If You Can’t Make It, Fake It

A Review of Absolute Friends (2003) by John le Carré

Coronet pbk 2004, ISBN 0349 83290 8

As befits an espionage novel, my copy of Absolute Friends came to me in an unusual format. A birthday gift, it emerged from its wrapping in two parts: the cover had been laminated, and the plastic folded and made into a pencil case. Meanwhile the text, thankfully complete and looking definitely used and well-read, came along in the package by way of corroboration. I checked the pencil case carefully; there was no microfilm. Then, I read the novel with an unusual mixture of discomfort and delight.

Le Carré died in December 2020, and this novel reflects the later phase of his long career during which he became bitterly disenchanted: first, with the politics of the so-called “special relationship” between the US and UK, notably over the Iraq War; then, appalled by the UK’s decision to leave the European Union; and finally, alarmed by what he saw as the resurgence of a corporately owned and social media-enhanced fascism. His anger is palpable in this novel, which was written shortly after the Allied toppling of Saddam Hussein. By the end of his life, his alienation led him to renounce his British citizenship and take up Irish, and thus EU citizenship once more.