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  3. "The news hit the British High Commission in Nairobi at nine-thirty on a Monday morning. Sandy Woodrow took it like a bullet, ja

"The news hit the British High Commission in Nairobi at nine-thirty on a Monday morning. Sandy Woodrow took it like a bullet, ja

admin2010-06-17  83
问题     "The news hit the British High Commission in Nairobi at nine-thirty on a Monday morning. Sandy Woodrow took it like a bullet, jaw rigid, chest out, smack through his divided English heart", Crikey. So that’s how you take a bullet. Poor old Sandy. His English heart must be really divided now. This deliriously hardboiled opening sets the tone for what’s to come. White mischief? Pshaw! White plague, more like it.
    Sandy Woodrow is head of chancery at the British High Commission in Nairobi. The news that neatly subdivides his heart as the novel opens is the death of a young, beautiful and idealistic lawyer turned aid worker named Tessa Quayle. Tessa has been murdered for learning too much about the dishonest practices of a large pharmaceutical company operating in Africa. Her body is found at Lake Turkana, in northern Kenya near the border with Sudan. Tessa’s husband, Justin, is also a British diplomat stationed in Nairobi. Until now Justin has been an obedient civil servant, content to toe the official line—in short, a hard worker. But all that changes in the aftermath of his wife’s murder. Full of righteous anger, he resolves to get to the bottom of it, come what may.
    "The Constant Gardener" has got plenty of tense moments and sudden twists and comes completely with shadowy figures lurking in the bush. There is a familiar tone of gentlemanly world- weariness to it all, which should keep Mr. le Carre’s fans happy. But the novel is also an impassioned attack on the corruption which allows Africa to be used as a sort of laboratory for the testing of new medicines. Elsewhere, Mr. le Carte has denounced the "corporate cam, hypocrisy, corruption and greed" of the pharmaceutical industry. This position is excitingly dramatized in his book, even if the abuses he rails against are not exactly breaking news.
    In other respects "The Constant Gardener" is less satisfactory. Mr. le Carte can’t seem to make up his mind whether he’s writing a thriller or an expose. Ina recent article for the New Yorker he described his creative process as "a kind of deliberately twisted journalism, where nothing is quite what it is" and where any encounter may be "freely recast for its dramatic possibilities". Such is the method employed in "The Constant Gardener", whose heroine. Mr. le Carte says, was inspired by an old friend of his. One or two prominent real-life Kenyan politicians are mentioned often enough to become, in effect. "characters" in the story. And in a note at the end of the book Mr. le Cane thanks the various diplomats, doctors, pharmaceutical experts and old Africa hands who gave him advice and assistance, though in the same breath he insists that the staff of the British mission in Nairobi are no doubt all jolly good eggs who bear no resemblance whatsoever to the heartless scoundrels in his story.
    There’s nothing wrong with a bit of artistic license, Of course. But Mr. le Carre’s equivocation about the novel’s relation to fact undermines its effectiveness as a work of social criticism, which is pretty clearly what it aspires to be. "The Constant Gardener" is a cracking thriller but a flawed exploration of a complicated set of political issues.
选项 A、film
B、comedy
C、novel
D、document
答案C
解析 事实细节题。从第二段开头"The news that neatly subdivides his heart as the novel opens is the death of a young, beautiful and idealistic lawyer turned aid worker named Tessa Quayle"可以看出这是一部小说。
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考研英语一

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