Reviews

This is the last of Greene's 'entertainments' that I've read, and probably the one that came with the highest reputation. I did enjoy it, but it didn't quite live up to my, perhaps unfair, expectations.

It takes a while to get going and the humour in the first half feels a bit awkward at first. I think on the whole I prefer Greene's more straightforward, tense thrillers such as A Gun for Sale or Stamboul Train. Having said that, the last third is a blast, as the humour darkens and the tale reaches a satisfying conclusion.

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5.0

What a strange little book, but I really quite enjoyed it. How concerned London becomes over a simple vacuum cleaner salesman is quite comical actually. I liked Wormold and Beatrice, I thought they made a good pairing. On his own, I thought Wormold was a clever man and his use of imagination made me smile.

Milly is a sly little girl, but I also liked her character. She certainly knows how to manipulate her dad into getting exactly what she wants. Hawthorne is a very suspicious character and I really didn't like him at the start. He also really confused me the way he tried to proposition Wormold. I like Wormold though, he's a clever man and his use of imagination made me smile. Poor Dr. Hasselbacher though.

I found Segura's definition of the types of people who belong in the torturable class were still quite relevant to today. In essence he says that the local, poor people can be tortured, but the rich or the forgein cannot. While I agree with the distinct class lines over the rich and poor, I find that foreigners fall in both categories. He also says that in non-Western countries there are no class distinctions so everyone is torturable.

I didn't realise that the book was made into a film in the late 50's. I made a photo collage compiled of stills from the film, swipe right to see it.

"It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster."

"They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain."