The Constant Gardener

The Constant Gardener

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72  ·  rating details  ·  8,181 ratings  ·  616 reviews
Now a major motion picture from Fernando Meirelles, the Academy Award-nominated director of City of God

The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle--young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin...more
Paperback, 496 pages
Published August 9th 2005 by Scribner (first published 2000)
more details... edit details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
The Princess Bride by William GoldmanThe Notebook by Nicholas SparksThe Devil Wears Prada by Lauren WeisbergerThe Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. TolkienStardust by Neil Gaiman
The MOVIE was BETTER than the BOOK
159th out of 695 books — 7,077 voters
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara KingsolverOut of Africa by Karen BlixenThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall SmithThings Fall Apart by Chinua AchebeDon't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
Best books for an African Safari
12th out of 311 books — 288 voters


More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)
filter  |  sort: default (?)  |  rating details
Bmbs
In the 60’s I distinctly remember reading two of the authors earlier books, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and the Looking Glass War. With no pun intended I read them in a small town in Germany, a town located not too far distant from where the fictitious events of the stories took place. They were really good books.

Returning to him some 40 years later proved, for me, something of a disappointment. There is only a fleeting reference to gardening so horticulturist need not get their hopes up b...more
Sheila
My first Le Carre, so I was expecting to be thrilled, something cat-and-mouse type of story. After all, someone killed Justin Quayle's wife while she's on a perfectly justifiable, if not very dangerous mission. And it was not a quick death like an assassination----she was stripped naked, possibly raped, had bruises all over her body, and her throat was slashed.

Meaning: It's the kind of injustice that forces Justin to go on a global hunt for the answers.

But the ending is just too sad for me. To...more
Eric_W
One of the reviewers on Amazon complained that this book had little to do with gardening. Good grief!

I think Le Carre has made the transition from Cold War spy novels to contemporary issue thrillers quite handsomely. In this book, he really goes after the pharmaceutical companies, accusing them not only of unethical practices using Africans as guinea pigs, but also suggests they would kill anyone whom might deign to challenge their unholy hegemony.

It's also truly a great love story. The relatio...more
Kaitlin Turner
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...more
Bunga Mawar
Saya berkesempatan menonton film yang dibuat berdasar buku ini terlebih dulu bulan Juni lalu, baru kemudian membaca bukunya setelah dapat diskon gede di Pesta Buku Jakarta. Filmnya, tentu saja dramatis, melangkah meloncat-loncat, membuka tabir kejadian dengan perlahan-lahan, lalu meninggalkan rasa yang sulit dilupakan. Ternyata bukunya juga punya alur seperti itu. John le Carre bisa tiba-tiba membuat tokoh yang sedang bernarasi, tahu-tahu memaparkan deskripsi. Penjelasan atas setiap bagian "ada...more
Maura
I think this is the only time in my life I've actually liked the movie better than the book, but perhaps my expectations were too high (I hadn't read or heard of LeCarré before this). Basically I'd thought that since it was about pharmaceutical company conspiracies to test drugs on poor Africans and kill people who get in their way, I'd love it... I was wrong, but maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised.

I felt Le Carré didn't address the pharmaceutical issue with enough depth, and focused too m...more
Karen Hansen
This was my first novel by Le Carre and I liked his style. I don't know if I would have bought this book, if I had not seen previews for the movie. I still have not seen the movie, but I cannot imagine that it is better than the book.

For the most part, the book had a lot of suspense and I did not guess the ending. It was a fast paced, page turner. I did find that it slowed down a bit when focusing on minor characters. I think that it could have been shorter and still kept the integrity of the st...more
Gail
A few months ago I bemoaned the repetitiveness of Le Carre's work, with its dreary world view. This book gives the lie to that opinion.

"The Constant Gardener" is a fast-moving, intriguing look at the problems of Big Pharma, government corruption and collusion, and personal greed and fear. These factors combine to make a mockery of aid to developing nations and to put many innocent people's lives at risk. The characters are realistic, flawed and conflicted but (at least in some cases) valiant. I...more
Fran
I had never read anything by John Le Carre before. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. He is a masterful writer who develops interesting characters and describes scenes with poetic intensity. This is the sort of book I could see myself rereading in years to come. There is so much in it. Clearly the author is so much more than a spy novelist.
Carrie
This was a fun book. I read it after I had already seen the movie, and I still found it suspenseful enough that I had to pull it from being my commuting book, and spend an hour on my couch Sunday morning frantically finishing it. Since I already knew what happened, I have to give much credit to Le Carré's ability to spin a plot. It is also very well written, particularly for a popular, mass-market thriller (I’m looking at you, Da Vinci Code). It was a nice post-Cold War twist on a spy story, and...more
AliceinWonderland
- Well written, exploring many important themes of social responsibility, corporate greed, etc...
- Dialogue is brisk and terse where appropriate
- The first 200-300 pages I would say are definitely slow; Le Carre writes well, but not much happens until mid-way into the book
- Characters Justin & Tessa are well-crafted
- The ending is very depressing and I must admit, I was hoping for a smoking gun, or at least a silver lining (perhaps through Tessa's cousin Ham), but NO, nothing. The bad guys w...more
Nshslibrary
The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré follows Justin Quale, an employee of the British High Commission in Kenya, as he tries to uncover the reasons behind his wife’s brutal murder. The novel explores ideas of corruption and injustice within the pharmaceutical industry and the British High Commission in Kenya.

Overall, John Le Carré’s The Constant Gardener informs the reader on an important issue within society today, but lacks the page to page writing quality to effectively draw the reader into...more
Smcleish
Originally published on my blog here in October 2002.

One of the major issues that faces our generation, one which receives relatively little publicity and which seems quite intractable, is how large corporations can be controlled by public opinion, particularly their operations in Third World countries desperate for money. Stockholders continue to put short term profits ahead of other concerns - such as humanitarian and environmental ones - and are frequently able to exert considerable pressure...more
Hilary G
Having read a couple of le Carré novels before, and found them tedious, I was relieved that this one was not about spies because the world of espionage is not one that interests me at all. In fact, I
read the first few chapters pretty quickly, and they promised the unravelling of a murder mystery (a genre I like) and a swipe at the potential (or real?) power of pharmaceutical companies, a subject in which I am interested. Somehow, le Carré managed to make even subjects I am interested in tedious...more
Tom Marcinko
I could make the case for this being JLC's best book.

From “Author’s Note”: 'As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.'

'…there was a screen on the garden side to protect the Woodrows from their servants.'

'“Bluhm’s as close as you’ll ever get to a good man,” she insisted, as if good man were a finite condition like Homo sapiens.'

'“I’ve never heard of such a person in my life. Nobod...more
Michaelbert Humperdink
The rain came down from a corrugated aluminum sky as I wandered into the campsite showers. Sticky with seawater and a puree of south Floridian mosquito corpses, I hurried inside. What's that? In a surprisingly dry alcove I found a small lending library, the sort which accretes in youth hostels or Peace Corps houses--anyplace lots of travelers pass through shedding their solar battery chargers, canteens, flashlights, and novels which seemed, from the coziness of home, a good idea to pack.

The book...more
Lex
What an amazing book turned into an amazing movie!!! I'm not going to say the book was better (like everyone says). I will say that the movie and book were equally great in their own separate ways.
So if you didn't already feel paranoid about phramasuedical companies, then this is the book for you!! It is an amazing activist book for third world countries told through the tireless efforts of a British diplomat's wife then by her husband as he tries to avenge her death!
Tessa Quayle (pronounced lik...more
Greg K
le Carré? Seriously? This guy used to write awesome spy novels, but once the cold war was over, all he could produce is this bunch of self righteous, incompetent, whiny bullshit. The whole thing is based on some terrible clichés with evil big pharma with offices in Geneva, the clueless genius Eastern-European hot chicks female pharmacists, corrupt politicians... (view spoiler)[OK, there is one guy from pharma, who is kind of evil, but also believes in God, so he is doubting and sometimes drops t...more
James Swenson
The first thing I've read by John le Carré. [I haven't seen the movie version, either.]

An interesting and upsetting read. le Carré's theme is the dilemma of humanitarian aid in Africa, set specifically in Kenya. The British Foreign Service balance the demands of scientific ethics and of profit, not always successfully. More could be said, but only inside (view spoiler)[spoiler (hide spoiler)] tags.

The shifting third-person perspective first introduces us to the heroic title character through the...more
Mike
This is my first John Le Carre book. Too bad it was an abridged audio though. I would have really liked to get more details so the full image of the people and their surroundings could sink in. In any case, I'm sure little of the needed parts were removed. What I did enjoy was the style of the narration. Not so much the narrator, but how the words were arranged. I hope it's more John Le Carre's style showing through than the abridgement itself.

While the opening part from Sandy's perspective was...more
Gina
Just on the positive side of 3.5 stars, actually. I enjoyed reading the book and it moved quickly enough for me, but I wasn't quite able to label it. Was it a murder mystery? A thriller? A anti-capitalistic manifesto? It sort of felt like each of these in turn.

The characters were okay, but like another reviewer said, I never warmed to any of them. Justin was sort of a pansy, Sandy was a womanizing loser without any real soul, Tessa was TOO self-sacrificing for my mind.

I most liked the first thir...more
V.r. Christensen
I have heard some say that of all LeCarre's books, this is the weakest. I confess that, while I'm familiar with the names of many of his other books, this is the first of his I've read. I have to say, I really loved it. It is a tender piece of storytelling, subtle in all the right ways that make the imagination work to fill in the rest, resulting in intense and complicated emotion. The story is about the death of Justin Quayle's wife, and his search to find out the truth. On his journey, he take...more
Barry
This is an odd book, and I'm not sure why it works and why it's so compelling. The heart of the story is a murder mystery, but that mystery is almost secondary (certainly parallel in importance) to the pharma mystery. The conclusion of the pharma mystery, upon completion of the book, caused me to reflect and wonder if there really was a pharma mystery at all or if it was just a piece of clever writing that made it appear to be mysterious when it really wasn't.

On the surface, this book isn't tha...more
Yusita
Jul 19, 2010 Yusita rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone
Recommended to Yusita by: Lulu Fitri Rahman
Buku ini pemberian indah dari sahabat baikku yakni Lulu Fitri Rahman sebagai penerjemahnya sebelum doi menjadi penyunting handal now:) selamat yah Lulu!!..

Oya, pertama melihat buku ini Wow!! tebal sekali kebayang deh penulisnya sangat detail dan penerjemahnya jg penyuntingnya yg kudu sabar banget he he he...banyak kata dan kalimat yg kudu dibaca soale:P

Membaca buku ini membuatku seolah mendengarkan cerita seseorang yang paham dengan intrik politik international, permasalahan dunia ketiga (menimp...more
Michelle
**********************************************************************************

POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW (in second paragraph)!

**********************************************************************************





This is my first le Carre book and it won't be my last. I loved it, but it wasn't something I loved by just trying to breeze thru it. You have to spend time with it, absorb it, put yourself in the place where there is nothing but you and this story. I actually read it twice to get a complet...more
Cari
This book is a little slow to start and a little confusing. Starting from the view of a character who is both a minor and major character at the same time, it's confusing to see where the story will take you. But finally, you shift to the protagonist's view point and things become clear. There story is thrilling, unpredictable and completely enthralling. I love the political stance it takes, it almost makes one want to join the groups of humanitarian workers, no matter how much the book quietly...more
Kendra
Jan 29, 2012 Kendra rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Lovers of Crime Fiction
Recommended to Kendra by: verona
Shelves: crime-fiction
The genius of The Constant Gardener is that, for a week, I lived in John Le Carré's head. I probably should have tried to finish the book more quickly, because Le Carré's head isn't always a comfortable place to be. When I dreamed at night, all of the characters were named Tessa and Justin, which just goes to show you how much this story got under my skin. I can't fault the book, or Le Carré, in the least. The Constant Gardener is beautifully written, its pacing excellent, its characters superb...more
Arun Divakar
Human tragedy as an occurrence is very much similar to clay; it can either drive humans to the vilest acts of insanity or the most humane of actions. Natural disasters, accidents and countless other instances bear witness to such acts each day & everyday across the world. Tragedy in individual life of a fictional character on the other hand gives rise to literary gems (a la Shakespeare & the gang) or movies (read tear jerker/pay back movies). The backdrop of John Le Carre’s The Constant...more
Iris
Although The Constant Gardener got off to a slow start, it turned out to be a well-written mystery/spy story. It would make a good book club book. If it were a movie, I would give it a PG-13 rating since there is some strong language and sexuality.

The main story revolves around the British High Commission in Kenya. Since I am unfamiliar with British Foreign Service and with Kenya, it took me bit to get the timeframe and setting in my mind. Once I was past that hurdle, the book moved very quickly...more
Prachi Singh
I watched the movie, The Constant Gardener, a couple of weeks ago and was inspired to read this book. I've heard people criticize this book for not being enough of a spy novel, but I personally enjoyed that it focused more on the characters than on the crazy cover-up. I can't really objectively review this novel because I loved the movie and the actors in it so much that this couldn't really be anything but a little disappointing. I will, however, say that the writing style was really interestin...more
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 99 100 next »
There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »
Constant Gardener the (Mass Market Paperback)
The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener (Hardcover)
The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener (Paperback)

1411964
John le Carré, the pseudonym of David John Moore Cornwell (born 19 October 1931 in Poole, Dorset, England), is an English author of espionage novels. Le Carré has resided in St Buryan, Cornwall, Great Britain, for more than forty years where he owns a mile of cliff close to Land's End.
More about John le Carré...
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (George Smiley, #5) The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (George Smiley #3) Smiley's People (George Smiley, #7) The Russia House A Perfect Spy

Share This Book

Your website
“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.” 13 people liked it
“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.” 2 people liked it
More quotes…