Graham Greene – Page 2 – Cannonball Read 17

“Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of a tragedy.”

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

July 17, 2020 by blauracke Leave a Comment

In Cuba, shortly before the end of the Batista regime, James Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, is recruited for the Secret Intelligence Service by an ambitious agent. He begins to fabricate information in order to earn money for his daughter’s education, but soon finds himself in more dangerous waters than he expected. This is a pretty good black comedy that makes fun of intelligence services and is genuinely hilarious, with the standout scene for me the one in which the agent who recruited Wormold notices […]

Not that I have time to think of the poor fellow much.

Travels with my Aunt by Grahame Green

November 1, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

One of the mid to late Graham Greene novels, long after his probably more famous classics like Brighton Rock, The End of the Affair, The Power and the Glory, and The Heart of the Matter, this novel is from 1969 and involves a middle aged bank manager on the cusp of retirement going along with his elderly aunt on a series of world travels. Don’t let the prosaic basic plot outline fool you, however. The two are reunited at his mother’s, her sister’s, funeral and when she finds […]

One never knows when the blow may fall.

The Third Man by Graham Greene

September 23, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

If you haven’t seen this movie, you just should. It’s so wonderful. The book is about Rollo Martins, a cheap novelist, coming to Vienna during the split occupation looking for a business opportunity with his old school friend Harry Lime. When he gets there, Harry Lime has been killed and Martins works to solve the case. The novella is told through the perspective of a British military police officer looking more so to maintain order than to solve the crime, so having this hack novelist […]

Two very different novels from a very English author

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene

April 14, 2019 by KimMiE" Leave a Comment

Graham Greene was a prolific English writer who, in addition to writing over 25 novels, wrote movie treatments and screenplays. Probably his most famous adaptation was for the Orson Welles classic The Third Man, based on Greene’s own novella of the same name. The author conceived of The Tenth Man in the 1940s while working for MGM, but nothing happened with the draft for 40 years. When MGM sold the rights in 1983, the buyer allowed Greene to revise and publish the novel, giving us […]

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim

The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

March 5, 2019 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

What begins as seemingly as a book about British colonial presence in Africa during WWII ends as a novel about “faith,” “faithfulness,” and marriage. I know of this novel from a handful of different sources; one, it’s famous in its own right as a novel; two, it’s on the MLA top 100 list of 20th century novels; three, a college professor for a modernism class gave of an overview of British fiction of the 20th century and this one was one of his favorites. It’s […]

Wow, this brings back some stuff

July 31, 2017 by vel veeter Leave a Comment

When I was in high school, the Neil Jordan version of The End of the Affair came out at the local arthouse theater. I think I had already watched a bunch of his movies or this one set me on a tear of watching Michael Collins, The Crying Game, and others I could get my hand on. In addition, I remember watching this and immediately becoming infatuated with Graham Greene and reading a handful of his books, including this one. I re-listened to this one, read by Colin Firth, […]

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