[gmw]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

[...] gmw, you asked earlier what Parkis was there for. He was needed to get hold of the diary.

Curious that we have read two very different books one after the other about abusive relationships, and with important information being gained from the woman’s diary.

Regarding Parkis, I meant on a bigger scale than that. Given that Bendrix had access to the house via Henry, access to the diary could have been managed another way. No, I felt Greene must have had a bigger reason to have Parkis in this story.

Originally Posted by issybird

[...]I don't think we were meant to despise Maurice; he was doing just fine on that front himself (as of course he was Greene's own doppelganger and Greene was working out some of his own issues). But my takeaway is that Maurice is a person in a process, on a path, and that while he started and ended the story somewhat arbitrarily as he himself said, using the timeline of the affair itself to define it, his own story is not done. Who can but believe that Maurice will be a reluctant convert himself?

I agree with Bookpossum on liking the book and finding Greene's prose marvelous.

I have trouble with the idea of a path, unless it is a circle and Bendrix keeps coming back to where he started? He doesn't appear to have learned anything. I mean, he's on the way to the funeral and he has this thought about the girl who is assisting him:

In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

Quite a piece of work is Bendrix.

And I have trouble with the idea that the prose as marvellous. So much of this read like teenage self-obsessive angst to me - but angst I was being told about, I never actually felt it. Bendrix says again and again how he hates Sarah, but we never feel hate. That, I acknowledge, is probably intentional, but I don't feel love at all either. No, I feel Bendrix is disconnected from Sarah, she is an idea in his mind, not a person.

And much the same with Sarah. I kept feeling as if I was being merely told she loved Bendrix, and perhaps loved God, but I never felt that love. Indeed, it seemed very much to me like Sarah was in sway to an abusive relationship, not love but something meekly submissive:

I felt the fear for a moment I always felt in the old days, that something would happen to spoil the day, that he would be angry with me.

(The parallel between this and fearing an angry God is not lost on me, it's one of the few things Greene didn't overwork.)

The only person in this story that seemed (to me) to show any genuine affection (as opposed to us being simply told that it was supposed to exist) was Henry for Sarah. He even showed considerable care for Bendrix. I am sure Greene meant something by this, but it's not obvious to me what that was.

Originally Posted by Victoria

Playing Devil’s Advocate to deliberately undermine religious experience is an interesting perspective - I need to try it on for a while. But deliberate or just misguided, to me Greene sells religious experience woefully short by reducing it, like all the relationships in the book, to just a series of transactions. All sacrifice, no enrichment, no joy. Just tick the right boxes and you’re saved, but from what and to what?

In the same way, he equates sex with love - as though that’s all love is. Maurice didn’t love Sarah; he wanted to possess her. No tenderness, no attentiveness. He didn’t even notice that she was ill. To me, there was very little heartfelt depth in the book. And perhaps you’re right - that’s exactly what Greene wanted to portray. If so what was the point of the book - lives of quiet desperation?

Yes. Just ... yes. That is the book I read.