I just couldn't get into the story. It was probably me. I'll probably pick the book up again in a few years and like it. ( )

I listened to the audio abridgment during a 1900 mile drive, and although it entertained me, I didn't think the quality was up to the level of the other books of his I've read. The main characters are interesting enough, but many of the other characters feel a little too cartoonish. Also, some of the psychology is missing, perhaps due to the abridgment but, judging from others' reviews, perhaps not: where are their motivations? where is the suspense? Instead, it all comes off as a bit too matter of fact. I did, however, love hearing le Carré read his own work, getting into the speaking styles he imagined for each character. ( )

Absolute Friends is a superbly paced novel spanning fifty-six years, a theatrical masterstroke of tragicomic writing, and a savage fable of our times, almost of our hours. The friends of the title are Ted Mundy, British soldier's son born 1947 in a shining new independent Pakistan, and Sasha, refugee son of an East German Lutheran pastor and his wife who have sought sanctuary in the West. The two men meet first as students in riot-torn West Berlin of the late Sixties, again in the grimy looking-glass of Cold War espionage and, most terribly, in today's unipolar world of terror, counter-terror and the war of lies. Deriving its scale from A Perfect Spy and its passion from The Constant Gardener, Le Carre's new novel presents us with magical writing, characters to delight, and a spellbinding story that enchants even as it challenges.

The absolute friends of the title, British Ted and German Sasha, first meet as students in West Berlin in the late 1960s. Over time, they both become involved in Cold War espionage. The legacy of that involvement gets them tangled with something beyond them in the post-9/11 world where suspicion of terrorism is a good way to credit or discredit many things.

I followed the story fairly well until mid-novel, then I started losing steam (and reading shorter and shorter passages in any one sitting), and struggled through the last 100 pages--which was a pity, as there was rather chilling stuff going on in those 100 pages. ( )

Stunning - an apparently humdrum tale of two old friends who end up almost drifting into the world of espionage with an explosive denoument. ( )