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I've been thinking more about those links about Greene's own affair and the parallels with this book ... and I now find my reactions coloured by that knowledge. I think I preferred it when the book stood on its own, the whole thing seems cheapened by its heavy borrowing.
Not only am I much less inclined to think well of Greene for what seems to me to be cheating (in so many senses it's amazing/appalling/something), but I think this book was a horrible thing to do to Catherine and Harry. Parallels are/were obviously going to be drawn between the fictional and real protagonists, and I think it is quite cruel for him to set them up this way. (Even if the affair was not public knowledge at this point, Catherine and presumably several others - given how indiscreet Greene was - would have known and drawn their own conclusion.) My regard for Greene is sinking pretty steadily.
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