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Book Reviews
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Absolute Friends
by John LeCarre
(Little, Brown & Co., 2003)
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Good news for John LeCarre’ fans: this last one is a masterpiece. Those familiar with his works — THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL, and THE TAILOR OF PANAMA, among a long list — know this master of spy thrillers regularly transcends the genre with psychologically complex and believable characters and texturally rich settings. But this epic novel about Ted Mundy, unsung Cold War hero, loyal friend and dupe, may well surpass them all.
In the novel’s opening pages, we witness a performance of the expatriate Mundy, English language tour guide at Munich’s Linderhof, one of the quirky castles of Mad King Ludwig. He is broke, estranged from his son and ex-wife, and running from creditors after his language school fails. To survive, he has taken a menial position providing tourists with bon mots and historical information, some of which is true and some Mundy throws in just to entertain and express his personal truth.
Into this mundane scene drops Sasha, the "absolute friend" of the title, a passionate, charismatic rebel with a succession of causes, usually futile, often dangerous, a man who shows up in Mundy’s life unpredictably across a friendship of 34 years to involve him over his head. This appearance of Sasha is no exception.
At first, Mundy is not that auspicious a hero. Burned out, too clever by half, his self-description of failed husband, father, and business man doesn’t promise much. But soon LeCarre’ shows more of his greathearted main character, who has given his love and protection to his Moslem girlfriend and her young son and repeatedly risked and sacrificed for his vulnerable friend. He has also been a legend in the British intelligence community because of dangerous work performed against the Communists in East Germany with Sasha.
Sasha’s latest crusade, unlike his earlier radical activities, will bring about social justice, he says, through peaceful means, wipe out Mundy’s debts and provide them all with a livable income. A mysterious billionaire is financing the project. All Mundy wants is enough money to get his lover’s front teeth replaced; her husband knocked them out on his way out of her life. Moreover, Mundy suspects the scheme is not what it appears, but Sasha reels him in by the heartstrings.
Things being other than what they seem is the recurring theme of Ted Mundy’s life. The sordid facts of his birth are painted over with strokes of sentimentality and pretense by his father, a British empire soldier remaining in service to Pakistan after independence. In Pakistan, young Ted’s sympathy is aroused by his Pakistani playmates and his tragic nursemaid, her family’s sole survivor of sectarian Hindu/Moslem violence. From earliest childhood, he sympathizes with the underdog.
Later in his father’s homeland, England, Mundy is attracted to the German language by a sympathetic teacher and winds up in the Berlin student revolts where he has his fateful meeting with Sasha, a youth rebelling against the bourgeois father he despises. Here Mundy promises the woman they are both sleeping with that he will "look out" for Sasha, a promise he will keep for the rest of his life.
After Mundy is forced to return to England, he builds a promising normal life with a wife and son. But Sasha drops back into this existence and pulls Mundy into the dangerous world of espionage. Disillusioned with the Communist regime in East Germany, Sasha agrees to spy for the West, but he will work only with Mundy as his handler. The mission requires Mundy to hide his secret heroism under a show of mediocrity and slacking and forces him out of his family’s life.
Sasha’s last crusade unravels suddenly in an elaborate bit of fakery reminiscent of the Jessica Lynch rescue, but far more deadly, one intended to leave no witnesses to refute the official story, victims of the alleged War on Terrorism.
While LeCarre’s usual tragic perspective pervades this tale, the existence of a hero like Mundy, whose sense of justice and capacity to love is undiminished by the falseness around him, compensates. LeCarre’s people ring true in terms of their personalities, their histories and their times. Readers old enough will recognize the rhetoric of the times and will understand the wasteful, phantasmic castle of the mad Ludwig as the perfect ironic background, the most fitting place to begin Mundy’s story.
Margaret Mooris is a regular contributor to HopeDance, an ad rep, distributor, down right enthusiast and loves writing. She lives in Ventura.
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