Well, the rest of you found an awful lot more to expound on than I did. My reaction was boredom, with a few flashes of annoyance and eye-rolling disbelief.
I had not previously read anything by Graham Greene, but I had him pigeonholed as a Catholic author. So I was taken aback by the anti-Catholic/anti-religious tone of the novel, the snobbery and lack of respect that dismissed faith as superstition and magic. And then Greene goes and turns dead Sarah into a saint--a real, honest-to-goodness, miracle-performing saint! A soul worthy of veneration, based on ... what? Which isn't to say that she might have become saintly, but that's a far cry from performing miracles, even iffy ones.
I disliked every character in the novel. Henry was so noble and long-suffering that I wanted to smack him upside the head. Sarah ... what was her struggle really about? You want to be a Catholic, go be a Catholic; believe, don't believe; who cares, just stop dramatizing. Maurice was a petty, nasty little man and I wouldn't have been displeased to see another wall fall on him. (I'm just full of Christmas spirit today, as you see.)
Generally I agree with gmw's and Victoria's comments.
|