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sjoerdbol's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
libertyskies's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know why more people haven't read this one. It's just as good as The End of the Affair, though very different. And it's a quick read too. I loved the first half.
blakeisgreene's review against another edition
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
ginbottle's review against another edition
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
4.0
Stylish, intriguing and mysterious; a story to ruminate on.
giovannareads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
canadiantiquarian's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent exploration of words and meaning, most especially the power we apply to, or strip from, words.
kdog's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
eely225's review against another edition
3.0
I've read more than a dozen Graham Greene novels in the past few years, so it's strange to reach the end. There are plenty that I skipped along the way, but this was the last novel he published in his lifetime and may be the last one I'll read for a while. He clearly had no intention to repeat his old tricks; even at the end, Greene wanted to do something new.
Partly new anyway. There is the banal brutality of espionage, the romance of the self-exiled Brit in Latin America, and the romantic commitment of an unspeakable and ambiguous nature. These things are prime Greene, but they don't represent most of what the book is. It seems mostly interested with the shortcomings of memory and the way in which the stories of ourselves can outgrow reality. It's about still not knowing what love is.
The quintessential Greene protagonist is a self-insert, passive elite who is comfortable outside his comfort zone. That character is not entirely present in this book. Jim is largely unfeeling, like his many predecessors in the Greene corpus, but he is not interesting either. All the intrigue surrounds the Captain, a Falstaff-like figure who is absurd in his breadth in the first part and absurd in his vanishing smallness later on.
The second divergence from the norm is the book's structure. It attempts to be a book that is aware that it is a book. Jim refers to the manuscript that you're reading as he writes it. The shifts between the first and second half are then focused on a person trying to write his story first, then a person trying to rediscover the version of himself that wrote that story in the second. And despite the changes in time, no one changes. Jim in his 30s is indistinguishable from Jim as a pre-teen. He doesn't grow; he just keeps watching the Captain.
Particularly confusing is the fourth section. If we are to believe that we the readers are reading the "manuscript" discussed in the book, why are we aware of what happens after the manuscript is completed? And if it's being published with some political end, as they allude to in the last chapter, is it realistic to conclude that "the Enemy" is an invention of the publication? There are interesting routes to analyze the book's internal logic, but I think it asks more questions than it's capable of answering.
The best Greene books don't allow their self-satisfied men to remain so to the end. In this one, they don't change, they just fade away. Perhaps as Greene felt himself fading away, this resonated more personally for him. If we think of the Captain as Falstaff, then it fits that his story would be unresolved. But even if making the resolution unsatisfying was intentional, it remains, for this reader, unsatisfying.
Partly new anyway. There is the banal brutality of espionage, the romance of the self-exiled Brit in Latin America, and the romantic commitment of an unspeakable and ambiguous nature. These things are prime Greene, but they don't represent most of what the book is. It seems mostly interested with the shortcomings of memory and the way in which the stories of ourselves can outgrow reality. It's about still not knowing what love is.
The quintessential Greene protagonist is a self-insert, passive elite who is comfortable outside his comfort zone. That character is not entirely present in this book. Jim is largely unfeeling, like his many predecessors in the Greene corpus, but he is not interesting either. All the intrigue surrounds the Captain, a Falstaff-like figure who is absurd in his breadth in the first part and absurd in his vanishing smallness later on.
The second divergence from the norm is the book's structure. It attempts to be a book that is aware that it is a book. Jim refers to the manuscript that you're reading as he writes it. The shifts between the first and second half are then focused on a person trying to write his story first, then a person trying to rediscover the version of himself that wrote that story in the second. And despite the changes in time, no one changes. Jim in his 30s is indistinguishable from Jim as a pre-teen. He doesn't grow; he just keeps watching the Captain.
Particularly confusing is the fourth section. If we are to believe that we the readers are reading the "manuscript" discussed in the book, why are we aware of what happens after the manuscript is completed? And if it's being published with some political end, as they allude to in the last chapter, is it realistic to conclude that "the Enemy" is an invention of the publication? There are interesting routes to analyze the book's internal logic, but I think it asks more questions than it's capable of answering.
The best Greene books don't allow their self-satisfied men to remain so to the end. In this one, they don't change, they just fade away. Perhaps as Greene felt himself fading away, this resonated more personally for him. If we think of the Captain as Falstaff, then it fits that his story would be unresolved. But even if making the resolution unsatisfying was intentional, it remains, for this reader, unsatisfying.