What do You think about The Constant Gardener (2005)?
I have been a little reluctant to read le Carré's post-Cold War, post-Smiley novels. Part of my reluctance was borne of some false assumption that le Carré's masterpieces were mostly weighted towards the front end of his brilliant career. 'The Constant Gardener' blew all my assumptions up. It is amazing how le Carré can write such a masterful novel and such a popular book. Many of the MFA literary novels published during the last thirty years will quickly slump and dissolve into the dust of mediocrity, but I am certain this novel (along with many of le Carré's earlier novels: the Perfect Spy, the Karla Trilogy, the Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the Russia House) WILL be read in three hundred+ years.Le Carré is amazing. He doesn't fall into the easy path. Yes, Big Pharma is bad, but not in some monolithic/caricatured way. It doesn't just do evil, but does many things that are good. This is le Carré's style. There is infinite shading that he does with EVERYTHING. Each character is shaded, and mirrors each other character. Some characters are flipped, some are mirrored, some are distortions, but each character is complicated, nuanced and difficult to view from one position. Le Carré writes with an artistry that makes it impossible to not love the good, despite their faults, and still appreciate the human-like frailties of the bad.A good friend of mine calls this novel the greatest love story of the last fifty years. I find that claim difficult to dispute. It isn't a traditional love story, and not exactly a happy love story, but it is an amazing story of loyalty, love and understanding that leaves the reader both tired and sated.If one day I discovered I could write a novel that was just 1/2 as good as 'The Constant Gardener', I would think I had been blessed with a masterpiece.
—Darwin8u
Human tragedy as an occurrence is very much similar to clay; it can either drive humans to the vilest acts of insanity or the most humane of actions. Natural disasters, accidents and countless other instances bear witness to such acts each day & everyday across the world. Tragedy in individual life of a fictional character on the other hand gives rise to literary gems (a la Shakespeare & the gang) or movies (read tear jerker/pay back movies). The backdrop of John Le Carre’s The Constant Gardener has a tragic backdrop of a wife who is a devoted human rights activist getting murdered in a barren wasteland in Kenya in a most gruesome way. What follows is a husband’s quest on the road to the truth. Heard that before you say? Well it’s a different quest here and a different landscape.The plot line is as simple as what I wrote above but there are sub plots and characters that would seem a lot more flesh and blood than many run-of-the-mill thrillers we come across. The best trait of this book is how human it is. The villains are not cartoonish; they are human like you or me. No one is an absolute black or white, they are doing what they must in order to survive. There are a lot of betrayals here as well, individual as well as on the on broader perspectives: in the name of love, country and that stubborn mule named duty. For individual betterments they jump sides and tip scales in seconds, you have met people like them before at your offices and your living space. The dialog is sometimes labyrinthine and the protagonist is an unlikely one who is polite to a fault and sometimes too good to be true. Like some of us mere mortals, he realizes the worth of love once that flame gets extinguished.The tale drags at places but that does not make me want to reduce a star in the rating scale, it is a solid five star book for me. Human & Animal rights activists have sometimes struck me as unreal, the fiery passion they embody for their cause is ethereal to my mind. I close this review with what one of my friends told me of this book “It makes you think and believe that there is much more to life than the humdrum of the daily activities”.
—Arun Divakar
I must admit that I don't get teary-eyed often from the events in books and if I do then it's in a long series of books where you've invested a lot of time reading, like the last Terry Pratchett book, for instance. However, 'The Constant Gardener' is heart breaking and I found myself struggling to read the last few pages because I was properly welling up.It's stupid. I'm not usually this soppy. But JlC's writing pulls you in, it makes you feel real emotions for these characters because of the way he writes those characters, the way he describes their mannerisms, their changing moods and emotions in almost every line, the shifting emotions you're bound to feel when you're interrogating someone who had a direct hand in your wife's violent death.. the anger, the pain, the need to calm down because you need the information they hold, the pulling back of violence, the step towards reaching out and murdering these people but you stop yourself because you need to know what they know. All that builds throughout the book until you're routing for this character, you hate fiercely even if he, as a perfect Gentlemen, doesn't show that hatred, you will do it for them. It's exhausting.It's odd because this way of writing his characters, of telling the story, of building up the bits and pieces of information is the same in all the books I've read by JlC.. yet, none of them have affected me as much as TCG has - could be because of the subject matter or whether it's because it is set in a time closer to my own, a world of computers, mobile phones and big multinational companies something I can relate to more than the shadowy world of 60s espionage - I don't know. I've read quite a few of his books now, and intend to read the rest of them too, and although I was quite content to sit there and go 'the spy novels are my favourites!/viva la George Smiley', I have to say that TCG is my favourite. I *WANT* to read it again, I could quite happily turn back to page one and even though I know what's going to happen, even though I know it won't change, I want to read it again.. for Tessa's sake and for Justin's. I'll definitely come back to it again!Now, I'm shooting off into another weird tangent, book-wise I mean, and reading about what happens when a chap decides to reply to email scam emails. Exciting times.
—Chris Boulton
