john le carre the constant gardener review

I'm not typically drawn to fast-paced action in my reading life. As long as you’re happy with them, my opinion counts for diddly-squat. I apologize to my thriller-loving friends. I hate to say it, but I’m not a big fan of thrillers. “She had witnessed a monstrous injustice and gone out to fight it. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle-amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat-discovers his own natural resources, and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa's killers as well.Ī master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle-young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin.

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. One of his most enduring heroes, Alec Leamas, perhaps best summarized le Carré’s feelings about espionage in “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold.” “What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors, too, yes pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.Now a major motion picture from Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of City of God

His books feature labyrinthine plots and high stakes the greatest betrayals and acts of deception are often internal. His spies are morally ambiguous, genteel, solitary - a marked departure from the suave and high-octane figures like James Bond, who glamorized the practice of espionage. Le Carré worked as a British agent until his literary success allowed him to quit his undercover work to write full-time. He wrote 25 novels over nearly six decades, zeroing in on the machinations of the espionage community and distilling complex interior conflicts into eminently readable tales.įor millions of readers across the world, his allure lies in the authenticity and believability of his novels.

John le Carré, who died over the weekend at age 89, left behind a remarkable literary legacy.

John le carre the constant gardener review