Le Carre John L Books : The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener

£0.01


There were those who feared that the end of the Cold War would deal a fatal blow to the creativity of many first-rate thriller writers who specialised in this territory. In the case of John le Carré, this would have meant the loss of not only Britain s finest thriller writer, but a serious novelist of quite as much literary gravitas as any of his mainstream contemporaries. Certainly, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold remains as utterly compelling today as when it was written, whereas such post-cold war le Carré themes as financial double-dealing seemed to inspire him less than the world of shifting identity he had dealt in so skilfully. But with The Constant Gardener, we have the author once again firing on all cylinders. The characterisation is as elegant and expressive as ever, the prose as limpid and forceful. But, most of all, le Carré has found a theme quite as pregnant as any he has handled in the past: the malign, deceptively ameliorative world of global pharmaceuticals. In the new novel, the customary themes of betrayal and danger are explored in a narrative that exerts a total grip throughout its considerable length. His protagonist, Justin Quayle, is an unreflective British diplomat whose job in the British High Commission in Nairobi suggests one of Graham Greene s dispossessed protagonists trying to survive in the sultry corruption of foreign climates. President Arap Moi s Kenya is a country in the grip of AIDS, while political machinations maintain a deadly status quo. When Quayle s wife (who has taken more interest in what is happening around her than her husband) is killed, his investigation of her murder leads him into a murky web of exploitation involving Kenyan greed and a major pharmaceutical company eager to promote its wonder cure for tuberculosis. As Quayle looks deeper into the company which his wife had been investigating, all he has carefully built around him begins to crumble. The steady accumulation of tension and rigorous delineation of character is emblematic of le Carré at his finest, and it is a tremendous pleasure to find the author so resolutely back on form, fired with a real sense of anger at the duplicity of the modern world:Specious, unadulterated, pompous Foreign Office bullshit, if you want its full name... trade isn t making the poor rich. Profits don t buy reforms. They buy corrupt government officials and Swiss bank accounts. --Barry Forshaw (This Review refers to the hardback edition of this title)

Unforgettable - This book starts off a little slowly, and actually I had to persevere to really get into it, but 7 hours on a train and I was well on my way.As you get to know the characters there are some very poignant moments in the book (which sadly the film completely irradicated - very disappointing) such as soil being tossed into Tessa s grave and covering the freesias that her constant gardener husband grew for her. It is not a soppy book by any means, yet some scenes are so emotinal that it could bring you to tears (and in my case, on the train, did).The book is a good old fashioned consppiracy theory, but it is painted in a way that isn t crime thriller and rather an exploration of self as the characters develop and you learn what people can really be capable of.The book is worth sticking with, I can t imagine anyone could be disappointed. If you have seen the film and like it, you will LOVE the book. If you have seen the film and hated it (like me) you will realise the true merits of the book lie within, well, the book.

Predictably PC - Easy read, enjoyable if you can ignore the inane politics of evil multinationals, demonized moslems and victim culture. Harder to ignore is the ghastly heroine (a concerned member of the public, a lawyer, .. a rights campaigner..deeply involved in aid work), an odious prig, sickeningly beloved by her servants, tearfully sent off by her African worshippers (Tessa our friend, goodbye..you came to us..you gave us your heart..goodbye), politically correct and a depressing window into LeCarre s fantasy world. After hundreds of pages describing Big Pharma s crimes: corruption, exploitation, third world guinea-pigging, intimidation, torture, and murder, he tells us that even this is by comparison with reality..as tame as a holiday postcard. On what planet is this idiot leftie on? By contrast, rights campaigners, Africans (poor ones), pharma watchdogs (off to a Rio conference), aid workers (one gives a lovely wave) and even Italian villagers are all wonderfully sincere and decent. Ex-pats, diplomats and their wives needless to say are bitchy, spoilt and remote. It s a simple tale of good-bad sterotypes.

Bleak, uncompromising and marvelous. - I have always loved the atmosphere of Le Carre s work and the way his characters use the English language. In the hands of actors like Richard Burton, Alec Guiness, Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan, the dialogue of such works as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Russia House and The Tailor of Panama has been brought to the large and small screen with great verve. I haven t seen the film version of The Constant Gardener but I m looking forward to it.The book is a bleak tale of corporate abuse, British foreign policy hypocrisy, African corruption and human tragedy, with little relief from the sheer awfulness of the story. What saves it from being simply depressing is Le Carre s almost Shakespearian use of the English language and the way he lifts the tale out of the depths of depravity and creates an almost epic tale of how one man seeks the truth - not to obtain justice for his murdered wife, save her reputation, or punish the guilty, but to find out for himself what the truth actually is. As such it conspires to be an inspirational tale, without a happy ending and without the guilty being brought to justice, but with a curiously satisfactory conclusion.I simply loved it.

Probably a very good film. - I have not seen the film and was lent the book by someone at work who said that they couldn t get into it. Sadly, I also could not get into it, although I did get a bit further into it that my friend did.The problem is, and I would assume that the film shows them to better advantage, that the entire middle of the book is full of the letters, emails, reports and miscellaneous government papers set out as letters, emails, reports & miscellaneous government papers, all with different typescripts, headings etc. that the main character is himself reading, interspersed with conversations with characters one originally met in chapter one and subsequently forgot about. I expect that this is to get the reader more involved so that they feel more in tune with the character. Unfortunately, this became quite confusing and ultimately very boring.I used to enjoy Le Carre, but I think I shall not be reading any more of his books.

Just the thing for a rainy Bank Holiday - I just spent two days in freezing cold gale force winds, in a tiny boat, in the pouring rain, in the Isle of Wight. Thanks to this book, it was thoroughly enjoyable. The early part of the book, from the High Commission perspective (Sandy Woodrow) was essential, in my view, to underline that injustice of this kind is only ever likely to be uncovered by whistle blowers, not by the system (and Tessa s faith that the system was the best means to follow up her research was cruelly mistaken). In the end the whistle blowers are either dead (Tessa, Bluehm, Justin) or out in the cold (the High Commissioner, Coleridge) and the detestable Sandy Woodrow has been promoted to Head of Mission. I have not seen the film and was shocked, when I read the synopsis, to see Woodrow described as a close friend and confidant of Justin. What a travesty. I m sure it s a nice film, with lovely shots of Africa, and I might go and see it one day, but I can t imagine it can begin to do justice to the complexity of the book. It IS long, but that was just what I needed in the circumstances, it lasted me until the weather changed long enough for me to sail home. Having worked in one, I don t think that the High Commission was harsly treated, as one reviewer above suggested. The High Commissioner himself was something of a star, as was the spy, Donohue. And the locally engaged Ghita. Four good eggs in one Mission, counting Justin. Not bad. Only Woodrow was really grim. The dreadful Pellegrin, back in Whitehall, was so nasty as to be something of a caricature, and not a well developed character in the book.




The Constant Gardener