A Good Man in Africa (The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene)

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Product:	The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Date:	28/10/01 (818 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wistful foreboding.

Disadvantages: wistful foreboding.

Graham Greene is one of my favourite writers, he was a compelling
story-teller, whose novels instantly grab your attention and hold it.
A purveyor of top quality escapism, he didn't always get the
literary recognition he deserved, perhaps even in his own mind.
He subtitled many of his novels "An entertainment" as though
he wanted to distinguish them from "serious" literary work.
But surely novels that aren't entertaining are just pretentious?

Greene left us a canon of enjoyably readable, quality novels,
often set in exotic locations, in which he created some vividly real
characters, who are usually wrestling with moral dilemmas.
You know of them, even if you haven't actually read any.

A whisky-priest on the run in Mexico in The Power and the Glory.
The mysteriously deceased Harry Lime in Vienna (The Third Man).
Pinky and his gang (Brighton Rock). A tragic war-time love triangle
(The End of the Affair). A vacuum-salesman who becomes a bogus
spy (Our Man In Havana). His works were manna from heaven for
film directors.

As I work my way through his books, I travel the world.
My last stop was Haiti (The Comedians), this time it's Sierra Leone.
Written in 1948, it is, inevitably, set during the Second World War.

Major Henry Scobie has been a police officer in this outpost of the
British empire for fifteen years. He's now the deputy commissioner,
but despite the imminent retirement of his boss, has been passed
over for promotion. His wife Louise can't stand the place any more,
and wants to move to South Africa, but he is content where he is,
and besides, they cannot afford it. Theirs is a loveless marriage.
Scobie decides to put his scruples to one side and borrow money
from a shady Syrian store-keeper called Yusef, so that his wife can
leave. And so a morally upstanding man sli
des into murky waters.

Decency, corruption and love. Three aspects of human nature
colliding in a far-off place, in the middle of a distant war.
There is an air of wistful foreboding in this novel. (Don't ask me to
explain what that actually means - it's just one of those phrases
that pops into my head as I'm reading.) And, like many of Greene's
characters, Scobie is a Catholic suffering from a lack of faith.
(Greene himself converted to Roman Catholicism as a young man.)

If you haven't read any of Graham Greene's novels (er, why not?)
then I recommend you pick one, any one, and let him take you on
a journey.

The Heart of the Matter has been adapted for BBC Radio 4 by the
Nottingham writer John Harvey. It stars Charles Dance as Scobie.
The concluding part can be heard again at 9pm next Saturday.

¶ Paperback: £6.99 ¶ pp274 ¶ ISBN: 0099286068 ¶ __________________________________________________ __

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