Background:

This is my 4th novel by Graham Greene I've recently decided to resume reading his works as many as I can. I first knew him from reading an excerpt from his The Power and the Glory (traditionally typed and Roneoed sheets) in one of our English literature courses 50+ years ago. I found reading him simply perplexing to me then, I couldn't help wondering how he wrote superbly and why, his narratives were so powerful that I had to go out at an Asia Books Bookshop in Bangkok on Sukhumvit Road in search of a Penguin paperback to buy a copy and kept reading off and on from Book 1 onward, and left it at that due to probably my fledgling skill in English reading proficiency, limited understanding on his writing style as well as background knowledge on its characters especially its rare synopsis in which we can now conveniently search and read as we like from Wikipedia, for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hea...
or his biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_... in which, again, we can gain more familiarity on his writing career and essential contexts related to any particular novel.

Good news! I've just finished reading this acclaimed fiction after my hesitant delays spanning some four decades. A reason, I think, was that I didn't enjoy reading him whenever I picked him up, in other words, my motive was not powerful enough to push me forward, no one pulling me; however, this was my case and I hope to read him more because I've seen something glimmering after reading for some information, ideas, inspirations, etc. from the aforementioned websites.

I’ve since had my deep pity toward Major Scobie, as a 50-year-old Deputy Commissioner, the protagonist trapped by his fate in supporting his wife to travel to South Africa unknowingly exploits himself further by borrowing 200 pounds from a cunning, cold-blooded man called Yusef. Eventually, he comes across to know a widow named Helen, 30 years younger, whose sarcastically sharp and bitter tongue he has to inevitably endure as a secret mistress. Desperately, he tries to solve his seemingly lingering ethical-related problems but in vain so he finally takes his life, it is too sad to read this part in which, I think, the author has done his best till we nearly know nothing on such a horrible decision. We can see Greene’s narration is so powerful that few modern writers can surpass him; his life-like dialogues always are enjoyable to read on and on.

In brief, those keen Greene newcomers should not miss this fantastic novel famously acclaimed by the Modern Library in 1998 as the 40th novel on its list of 100 best English-language novels in the 20th century. (http://www.modernlibrary.com/top-100/...) However, I think its readership would not be limited to specific time only because this novel has amazingly portrayed such a fateful life worth pondering with pity and compassion.

I read this years ago, and now upon re-reading I'm struck by how Greene pierces all that insufferable British colonial wartime mumbo-jumbo and shows the ineffable sadness behind the fake chumminess and the cold loneliness at the heart of the overseas bureaucracy.

The main character, Scobie, is tormented by his own betrayals: of his wife, his mistress, his job, and his God. Like so many of Greene's characters, he is at once the strongest and weakest of men--the one possessed of the most "goodness" and the most moral failure. He struggles with a way out of the various traps he's set for himself, and ultimately chooses....but no. I won't spoil it here. Suffice it to say that this is one of Greene's best for a reason. The inner tensions that rip through every page remind me of what Faulkner once said about the human heart at war with itself. And this really is all-out war: a life-or-death struggle waged beneath the polite surfaces of things.

Graham Greene's 1948 novel, The Heart of the Matter is nominally set in West Africa, perhaps because the author served Britain in Sierra Leone for several years during WWII. However, the heart of this novel is quite definitely situated in a far more authorial landscape known as "Greeneland".



Oddly enough, while Graham Greene seemed to savor his time on the African continent, there is little of Africa or Africans held within the novel, offerings a scant hint of life beyond the British administrative presence, the sounds of voices or the the images of the local people going about their daily lives. Instead, this is a tale, set during WWII that seeks to portray the soul of a man named Scobie, a terminally lethargic police official, estranged from his wife Louise, nearing retirement but thoroughly alienated from his job after 15 years of service in Africa for the colonial administration of Britain.

The scene is marked by great heat, constant flies, frequent roaches & perpetual rain. Meanwhile, the other characters seem sent forth from Greene's central casting bureau, among them: Yusef, a Syrian shop owner who is not trustworthy but has necessary connections to both money & the sources of local power; a priest named Fr. Rank, ("gray-haired & with the roguery of an old elephant") who seems to be present mainly as a foil for Scobie; an undercover agent named Harris who is in love with Scobie's wife & keen to discover Scobie's weaknesses; and a man named Wilson who seems out-of-place in Africa but who attended the same school as Harris, allowing him a minimal feeling of attachment.

All of these characters are bent on keeping up English habits while serving in a fairly inconsequential African posting. At one point, at the Bedford Hotel which both share, Harris tells Wilson, "You don't have to dress up for a Syrian, old man", this at a point when Wilson's cummerbund was said to "lay uncoiled like an angry snake." And later Harris adds, "Be careful of the fish old man!" (The "old man" usage is essential Greene dialogue, being frequently used in The Comedians & of course by Harry Lyme in The Third Man.)



What lifts this tale is the language the author employs, that which makes reading Graham Greene so uplifting even when the characters can at times seem flat & immobile. The law courts building is described as "a great stone building like the grandiloquent boast of weak men". And it continues:

Inside that massive frame the human being rattled in the corridors like a dry kernel. No one could have been adequate in so rhetorical a conception. But in any case the idea was only one room deep. In the dark narrow passage behind, in the change-room & the cells, Scobie could always detect the odour of human meanness & injustice--it was the smell of a zoo, of sawdust, excrement, ammonia & lack of liberty. The place was scrubbed daily but you could never eliminate that smell. Prisoners & policemen carried it in their clothing like cigarette smoke.

The Heart of the Matter seeks to display what happens to those who can not love, who are defeated in their attempt to fully admit others into their lives & therefore ultimately can not accept themselves as worthy of life.

It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn't the test of man be carried out in fewer years? Couldn't we have committed our 1st major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a 15-year-old deathbed?

At one point & with reference to British WWII censorship rules, we are told that Scobie, "against the strictest orders was exercising his own imperfect judgment". In fact, throughout the novel, Scobie fails at life in a more generic manner & therefore can not merit redemption. Greene is often categorized as a "Catholic writer", which I think is at least somewhat dismissive, as more than a few of his novels are teleological rather than sectarian, more generally illustrating characters who are unable to love, to fulfill their human function by connecting to their fellow man.



Here are but a few more clues to Scobie's persona:

Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give you, my peace I leave with you. Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace. In the mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of good will carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

What an absurd thing it was to expect happiness in a world so full of misery. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? If one reached what they called the heart of the matter?

The word "pity" was used as promiscuously as the word "love": the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

It was as impossible for him to put out a hand of forgiveness into the suicidal darkness & chaos than for Christ to have awoken in the tomb. Christ had not been murdered: you couldn't murder God: Christ had killed himself: he had hanged himself on the cross.

These may seem like the ravings of a mad man but in fact, they represent a kind of interior dialogue of a man in quest of his soul. In my view, Scobie is at least an informal believer in a godly presence but someone who can't confront his own weakness, or his inability to love. In order to cease infecting others with his sense of despair & failing to clarify his own "god-questions", Scobie suffers "the stigmata of loneliness". He declares that "I'm carrying my corruption around with me & am damned."



Apparently, Graham Greene suffered bouts of depression or bipolar disorder and perhaps we can see in Scobie why the author was called "the ultimate chronicler of 20th century man's consciousness & anxiety." The Heart of the Matter is quite definitely not every reader's cup of Tetley's but, perhaps akin to viewing an Ingmar Bergman film, it is nonetheless a rich & remarkable experience.

Policeman stationed in colonial Africa cheats on his wife, gets involved with shady diamond smugglers, struggles with his Catholic faith, and endures no end of anguished self-analytical rumination. Funsy!

Three stars means "liked it." I liked it. But the thing is, I recently read Greene's The Quiet American, and looooved it, and hoped this would be in the same vein and that I would loooove it, but it wasn't and I didn't.

The Quiet American is tightly plotted, full of witty irony, sharply drawn characters, exquisitely cynical melancholy, and still-relevant political anger. It's just a great novel, so great that I didn't even write a review because nothing I could say could measure up. This one............I dunno. It's good, Greene writes fabulously readable prose and has a knack for stinging aphorisms that nail down certain miserable aspects of human nature. I enjoyed it, wasn't bored. But the character work was weirdly flat (esp. the women), and the story's rather mundane events never justified the emotional fever-pitch at which the protagonist is consistently operating. Fowler in Quiet American was a miserable bastard too, but he wasn't constantly going on about it like Scobie in Heart, who often repeats repeats himself, or rather Greene often repeats repeats himself on behalf of Scobie. Also, Fowler was miserable in some specific, concrete, logical ways; Scobie is just kind of broadly emo. I also wasn't really into the God stuff. I skimmed the God stuff.

So not a huge fan of this one, but definitely a fan of Greene generally and looking forward to plowing through more of his prolific oeuvre. And do read The Quiet American if you've not yet done so.

Bettie's Books

The rating, any status updates, and those bookshelves, indicate my feelings for this book.

3,5 estrellas.

La historia no me ha encantado pero se lee con facilidad y es entretenida casi todo el tiempo. Graham Green tiene un estilo directo y simple que puede venir bien de vez en cuando para alternar con lecturas más densas y al mismo tiempo, no está exento de profundidad en algunos pasajes.

This is what happens when you live your life trying to get a piece of Sky Cake* in the great hereafter. Not only will you probably make yourself miserable while you’re here on earth and waste time that could be spent eating delicious actual cake, but you’ll most likely fuck up the life of everyone else involved with you.

*(For the detailed explanation of the concept of Sky Cake, check out comedian Patton Oswalt’s routine of the same name.)

Henry Scobie is a police officer in an unnamed British colony in West Africa during World War II. Scobie is incorruptible, but not naïve. Even though it's not a glamorous posting, he actually loves his work and the area. However, when he gets passed up for a promotion to the top police job, it puts stress on his marriage to Louise. Scobie doesn’t love her anymore, but does feel responsible for her. He can’t resolve his wish to stay with her desperate pleadings that they should leave.

Despite his desire to just do his job and try to keep the peace and limit the diamond smuggling that is flourishing during the war, Scobie is soon facing a host of problems. Rumors are flying that he was passed over for sleeping with native women or taking bribes from Yusef, the local smuggling kingpin. A new British official named Wilson seems to have fallen for Louise and may have a larger secret agenda, Louise is falling apart and Scobie can’t raise enough money to send her out of the country.

Trying to fulfill Louise’s wish to leave will cause Scobie to bend his own code, and that sets off a chain of events that trap him in an ethical dilemma that he can’t square with his own Catholicism. It’s bad enough to make mistakes that put you in a situation that someone you care for will be hurt no matter what, but when the Catholic rule book assures you that you’re going to be damned for eternity if you can’t do things exactly according to the manual, it makes for a rather shitty moral dilemma.

Great writing, believable characters, a unique setting and a tragic situation made for very compelling reading.

What a lot of angst! I don't think I really enjoyed this book until the last quarter. It seems to be split into arbitrary parts so that the storyline loses momentum at times. The anguish Scobie suffers over his Catholicism is lost on a non Catholic but it seems to me an irony that having a strong faith can cause so much pain. Some phrases left me bewildered: 'He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger's life, the interest the young mistake for love.' Really? 'In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.' Very true but is this more Catholic guilt? And then the completely contradictory 'better surely to pretend a belief than wander in that vicious vacuum of cruelty and despair'. Again - really?!

In the end, I suppose this book made me think but it's not an edifying book and it's certainly not uplifting. I haven't read Greene for years and I think I'm now realising why. The other problem I had was that Scobie often morphed into Captain Mainwaring and the last scenes between him and Helen were transposed to the platform of Brief Encounter. Kept it interesting, I suppose.

"La Chiesa conosce tutte le regole. Ma non sa ciò che avviene in un solo cuore umano"

Cosa guida l'agire di un uomo?

- Emozioni
- Interessi
- Conformismo
- Regole
- ...

Ma quanto la leva che muove l'uomo si compone di misericordia? Una parola talmente desueta da esserci divenuta quasi estranea.

Misericordia chi era costei?"Nobile sentimento di compassione attiva verso l'infelicità altrui, di solito promosso da una virtuosa inclinazione alla pietà o al perdono: avere m. di un povero infelice. Dio perdona tante cose, per un'opera di misericordia! (Manzoni)".

Scobie, il protagonista di questa storia, è un uomo che è mosso sostanzialmente da questo sentimento dal nome antico e così poco agito da parere quasi deprecato. Egli prova nei confronti di chiunque tranne che verso se stesso questo "nobile sentimento".

"L'amore è soltanto il desiderio di capire; e adesso, a causa di quel costante fallimento, anche il desiderio di capire moriva; e l'amore pure, forse; o, ecco, si mutava in quel penoso attaccamento, in quella lealtà, in quella pietà..."

E oltre questo sentire, è caricato da un altro gravoso sentimento, la responsabilità nei confronti di chi ama. Nessuno delle persone che ama deve soffrire a causa sua.
Scobie si pone continuamente in discussione. Ogni mossa che Scobie fa viene sottoposta al vaglio della sua coscienza. Coscienza che risulta essere un giudice assai poco misericordioso.

"È, così almeno si dice, il peccato irremissibile; ma è un peccato che il corrotto e il malvagio non perpetra mai. Costui spera sempre, non raggiunge mai il gelo della consapevolezza di essere totalmente fallito. Solo l'uomo di buona volontà si porta sempre in cuore questa capacità di dannazione "

Se l'azione compiuta va contro le regole che ti sei dato ma è agita con cuore puro ed intenti onorevoli, l'uomo che la compie deve essere condannato/giudicato? E da chi nel caso: da altro uomo o dal suo Dio (se crede)? L'uomo di 'buona volontà' può avere un giudice più severo di sé stesso?

E chi è più puro? Chi rispetta formalmente tutte le regole senza provare la benché minima emozione, completamente privo di pietà o 'desiderio di capire' alcuno? O chi compie azioni non proprio correttissime per cercare di preservare chi ama?

Ed arriviamo subito al nocciolo della questione che è ben espresso dal pensiero di in epigrafe:

"Il peccatore è al cuore stesso della cristianità ... nessuno è così competente come il peccatore in materia di Cristianità. Nessuno, se non il santo". Come dire che (santi esclusi) solamente bevendo il proprio calice fino in fondo, riesci a essere veramente umano.

Un romanzo opprimente, ossessivo, angosciante, cupo tormentato al pari del suo protagonista. Il rapporto di Scobie con Dio o con la propria coscienza non lascia spazio ad alibi o a giustificazioni. E questo essere così severi con sé stessi, è proprio tipico del puro di cuore, dell'uomo di buona volontà.

Mi vien da dire che i gesti che ciascuno di noi compie andrebbero forse accompagnati da un foglietto di intenti. E dovrebbe essere proibito per legge l'esprimere giudizio sull'altrui agire.

Se la pietà, la misericordia e l'amore costituiscono il motore che muove l'uomo, non credo possa esistere un Dio non assolve questo uomo dai suoi peccati.

"Può sembrare una cosa strana da dirsi, per un uomo che era nel torto come lo era lui, ma io credo, per quanto lo conoscevo, che egli amasse veramente Dio"

#2016-aty-reading-challenge--week-9: a book that was mentioned in another book. (This was mentioned in Americanah several times as a favorite of Obinze's mother, a book she hoped he'd love as well.)

#book-vipers-book-hunter: HEART

Henry Scobie has spent the last fifteen years working as a policeman in a West African colony. It looks as if he will be passed up for promotion to be the next Police Commissioner, making his wife very disappointed and unhappy. To appease her, he borrows money from Yousef, an unsavory Syrian merchant, to send her on a trip to South Africa. While she is gone, Henry is drawn into a love affair with Helen, the young survivor of a submarine attack, who also lost her newly-wed husband in the attack.

Now the situation becomes a matter of conscience and moral dilemma. He is a devout Catholic and cannot divorce, and does in fact still love his wife. If he confesses his adultery to the priest, he cannot be absolved of sin if he knows he intends to commit the sin again. If he takes communion in a state of sin, his soul will be eternally damned. If he doesn't take communion, his wife will know the rumors are true. Henry begins to believe there is only one way out. "The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart."

This was fascinating, watching a decent man begin to lose his moral center and hope. Adultery leads to being blackmailed and, to protect his reputation, how far will he sink before he hits rock bottom...especially if he really loves his God?

THE FIRST FACETIOUS REVIEW BASED MAINLY ON FRANKIE VALLI AND SUPREMES SINGLES

*** Spoilers ahoy but we're all friends aren't we?****

As our tale opens, Major Henry Scobie is stuck in a you never close your eyes anymore when you kiss my lips type situation with Mrs Major Henry Scobie aka Louise and there’s a big thought bubble coming out of both their heads which says Where did our love go? Well, after 15 years, what do you expect darlin? Then this new character strolls in called Wilson and he clocks Louise and he’s all there she was just a walkin down the African colony singin doo wah diddy diddy she looked good she looked fine and I nearly lost my mind and before you can say another pink gin dahling? he’s telling her Mrs Major Scobie, my world is empty without you and she’s now then Wilson, you cahn’t hurry lohve, no, you just got to wait. Dahling.
So she decides she wants to visit South Africa, as you do in the middle of World War Two, because it’s automatically sunshine there. So then the Major’s like what? No! Love is here and now you’re gone what a bitch but then this shipwreck happened, not a metaphor a real one, and the young Keira Knightley (I think we could get Keira - couldn't we?) winds up widowed and prostrate in front of him and it’s oh what a night late September in 42, what a laydee, what a night and he’s a bit Dawn Go Away I’m No Good For You but she props herself up on her one good elbow and says stay...just a little bit alongerrrr, another pink gin Major? And as soon as she’s vertical again love is like an itching in her heart tearin it apart and she gets Major Henry to scratch it which he does with aplomb.
And the pink gin rains down for forty days and forty nights. But even though tourism must have been discouraged during a period of total war, Louise aka Mrs Major Henry Scobie sails back from South Africa and she’s all let’s hang on to what we’ve got and his mind gets all messed up, every day he’s falling in and out of love with the one or the other, but because of the big religious thing he has going on (I should have mentioned that) he’s living in shame. He’s careful but he’s waiting for that moment when Mrs Major Louise will tell him as he dons his solar topee and heads off towards the nissen huts baby baby I’m aware of where you go each time you leave my door - I watch you walk down the African colony knowing your other love you’ll meet and so forth. He knows it’s in the post, then there’s Keira feeling like a rag doll telling him one minute go on, get outta my life you don’t really love me you just keep me hanging on then the next minute ooooh dob me one Major I hear a symphony coming out of your fleshly parts you knows I do . Poor guy doesn’t know if he’s on his elbow or his arse and the religion appears to be no help. Anyway he decides to walk like a man for a change and take drastic action. I shan’t give the ending away but I will say this much – it turns out that big girls don’t cry much. If at all.

*******


I got to feeling a bit guilty about the above review, thinking well, maybe Graham Greene deserves to be taken just a little more seriously, because, God knows, his books are serious stuff. So I must say that this novel is pretty good stuff and even quite compelling, but I had a crucial problem with it. The central crisis, the horrible dilemma he contrives for his man Scobie to find himself in, is religious. I can’t discuss it without giving the whole show away, so **big fat spoiler warning in dazzly orange lights** . Scobie believes to the core of his very self that if he takes Communion without having confessed his sins and received absolution and – crucially – without a genuine desire not to commit the said sin again – then he will be damned to hell for eternity. Ironical twists abound, as you may well expect – the woman he’s committing his adulterous sins with and with whom he fully intends to continue, because he loves her, is a non-believer and thinks his convictions are quaint. He doesn’t love her less for that - in his eyes God hasn’t, for inscrutable reasons, given her the grace to see the truth. So, he’s driven to go to Mass with his wife to avoid her being suspicious. And go he does, and gets his soul damned to hell as far as he's concerned. For all eternity! He says : “What I’ve done is far worse than murder- that’s an act, a blow, a stab, a shot : it’s over and it’s done., but I’m carrying my corruption around with me.” I mean, really? Is GG seriously saying that going to Mass and taking communion if you’re still intending to carry on sleeping with your mistress is far worse than murder? Really? That’s crazy you know. So if I can't take that very serious point in this serious book seriously, then maybe I the Non-Believer have to turn away muttering "It's Chinatown, Jack, leave it" like a gumshoe too far over his head in other people's business.
Of course it turns out his wife pretty much knew all about the affair so this abandoned act was really not needed. So there was the irony. There was I say plenty of that sloshing around.
However, I could read it as a novel which was an intensely observed case of mental illness and gross self-delusion. Scobie is about as wrong as a person could be about the situation he finds himself in, so maybe GG is implying that he’s wrong about God too, that the ugly version of God Scobie appears to believe in which God is half cruel puppetmaster and half lascivious voyeur of human pleasures and sins and repentances, a very repulsive version, is as wrong as his presumptions that both his wife and his mistress actually care about him. The speed with which they drape replacement male companions about their persons after Scobie’s demise appears to give the lie to that one.
This novel hangs in the air like cordite after you’ve finished it with its awful pathetic denouement. So, it's pretty good.

A GENERAL COMPLAINT ABOUT A THING NOVELISTS DO

While I was reading it something bugged me which is a general point about novels. Authors like to drop nuggets of wisdom into their prose and sometimes I think they should be told to stop because their nuggets aren’t actually wise at all. Examples from this book – these are from the narrative, not from dialogue, so they’re as it were spoken by GG himself –

“Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness” (p87) [who says it is? I don’t - do you?:]

“He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger’s life , the interest the young mistake for love.” (p126) [oh yeah, do the young mistake it like you say? or would they think this intense interest in a stranger’s life was merely really creepy?:]

“Every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion” (p242) [no it doesn’t:]

“We are all of us resigned to death : it’s life we aren’t resigned to.” (p242 – two on one page!) [and, er – no, I’m NOT resigned to death AT ALL, where did he get that idea from?:]

Possibly this nugget-dropping is an old-fashioned… fashion… which modern writers don’t do. I haven’t made a scientific survey. But if they haven’t stopped nuggeting, they should because it’s not big and it’s seldom clever.

I am a big fan of Graham Greene, who produced a corpus of entertainments and novels that plumb the anguish, scars and comedy so liberally dispensed by morality, guilt, love, bruised intentions and battered idealism in the twentieth century. The Heart of the Matter was my first exposure to Greene, and he really delivered with this melancholy and poignant tale of catholic guilt and non-denominational pride amongst British colonial settlers in West Africa during the Second World War.

It's actually Wilson, the new arrival to the unnamed capital of the anonymous West African Crown colonial possession, who I found to be one of the most interesting characters: Young, wet-behind-the-ears, filled with British school-bred priggishness and prejudices, a closet romantic who hides his loves of poetry for fear of being ridiculed, Wilson is the idealist who so often collides with the cynical and jaded long-timers who populate Greene's novels. The British colonials - wilting in the omnipresent heat and humidity, resigned to the native African's non-Western way of doing things, and complicit in the residential affairs and petty-intrigues that keep life tolerable - patiently put up with Wilson's rigidities, knowing that West Africa will eventually bring him to heel. Before he does, though, he'll cause trouble.

Scobie, the main character of the novel, is a British policeman and a catholic convert for the sake of his wife, Louise. An afternoon's tryst between Louise and Wilson - and the discovery of having poetry in common - causes Wilson to fall in love, hard. She tries to explain that it's just for fun, that she loves Scobie, but Wilson is a true romantic and develops an increasing animus for his perceived rival. Scobie, disillusioned but honest, and a firm believer of an hierarchical faith and catholic God he married into, becomes inadvertently involved with a corrupt Syrian merchant and, after Louise has left for an extended stay in South Africa preceding Scobie's joining her when he retires in a few years, seals his fate when he has a torrid affair with Helen Dolt, a recently rescued shipwreck survivor. The Syrian and the survivor, with the addition of Ali, Scobie's long-serving and loyal servant, and an invitation to join in the endemic corruption that prevails in the African colonies, all lead Scobie into sins against his faith of increasing severity, until the only way out for his agonized soul is to make the ultimate sacrifice and accept damnation. Sadly for Scobie, his moral choice, made for love and pity, will be cast in an entirely new light when the perceptive Louise returns from South Africa and reveals another example of how guilt and despair can blind one to all manner of truth.

Few other authors can portray the beset-upon and wearied Englishman as convincingly as Greene, nor the fatigue of loss of country and ideals, the fracturing of love and desire, the tests of faith and conscience, under the ruthless assaults of time and experience. The Heart of the Matter is among his best novels and is highly recommended - especially for autumn days, when slate walls barricade the sky and the leaves have prostrated themselves in multi-hued obeisance to a remote and austere sun.