That Unworshipped Saint

The Constant Gardener; John le Carre; Thriller/Mystery; +12; Lucinda Labes at The Ecologist

There's a reason this man is my favorite novelist. He's one of the best fucking writers I've ever read.

I feel a little squirrelly giving this a +12, the writing is actually much better than that, but the subject matter is so depressing. I swear on the grave of my father's father I wept three times in the course of reading this. The movie, predictably, killed it. What a surprise. Great actors, really, and a very good script, but there's something about the book, about the way le Carre writes... His world becomes so very, very real and it's so easy to get lost there. His writing sort of carries you along.

But as for being lost... One is lost in this story. One is totally lost during this story. Everything makes sense by the end, but emotionally... One starts, remains and ends lost. It's because le Carre makes the reader at one with his main character. I don't know of any other author who does that so well- or of any other writer who drops his protagonists into to such dark, twisted messes.

I always think of le Carre in terms of Fleming, and Fleming in terms of le Carre. It's a theme I'll probably return to. They really are the best example of the two sides of their shared coin. They were born about the same time, they both worked for Biritish Intelligence, and they both went on to write a large number of novels about intelligence work. They both created characters who became archetypes in the spy genre. Fleming's James Bond and le Carre's George Smiley seem to typify the two major views of intelligence work. I want to ramble, but I shouldn't.