I like Graham Greene’s writing and other books. I just couldn’t get into this one. ( )

Looking for some context, well, really, explanation, for this bizarre, poorly executed concoction, I turned to Volume 2 of Norman Sherry’s biography only to read the most uncritical description of it as Greene’s ‘most brilliant thriller’. I wondered if I was reading the same book. Even when his ‘serious’ books were being praised when his literary reputation was at its height, the ‘entertainments’ (of which this is one) were seen as slight. Well this seems to me worse than slight. An absurd plot with what seem to be the dregs of ideas from other unwritten books thrown in, it just never at any stage convinces, either as a novel or as a worthwhile use of the reader's time. ( )

The narrative is like a dream; faint, tenuous webs of logic tie together vividly written scenes varying in tone and setting (from a fair, to the offices of a charity group, to a seance, to a bombed-out apartment, to an asylum, etc.). I did not find it terribly compelling, as it rests on dated (and to 21st century sensibilities, strange) notions of amnesia and a rather unconvincing love interest. ( )

"Don't tell me the past. Tell me the future."

I will never look at a cake the same way again.

Winning a cake at a little street fair. Such a simple thing that gets our story rolling, sending our protagonist on a dangerous adventure that he certainly doesn't consciously want, but surely needs if he is to learn who he is in the world, and how he fits in it.

Greene places us in WWII Britain during the Blitz. We are there, without a doubt. Perhaps it is so real because Greene was there, writing this novel as the bombs fell around him. Or, it may be because Greene's prose, as a rule, is just so tight and sharp. Probably both.

Arthur Rowe is such a superb character--real in his faults and emotions, and ignorant of his own latent heroism. The dialogue is crisp and perfect. The descriptions are precise. The writing is economical, and so much so, you wonder after finishing the novel how you can know so much, and feel as if you've lived it yourself. Such a master of story-telling in only 221 pages.

"One can't love humanity. One can only love people."

"It occurred to him that perhaps after all one could atone even to the dead if one suffered for the living enough." ( )

3.5

A fun little novel with a few surprising twists. Quite gripping for the first 2 thirds or so - arguably Greene at his best. Unfortunately, this is watered down towards the end by what is revealed to be an overly elaborate plot and an unconvincing romance. ( )