Absolute Friends

By: John le Carré

Narrated by: John le Carré

Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

By chance and not by choice, Ted Mundy, eternal striver, failed writer, and expatriate son of a British Army officer, used to be a spy. But that was in the good old Cold War days when a cinder-block wall divided Berlin and the enemy was easy to recognize.

Today, Mundy is a down-at-heel tour guide in southern Germany, dodging creditors, supporting a new family, and keeping an eye out for trouble while in spare moments vigorously questioning the actions of the country he once bravely served.

And trouble finds him, as it has before, in the shape of his old German student friend, radical, and one-time fellow spy, the crippled Sasha, seeker after absolutes, dreamer, and chaos addict.

After years of trawling the Middle East and Asia as an itinerant university lecturer, Sasha has yet again discovered the true, the only, answer to life, this time in the form of a mysterious billionaire philanthropist named Dimitri. Thanks to Dimitri, both Mundy and Sasha will find a path out of poverty, and with it their chance to change a world that both believe is going to the devil. Or will they?

©2004 John le Carre (P)2003 Hodder Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"John le Carre never, ever phones it in.... He's an old pro with the ardent heart of an amateur, which is why...he is still capable of producing a novel as odd, as ungainly, and as compelling as Absolute Friends.... Fans...will be happy to learn that he returns here to his old cold war stomping grounds." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Seamless abridgement. No one reads le Carre better than le Carre. His nuances, accents, and inflections are as brilliantly precise as his prose." (Publishers Weekly)

"Le Carre brings his superb reading talents - sonorous, cultured voice; gift for accents; deft expressiveness - to the story of Ted Mundy, a fumbling, well-meaning Brit.... He is simply one of the best author readers there is." (AudioFile)

the spy who stayed in the cold

Le Carre writes the same novel again and again.
This is high praise for le Carre is a master, both of thought and prose. He challenges all that masks itself in the guise of Terror's war and ever so exactly separates myth from reality.
Le Carre also is an excellent interpreter of his own prose. Each nuance is perfectly realized.

excellent

great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great here are more words for this review

Absolutely Brilliant...!!!

A wonderful story read by the author. So we'll spoken you can "see" the story and hear the action. BRILLIANT...

Dreadful

I've downloaded many books from Audible, and this was the first that I didn't enjoy. Perhaps the author's style just doesn't work in the audible format.

Save Time and Listen. Don't read

In the film Amadeus, Mozart's Opera is criticized as having "two many notes." Le Carre's early works abound in detail; detail so great, so ponderous, and yet so necessary to his story. Most of his later books, however, are read as abridged editions, as is his latest one. Here the author reads his greatly abridged edition, announcing to all that his work has become pedantic. "Look here," he seems to say. "I can remove half of my words and still have the same story!" Unfortunately, his knife didn't cut deep enough. He could remove still another half. Too many notes.
The story is simple. Two radical "pink" friends interact throughout their lives. Firstly in the radical student movements of the 1960's in West Berlin. Then as spies for England against East Germany. Finally, they are set up by an ex-CIA agent, now working for global corporate interests, to look like terrorists targeted against US interests ala 9/11, with the tacit support of a lying George Bush and Tony Blair, who, of course, must murder them to keep their voices quiet.
Le Carre has always praised a "pink" or radically leftist point of view. In his first novel, Call for the Dead, for example, a Foreign Office employee is murdered. We find the man was sympathetic and a good communist. Not the "Communist" brand, mind you, but with a little c. He also, however, found some sympathy for Western thought as long as it was sufficiently liberal. Further, Le Carre has always pointed sharp barbs at the United States as well. In Absolute Friends, his portrayal of the new anti-global, anti-New World Order radical leftists is stronger than sympathetic, while his denunciation of capitalism and the United States is stronger than denunciatory. Can one read with some credibility that 9/11 was planned and executed by agents controlled by global corporations and supported by the US government?
Listen if you must. Many fewer notes.

Confusing and hard to follow

Any additional comments?

Normally, I do not like books read by the author. However, in this case, John LeCarre did an excellent job of narration. Unfortunately, I found the book itself to be confusing and difficult to follow, especially the ending.

Polemic masquerading as fiction

This disappointing novel reads as though a promising beginning was grafted onto its very message-heavy ending. The author has made no secret of his disdain and distrust of the United States, so this paranoid concoction should come as no surprise. In the anti-American atmosphere that prevails in certain circles in Europe, the idea of the U.S. staging a phony terrorist operation to justify its policies and to coerce European countries probably sounds pretty plausible. That someone with Cornewell's (Le Carre) smarts could offer up a story like this indicates just how far relations between the U.S. and its erstwhile allies have deteriorated. Food for serious thought, but not necessarily for the reasons intended.

Great Book...NOT!

I've read 1000s of books, and this rates down there with TERRIBLE! This is the first time I've felt cheated when I bought a book. I've read Le Carre before, and this had to be an amateur stand-in writing this book and using his name!!

dont waste a credit

boring, the worst book I've downloaded yet. A real chore to listen to.

disappointment

What disappointed you about Absolute Friends?

everything..no plot that can be followed..THE STORY SAID NOTHING AND COULD NOT BE FOLLOWED.i HAVE AUDIO LISTENED TO 19 novels by John leCarre....Enjoyed most all the books.This was not what I anticipated.John most have wrote it on a bad day.

What could John le Carre have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Get rid of the music ,played between sections.

What didn’t you like about John le Carre’s performance?

This was not John leCarre.....Some one borrowed his name.

What character would you cut from Absolute Friends?

GUT the whole story and start over.

Any additional comments?

I'm still a fan.One bad book doesn't make a bad man