A review by jenmcmaynes
The Comedians by Graham Greene

4.0

The Heart of the Matter is still my favorite Greene, but The Comedians is definitely an excellent novel. It deals with many of Greene's recurrent themes - lapsed Catholic faith, corrupt government, infidelity - this time in Papa Doc's Haiti. It veers between black comedy and tragedy, and the ending is fairly bleak. The Haitian sending, though vividly depicted, is actually the one reason I am not giving this 5 stars; Greene's depictions of voodoo and Baron Samedi felt a little exploitative to me. But the descriptions of life under the Tontons Macoute were chilling in their commonplace despair, and Brown's and Jones' fumbling towards some type of meaning - any meaning - for their lives was masterfully written.