into the West. Sasha, now an agent of the East German secret police, steps in and saves Ted from the Stasi and now Ted is pulled into a double spy game in which both he and Sasha pretend to spy on England, when their real goal is to pull down the East German regime they both despise. They remain double agents throughout the Cold War, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ted is out of the spy game and they drift apart. They don't see each other often, but the bond between them is strong and apparently eternal. Ted divorces, drifts to Germany, gets a job as a tour guide in Germany, moves in with a Turkish prostitute, becomes sort of a surrogate father for her son Mustafa, gets a dog and appears to finally be happy. Than Sasha returns to his life. Pulling Ted into a scheme of founding an open university that will liberate Western thought from the corporate imperialists. This scheme is funded by a mysterious character named Dimitri, a renegade billionaire who denounces the recent invasion of Iraq by the Americans as "a criminal and moral conspiracy." He goes on to claim that the war has been, "dressed up as a crusade for Western life and liberty...launched by a clique of war-hungry Judeo-Christian geopolitical fantasists who hijacked the media and exploited America's post-9/11 psychopathy. Yes, the book is a bit political, le Carre seems to feel that he has to get his views about Bush, Blair and the Iraqi War into popular print. Still it's a heck of a story with an fatalistic ending that reminded me of "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold." This is a character driven book, excellently written and it swept me away, but I suspect that if you are a strong supporter of the current administration in Washington, that your political views will cloud your judgement of this fine story which is, in my opinion, one of John le Carre's best. Reviewed by Captain Katie Osborne