leider schwach: Mit Freude habe ich "Der ewige Gärtner" sowie "Der Spion, der aus der Kälte kam" gelesen. So nahm ich dieses Buch mit Spannung in die Hände, schließlich werden hochaktuelle und immerwährende Themen, Terror (RAF), Krieg (Irak), darin behandelt. Doch leider ist die Geschichte zu konstruiert und damit auch zu langweilig. Das Anliegen Le Carrés ist allzu offensichtlich, die bösen Amerikaner sollen enttarnt werden. Leider verbreitet er seine prinzipiell richtige Ansicht viel zu pauschal, geradezu platt, so dass ich am Ende eher genervt davon war, anstatt begeistert "genau" zu rufen. Also da wäre mehr drin gewesen. Die Personen selbst gefallen mir jedoch gut, daher drei Sterne.

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. ( )

Oddly disappointing for a LeCarre novel. ( )

After watching The Constant Gardner and hearing good things about The Tailor of Panama, I decided I really ought to read a John Le Carre novel. On the recommendation of my roommie, I picked up a recent one called Absolute Friends.

This is the life story of Ted Mundy, failed student, employee, and husband but excellent spy. I suppose my frustration with this book began because I expected it to be a spy novel. For the first half of the book, it simply told Mundy's backstory, a series of meanderings through school, travel, a brief stint of activism in the 60s. Mundy isn't a particularly admirable character. He follows leaders because they are magnetic, not because he's especially attached to their ideals. Finally, after 200 pages he is invited to the service and you realize that his meandering history actually makes him perfect for the role of double agent during the cold war, traveling back and forth between East and West Berlin. He lives a secondary life which he can tell no one of except for his close friend and confidant, his mirror image double agent on the other side.

What happens next? Well, we certainly don't hear about spying. We hear about how his marriage fails and how he's never promoted in his cover job, how he lets go of his son for the sake of his wife's career, how he begins to spend time at peep shows just to waste the hours between spying and how he is casually tossed aside when the Cold War is over. He is truly a pawn of higher forces, and watching him get trod upon is just so depressing. In the end he is set up in a sting operation for no use whatsoever except to increase support for American military hegemony. Two somewhat idealistic but hopeless has-been agents brutally murdered to prove a point.

Now that I think about it, all three Carre pieces (Tailor, Gardner and Absolute Friends) involve the destruction of a normal Joe's life by careless greater powers. Are all Carre's books like this? At least with Clancy you get some of the ins and outs of espionage. Here it was merely the after-effects, the seediness. I even found the style tiresome -- this constant patter of present tense which would be thrilling if it described action, but sounds flat and dry otherwise. I don't mind moral ambiguity in a novel -- it can make it much more interesting and real -- but with neither plot nor hero this just seemed as drab as an East Berlin apartment.

A fine read for Le Carre's fans. This is a more direct and immediate story than his [A Perfect Spy], with many of the same elements but perhaps less depth of character. It has le Carré’s characteristic lonely spy, an ethical man who finds himself adrift and conflicted in a corrupt world, at odds with his handlers while sacrificing his personal life for his work. In this one, we have the life story of a man born to a British military man serving the Raj in Pakistan at the time of Partition. After a troubled youth, the protagonist finds one true friend, an association that ultimately carries them through post-WWII Germany, the Cold War, and into the even darker world of Bush-era neo-con intrigue, much of it perhaps a parallel for le Carré’s own history, certainly a parallel for the world as we have known it over the last 50 years. As in [The Constant Gardner], the author’s theories on the contemporary military-industrial agenda are scary, and worse: they’re believable. ( )

Som altid hård og ubarmhjertig i sit syn på denne verdens ondskab og fortrædeligheder. Måtte læse den over to gange, da jeg skulle i det rigtige "mode". ( )

Of all of Le Carre's stunning work THIS book is my favourite. All of Le Carre's trademark characterization and local 'colour' is here, of course, but he tells his tale with such aplomb, such mastery of pace and tension, that I couldn't put it down -- I stayed up all night to finish it. ( )

At first this seemed like one of LeCarré’s usual spy books, with a lost boy hero who had a bad father and got caught up in the Cold War. Yet as the book moved to its final act it becomes clear that this is a political polemic against America’s war on terror. All the criticisms that the Iraq War was nothing but lies come to roost by the end of the book. The British, as America’s junior partners don’t come out lightly either. I found myself wanting to scream out at Ted Mundy to get away, to stand up for himself. His fate, however, is to be an “absolute friend”. ( )

Did not care for the style at all... too hard to follow. I forced myself to finish it. ( )

This novel of le Carre's is much more absolute in terms of plot and development than has been the case in some of his previous books. In a sense, it is a step away from what could be considered his classic style as found in "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" and "Smiley's People" amongst others. "Absolute Friends" is much more terse and compact than these. le Carre's distaste at current events surrounding the "War on Terror" is obvious and he both deftly and pointedly highlights how the media as well as foreign governments can be inveigled into supporting quasi-Imperialism pretensions.
Those who are more used to the rather more abstract developments of earlier le Carre should still find this an absorbing story while for newcomers it provides a straightforward introduction into his books. ( )

As always, Le Carre does not disappoint. There is the usual gripping story, along with the usual fascinating background information.

Le Carre is clearly very very angry about what has happened in the west in the past few years, the creeping fascism of Bush and friends, and is not scared to focus on it here. ( )

So long my friend !!! Boring to the brim ( )

http://www.johnlecarre.com/
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lecarre.ht...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/st... ( )

http://www.sascha.com/2006/08/absolut... ( )

Spy story set in Berlin, spanning Cold War to the modern "war on terror". True le Carre. ( )

Thrilling suspense ( )

A somewhat disappointing read. I have to say not one of this usually excellent writers better efforts ( )

I read this one in the fast lane - so to speak. Might give it another try, but I am not sure.