john le carre the constant gardener review

In Le Carré's postscript, poetic injustice seems to be the point. The narrative shifts back in time to show us what really happened, what has been hushed up in that summary. 'Deranged by despair and grief, he had taken his own life at the very spot where his wife Tessa had been murdered only weeks before.' This is the final, official account - but not the truth.

For the postscript tells us of 'the unhappy passing of Justin Quayle'. Quayle has ensured that inconvenient documents become public, and the novel's postscript includes rumblings in press and parliament about a conspiracy behind Tessa's murder. Le Carré cannot merely invalidate his hero's sleuthing. Rob and Lesley, the police officers doggedly investigating Tessa's death, leave the police service. Kenny Curtiss, the entrepreneur whose company was testing a new drug on Africans, is made a lord. Foreign Office 'Africa tsar' Sir Bernard Pellegrin, who has made sure that her findings are 'buried', gets a senior post with the pharmaceutical company she was investigating. Sandy Woodrow is rewarded for dealing diplomatically with Tessa Quayle's murder by being made high commissioner. We get the destiny of each secondary character. Le Carré's final chapter leaves his hero, Justin Quayle, in the African bush, on the trail of his wife's killers, to tell us 'a chapter of events' in the months that follow. In fiction, it has sharp lessons and sharper ironies to display. The postscript is schematic, succinct, often didactic. They are favoured by narratives that purport to be based on 'real' people and events (which spill over, beyond any artificial ending). Postscripts feature brief summaries of future events - in films, often a few sentences on the screen. Viewers of last week's BBC drama-documentary Dunkirk, for instance, were told of the exploits later in the war of the individuals whose stories it had dramatised.Ī postscript differs from an epilogue, which presents some representative episode from a future time. Now, however, extra footage informs you what happened - after the story's end, perhaps years later - to some of the characters you have encountered. A story has been brought to its conclusion and the credits are ready to roll. One of these, used in the final chapter of The Constant Gardener, is the postscript. S ome narrative conventions first developed by novelists are now more familiar from film and television.

John le carre the constant gardener review