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payindigo's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
david_rhee's review
3.0
Graham Greene, the 007 of literature, surely saw much of the world. First, it was the Tabasco region of Mexico, then western Africa, Havana, and now it's Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The story follows shipmates on their way to Haiti who each in his own way resorts to living as a play-actor, or comedian?, to bolster his ambitions in the violent climate of Haiti. There's a fraud military officer, an idealist who envisions a vegetarian center on the island (yes, it is as bizarre as it sounds), and a hotelier who dreams of establishing a tourist haven after fleeing the States to avoid being caught forging works of art. There is a surreal and almost ridiculous feel to the novel as the characters' humorous fronts sidle along just a hair's breadth from the reality of Haiti's bloody dictatorship. The secret police, the much feared Tontons Macoute, menace the locals and foreigners alike. When the players of comedy are faced with the real fate of death and destruction, they can easily become the cast of that other great pillar of theater, tragedy. Curiously, in this passage from one to the other, heroes are born. This is a very clever construction by Graham Greene.
garcia12aj's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
armina_salemi's review against another edition
4.0
It was sadly hilarious, hilariously sad, meaningfully meaningless and in the end only sorrow remains...
babsellen's review
4.0
It was wonderful to bask in the warmth of a Graham Greene novel again. He manages to embed pictures of time and place so seamlessly into his stories that I can't help being drawn in as if in a dream.
sethlynch's review
5.0
I hadn't read and GG books for a number of years. About 20 years ago I went through a phase of just reading his novels, this autobiographies then biographies. But luckily I stopped before I'd read them all so there were still treasures like this one to read. I always knew he was good - I wouldn't have read one after the other if I didn't - but I felt I appreciated something more in this book. It's there in the others, I just noticed it this time. It's the resigned philosophy, the taking the world as it is. The evil is there, and it's evil, but you can't do much about it, except a gesture. And sometimes life is so pointless that the gesture is worth while. I read this off the back of Camus' The Fall and I felt Greene handled the same subject in a much better way. (In fairness so has Camus in The Plague).
I'm hoping there are a few others I've missed off so I can read them now
I'm hoping there are a few others I've missed off so I can read them now
bwood95's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
bobbo49's review
4.0
This well-paced story, set in Papa Doc Duvalier's Haiti of the 1960s, is another excellent work that captures a time and place perfectly. Greene recreates life in that terrible era in Haiti with incredible depth and feeling, and renders the political and social climates through believable characters. I don't know how he was able to create settings all over the world with such color and feeling, but Greene is as passionate and well written as anyone I have the pleasure of reading.