Duck Test
- The Rose by Foster Grant
Foster Grant writes a personal account of the mystery surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a Paris car crash in 1997.
The Rose is an extraordinary and compelling book. But not for all the usual reasons – although many of those reasons also apply; most particularly, the story. I say story but surely this has to be a memoir, and a stunning one at that. It’s a riveting and outrageous tale but it’s told so vividly, so personally, so candidly, and the writing is so truthful and real that it can’t possibly be anything else, can it? As Foster Grant writes in the book, ‘If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a fucking duck.’
Or is it? This enigma of a book captivated me. It intrigued, educated, delighted, and ultimately confounded me. Having spent the first half of the book cementing my belief that what I’m reading is in fact a memoir and not a work of fiction at all, the author as investigative journalist, goes on to present the curious litany of circumstantial evidence to support the contention that Diana was murdered in the Alma tunnel and that the accident wasn’t an accident at all. Grant builds his case up slowly, arduously, fact by indisputable fact. His arguments and moreover the level-headed intelligence and authority in which they are made together with the eloquence of his delivery surpass them being merely plausible; Grant’s voice makes them feel hugely convincing. And bit by bit I found myself drawn into his web of belief.
Where to begin with this masterful piece of writing? How about with the mastery of the writing? It’s a beautifully written text, the quality of the prose is flawless and is sustained throughout the book. It makes perfect sense that the author is a journalist, the writing is so fluid and Grant possesses a wonderfully relaxed, confident writing style. Back to the F-bomb duck for a moment, Grant uses profanity well; always at the right moments and in exactly the right concentration. The Rose is hugely enjoyable, highly engaging, and at times wryly funny. The late eighties and early nineties periods are also wonderfully evoked. And the Diana sections are eye-opening and at times jaw-dropping.
Eventually though, it all becomes a bit much to stomach and my rational mind finally woke up to my induced suspension of disbelief - The Rose is powerful, the way drugs are. Amongst other things, the car begins to look implausible - if MI6 were truly behind her death, then surely, they could and would have picked a more reliable vehicle than a clapped-out, nine-year-old Fiat Uno to mount such a vital operation. Far more likely that the Uno was the one belonging to Van Thanh which he had resprayed red in the middle of the night...
The final section shifts up a gear as the story veers into all-out fiction with the narrative seamlessly segueing from the biographical and journalistic to the fantastical thriller it becomes. The shocking, climatic scene at the end of the book ‘Jesus H fucking Christ on a Bike!’ throws my previous view of the book as a memoir right up in the air and into the woods (let’s hope that Grant did in fact make this bit up). The shift here is extraordinary and demonstrates skill in storytelling of the highest calibre.
No one’s perfect though, not even Diana, and Grant has his flaws as an author. That said, they’re minor flaws. I digested this book, like I do so many others as an audio file. The narrator (is it Grant?) has a great voice which is a pleasure to listen to but for me, the narrator’s female voice spoiled an otherwise flawless delivery. Just raising pitch doesn’t work - it’s a pastiche, almost verging on the comical and it isn’t always so easy to understand. More critically, because he only does this one voice, all the women sound much the same - and there are a lot of them! It’s my only criticism of any substance. I think the narration would have benefited from either a bit of voice coaching or from employing an actor to voice the women. Grant’s father is richly portrayed – and voiced - as is his lawyer friend, Mack, but some of the other male characters either aren’t as well introduced or I wasn’t paying attention. The ladies, on the other hand are all impeccably well-attended to in this respect. Consequently, I’ve less of a picture of some of the male supporting cast.
By the end I was left feeling highly confused by The Rose. Ambiguous, another reviewer called it. It’s ambiguous alright, but if it’s ambiguous then it’s ambiguity on coke. It reminded me of how I felt after watching Total Recall (Verhoeven’s original, not the Netflix remake which I haven’t seen), Blue Sky on Mars and all that. I never got all the way through Gone Girl but I guess up to the halfway point, Flynn’s novel is a literary example too.
I near drove myself mad trying in vain to find any trace of the author’s real identity online. Either, this book is a masterfully convincing work of fiction (which would explain the total absence of anyone matching Grant’s description in the real world) or what’s described is factual and the author has - very sensibly - buried himself so deeply under an impenetrable pile of sunglasses that no one will ever be able to trace him. And for the life of me, I really don’t know which it is. And even if I could ask him, I feel sure he wouldn’t tell me so I’ll just have to remain in the dark about it.
But I think what Grant has done in fact is to cleverly stitch together elements of a highly personal memoir together with the many conspiracy theories surrounding Diana’s mysterious death in the tunnel, with invisible seams. Add in a flourish of fictional fantasy (the author as spy) to add drama and the costume is complete. It all seems effortlessly constructed and is extremely well written in order to make it all tie together so well and to work so convincingly. Either that or it’s exactly what it appears at face value: a well-documented and finely written factual account of real events as experienced personally by the demonstrably sane-of-mind author. It leaves me feeling nervous because, if that’s actually the case then it leaves little doubt that Diana was in all certainty murdered, exactly as Grant goes to such great lengths here to attest. And therefore, this tale is indeed a fucking duck.
About the author
Who’s behind those Foster Grants?
Photo Credit: Foster Grant catalogue cover 1968