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Liked It “As a writer, I’ve always been a little shy of the subjects of adultery, affairs and jealousy the way that you might be shy of opening that great big present someone gave you for your birthday, the one in the enormous box with the massive bow. Mystery writers can rely on sexual jealousy as a...” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“Graham Greene does it for me. This book is superb. In many ways I wish I could be Brown, overlooking Port Au Prince sipping a pink gin and mourning a lost age and a wasted life. Jump into my Humber and have one of those good old fashioned affairs with a Diplomat's wife. This book brought me the utmost pleasure and made me upset because the time he's writing about is gone. I noticed with this book in particular I kept thinking Greene was Brown and was just writing about himself it's not so and I'm glad. I should hope one of my favorite authors wasn't a washed up Britisher down on his luck and down on life. ”
JACK S! wrote this review Monday, March 23 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“An evocative world with interesting characters and an ability to make the reader feel tense. I rooted for the main character despite the lack of any real cause, definitely worth a read.”
Richard H wrote this review Thursday, November 6 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Typical white perspective on Haiti, but a good story nonetheless. Considered by some to be one of the classic novels about Haiti... probably because there aren't many.”
Jess Mowry wrote this review Saturday, August 16 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“As a writer, I’ve always been a little shy of the subjects of adultery, affairs and jealousy the way that you might be shy of opening that great big present someone gave you for your birthday, the one in the enormous box with the massive bow. Mystery writers can rely on sexual jealousy as a surefire motive guaranteed to contain more spice than simple monetary greed. Serious writers seem obliged to dwell on the complications of extramarital affairs the way that traditional haiku poets were obliged to dwell on the blossoms of cherry trees. Affairs, custody battles, divorce, feelings of loneliness, these are all cliché subjects, but they’re clichés that many of us have to visit because these are the subjects that get under the skin of the safest, most stable, most “mature” people, the apparent pillars of our society. If you want, you can write about mob lords, private detectives, wizards, soldiers, whalers, firefighters, people who throw themselves into conflict and adventure. Heroism and villainy are legitimate subjects for serious literature. But in order to gain maturity you also have to recognize the forces in life that make mature adults act like selfish children; you have to recognize the fact that even when people seek to avoid conflict, even when they try to settle down, conflict comes and finds them right where they live.
Paul Brynner wrote this review Saturday, March 15 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Graham Greene is thinking about these issues and many more when he brings together Brown and Jones, two men who have spent much of their lives as itinerant con artists. After a particularly successful scam involving forged paintings, Brown retreats to Haiti and decides to settle down into the role of the owner of a hotel he inherited from a mother he barely knew. He manages to turn the Hotel Trianon into a favorite spot for poets, artists and thinkers, and also starts up a romance with the wife of an ambassador from an unnamed South American state. Brown scoffs at the way the ambassador is obsessed with his own sense of ownership, the way he treats his wife as a possession and always emphasizes the word “my” in the phrase, “my wife.”
But Brown finds that he too is susceptible to jealousy and pettiness when he encounters Jones, a laid-back smooth-talker who boasts of his spurious military achievements in Burma during WWII. As a fellow con-artist, Brown can’t look down at Jones for playing fast and loose with the truth, but he feels threatened by the fact that Jones is capable of something that’s always eluded Brown: the ability to make people laugh.
What’s great about this book is the fact that the narrative is so prosaiac and matter of fact that I kept getting caught off guard by Graham’s great talent. Over the course of the book, Graham takes the carefree sense of humor that Brown so dreads and uses it as an anchoring for a series of literary fancy knots, reflections about the dark comedy of the increasingly corrupt Haitian Government under President “Papa Doc” Duvalier; about the tragically absurd comedy of guerilla forces who think they have a chance to overthrow a despotic government able to rely on CIA support; about the comedy of the American utopians who come to Haiti in hopes of building a vegetarian center that will bring peace to the country by removing acidity from the Haitian diet; and most of all, about the farcical and pitiful comedy of misunderstanding that arises when Brown fails to heed the wisdom of his own mistress’s words: “Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn’t worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination . . . then we fail.””
“reads like honey and milk. political.”
Ashraf K wrote this review Saturday, December 1 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“A great novel by green which perfectly describes the crimes of an authoritarian and totaliterian government. ”
nostalgia9 wrote this review Tuesday, November 27 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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