The Constant Gardener: John Le Carré

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And you’re all well, I trust?” Justin asked in that same studied drawl of his. “Gloria not languishing in this awful heat? The boys both flourishing and so forth?” in the real world, we don't hear of pharmaceutical whistle-blowers being murdered, and there have been several whistle-blowers recently. Or maybe that's just a form of compassion fatigue by the time I'd finished the book. There was so much to be outraged about, such a sharp demonstration of the weaknesses of the human condition, of "man's inhumanity to man" on so many levels. Of how easy it is to look the other way when its inconvenient.

Woodrow did not head directly for Justin’s room. He looked in on Ghita Pearson, Chancery’s most junior member, friend and confidante of Tessa. Ghita was dark-eyed, fair-haired, Anglo-Indian and wore a caste mark on her forehead. Locally employed, Woodrow rehearsed, but aspires to make the Service her career. A distrustful frown crossed her brow as she saw him close the door behind him. When did you first get the idea something might have gone wrong? Over,” he asked lamely—like, Do you live up there all year round? Over. Or, How long have you been running your nice hotel? Over. In short, just another bloody Monday in late January, the hottest time in the Nairobi year, a time of dust and water shortages and brown grass and sore eyes and heat ripping off the city pavements; and the jacarandas, like everybody else, waiting for the long rains. Now a major motion picture from Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of City of God Shiny, overweight, twenty-four-year-old Mildren, High Commissioner’s private secretary, Essex accent, fresh out from England on his first overseas posting—and known to the junior staff, predictably, as Mildred.Yes. Yes, I do, thank you,” Justin replied, each word carefully weighed before it was delivered. “It’s my wife Tessa. We must fix her funeral, Sandy. She’ll want it to be here in Africa as soon as possible. She’s an only child. She has no parents. There is no one apart from me who needs to be consulted. Better make it as soon as possible.”

Forse il migliore Le Carré post Smiley, secondo me. Senz’altro il più rabbioso, il più appassionato.For a moment of paralysis Woodrow had no further questions, or perhaps he had too many. I’m in prison already, he thought. My life sentence started five minutes ago. He passed a hand across his eyes and when he removed it he saw Donohue and Sheila watching him with the same blank expressions they had worn when he told them she was dead. Justin was having difficulty coordinating. First he had to wait for the sound of Woodrow’s words to catch up with him. Then he hastened to respond in brisk, hard-won sentences. “There’s this shop off Piccadilly. She bought three pairs last home leave. Never seen her splash out like that. Not a spender as a rule. Never had to think about money. So she didn’t. Dress at the Salvation Army shop. Given half a chance.” We’re fine.” A delay, of Woodrow’s manufacture. “And Tessa is up-country,” he suggested. He was giving her one last chance to prove it was all a dreadful mistake. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

From the carpeted sanctuary of the Private Office, Mildren slowly read aloud to the blank-voiced young man on the other end of the line: Ebert, Roger (1 September 2005). "The Constant Gardener review". Chicago Sun-Times . Retrieved 11 November 2017. Indeed she is,” said Justin proudly. “Night and day, the poor girl. Everything from wiping babies’ bottoms to acquainting paralegals with their civil rights, I’m told. Most of her clients are women, of course, which appeals to her. Even if it doesn’t appeal quite so much to their menfolk.” His wistful smile, the one that says if only. “Property rights, divorce, physical abuse, marital rape, female circumcision, safe sex. The whole menu, every day. You can see why their husbands get a little touchy, can’t you? I would, if I was a marital rapist.” My first impression of the book was not good. The beginning was slow, and seemed like something my Dad might read; something mundane and unoriginal with cheap thrills. I kept on though, and soon found myself completely enthralled. I could not have been more wrong. Not only does The Constant Gardener deliver clever suspense and thrills, but it also has a strong emotional pull. The strongest part of the book is probably its intelligent and complex plot which involves major pharmaceutical companies. I was both compelled and horrified by what I learned about pharmaceutical companies. Furthermore, the book holds a lot of cultural analysis, which I found to be both true and insightful.Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan. Oh, goodness knows. Ask Doc Arnold,” Justin threw out, too casually. “Arnold’s her guide and philosopher up there.” Despite the fact that the plot held little or no surprises for me, I still enjoyed The Constant Gardener immensely. I found it an interesting read, mostly on the strength of its writing and character portrayal. Quite early on, I realized that I can predict pretty much everything, the themes as well as the events that were to take place, but as it happens, it didn't bother me that much. I didn't predict the ending precisely, but I imagined something along the lines of it. A fitting ending for this one, I'd say. It’s an angry and bleak story of rich and powerful pharma mowing down those standing in the way of shareholders’ profits (to sum up, “Old, established, British-based company is poisoning innocent Kenyans, using 'em as guinea pigs”), hand in hand with both “civilized” and overtly corrupt governments, seemingly impartial scientists, organized and less-so-organized crime — and those on the other end whose lives and health are deemed expendable in the pursuit of more lucrative markets. As a slimy character genuinely inquires at some point, “Drugs have got to be tried on somebody, haven't they? I mean, who do you choose, for Christ's sake? Harvard Business School?” This is not a simple political thriller. There is so much more going on here than I was expecting, despite vague memories of the movie, seen ages ago. Le Carré created something incredible with the story of Justin and Tessa: two magnificently complicated and layered characters whose barely lived love story is the fire that drives both of them – albeit in different directions, tragically.

Oh, and did I mention a love story? No, please don’t run away! Just as le Carré wrote like no other thriller or espionage writer, he most certainly did not toe the line when it came to writing ‘romance’. It’s brilliant that one half of this love affair is kept off-screen, if you will, for the entirety of the novel’s length. Yet the presence and the immediacy of it all are right there. Tessa and Justin might seem like an unlikely couple, yet I wholly believed it; le Carré showed me that it is all so true. Even when the rest of the characters pointed out what they felt were inconsistencies, I had faith in the fact I would be shown over time just what this unconventional relationship was all about.The Constant Gardener is the perfect title for this novel in that it's a double entendre that describes two important aspects of Justin, our titular “constant gardener.” He was brought up to join the ''family firm,'' as his father called the Foreign Office, and he has cultivated the image of ''a sweet chap passionately interested in nothing except phlox, asters, freesias and gardenias.'' Justin gardened “constantly, in one sense, as an escape from a world he viewed as very dark: ’'Man was vile and evermore would be so. The world contained a small number of reasonable souls of whom Justin happened to be one. Their job, in his simple view, was to head off the human race from its worst excesses -- with the proviso that when two sides were determined to blow each other to smithereens, there was precious little a reasonable person could do about it.’'