Four stars because it's Graham Greene - the man didn't have an overblown bone in his body - but I found this strangely anaemic and lacking something I look for in his novels.

Greene's mastery over plot and character is evident, and the story flows smooth as the whisky that the titular Consul is so fond of, but there was a lot less heartache and Catholic rending of soul than his earlier work.

It's a cynical piece of literature, the kind written by someone who has had cynicism ingrained in his style since his earliest works but now has the benefit of many decades of living to back it up.

One of Greene's greatest appeals for me has always been his worldly cynicism combined with the agony of knowing that cynicism means nothing in the face of the world's horrors, be they South American dictator or aloof Scandinavian capitalist. Cynical inevitability, I could call it. A good description of Greene's Catholicism. And I found that sensation lacking here.

A very typical Graham Greene-novel with all the classic dilemma's the protagonists (with them again a former priest) are confronted with: what is right or wrong? Is there a loving God? What is the meaning of life? The setting is the north of Argentina and the story revolves around the abduction - by mistake - of a British honorary consul. Even more than in other Greene-novels there are quite a lot of very cynical protagonists, but as always they appear to have their weak sides in time of need. Not his greatest novel, but nice. (2.5 stars)

Perhaps I was expecting much more from this book and, living as I do in Buenos Aires, I was hoping to take away much more than I did. In fact, I was even living here in 1974, the same era Graham Greene writes about, but I was sorely disappointed by his painting of the times endured by Argentines in this story, even if that wasn't the core of the story.
Apart from Charley Fortnum, whose idiosyncrasies must surely be part of literary folklore by now, the rest of the characters are one dimensional and forgettable. Often described as a 'British thriller novel', I have to wonder how that tag was arrived at. There was nothing thrilling about it and turning each page became a chore for me.
The character examination was interesting up to a point, but its dullness was expounded by a complete lack of life and vitality given to each character, each of whom I couldn't care the least about by the middle of the story.
I felt no sense of actually being in any of the scenes and this book struck me as more of an ode to life in the sticky, oppressive existence of Entre Rios, that I imagine Greene once spent some time observing as any writer is wont to do.
I can't honestly remember a book that was so much of a drawn out chore to actually finish.

Quattro stelle e mezza.

Stupendo. Amaro. A tratti disperato. Cinico, senza essere nichilista.
Un libro affogato nell’alcol e nelle umide tenebre argentine.

Uno scrittore immenso.

Good book by Greene. I could easily see this being made into a stage play. We deal with the mistaken kidnapping of an Honorary Consul, when the real target is the US Ambassador. Kidnappers want to exchange him for 10 of their kind held in Paraguayan prison. Interesting day by day timeline with lot of religious theology and backstories about the characters. I did not feel a lot of connection with the characters, as it appears that they exist only to espouse certain philosophical views. But it is well written, the dialogue is good. The prose gets a bit bogged down but the entire book is based upon this case of mistaken identity in the kidnapping of the wrong person.

According to a fawning, lengthy spoiler of an introduction by one Nicholas Shakespeare, Greene considers The Heart of the Matter his best book, but this one was his favorite. The characters all seem to mirror the fellows in his other books. The men are morose, cynical creatures of habit. They've stagnated in their non-exotic dump of choice. And I've never known them to take joy in anything. Moral scruples are at a deficit. The women fare no better. You can always count on them to be on hand for some brazen betrayal of trust and friendship. Add to the mix inner conflicts concerning faith, suicide, father issues, and you have Greene's formula for setting the stage for an eventual redemption of sorts.

A Sort of Life, followed by The Heart of the Matter remain my Greene favorites. So far (I intend to follow this up with Travels with My Aunt). Worth noting: the introduction mentions how Greene was two thirds into the book before he experienced a mental block. It then took him another three years to finish the novel. Two thirds into the story I felt a disconnect--like watching a movie sequel when another character takes center stage. I speak of the part where Father Leon Rivas rambles on about his faith and tries to justify his leaving the clergy. I could be wrong, and while it does not diminish the novel, the dissonance is there.

* I've since read Travels with My Aunt--a huge disappointment.

For all that I find signs and portents of now in so much stuff I read, I'm still generally of the opinion that I wouldn't want to read most conceivable novels directly about 2020 and the years leading up to it. This, though, has left me thinking that if anyone could have pulled it off, Graham Greene could. He understood shabbiness so well, both physical shabbiness and the moral sort, the way that people jockeying for a little advantage or scared of an awkward conversation thereby take actions which will lead to others having their lives destroyed. He knew that the sort of little distinctions people so easily ignore can have huge consequences, as when everyone except protagonist Doctor Plarr keeps referring to the kidnapped Fortnum as the Consul or even the Honourable Consul, making him out to be a significant figure, rather than the Honorary Consul, which is more or less a scam nobody has quite found it worth the embarrassment of ending. Hell, even the plot, centred on a political kidnapping in South America, was at the time the sort of topical material on which so many novelists founder, but which Greene could make speak to something wider. The references are exactly the kind at which writers who make a futile grab for timelessness would turn up their noses – rumblings in the Falklands, Ken Russell films, Paraguay's dictatorship, Liberation Theology. But if some of them have become a little obscure with the passing of half a century, for others the opposite is the case, and none of them feels remotely like they get in the way.

Initially at least, religious faith per se doesn't play such a part here as in many of Greene's other books, though there are still masses and defrocked priests along the way, which loom larger as the tangle at the story's heart worsens. But the tension now between what people want and what they believe is right, oh, he could have done fabulous things with that. One of the scientists who backed lockdown ignoring it to see his lover? The ideologue appealing to his own love for family as though it were different to everyone else's because it's his? These men would have been right at home in Greeneland. And yes, there are those signs and portents here too: "you decay there more quickly than in a prison. The General knows there is comradeship in a prison. And so he plants his victims out in separate pots with insufficient earth, and they wither with despair."

As the novel nears its end, it does get a little bogged down in a more directly claustrophobic endgame which feels like it could have made all the same points at least as well at half the length – though again, that's an experience with which we're all amply familiar now. What's worse is that, by letting the defrocked priest run away with the story, getting bogged down in direct theological discussions of sin, it feels like Greene is both showing his working to an unnecessary extent, and letting a hobby horse run away with him – something I can appreciate in more gothic modes, but which feels out of place in a novel that has otherwise been so good at catching the attempt to maintain a decorous, unruffled surface over the seething pits that are human hearts. Tellingly, I think this section is also where all the novel's F-bombs lurk, something which can still shock from a writer of that generation and inclination.

Granted, too, some of the objectification of a teen sex worker might not play so well in a 2020s novel, and an English author writing about Argentina while mocking a native novelist likewise – but in both cases it is the character rather than the author, for all that defence is worth nowadays. There is also a definite sense in which Greene is setting up the story and the characters to mock Plaar's sense that by seeing himself as firmly English, rather than half-English and half-Paraguayan, he's exempt from the local code of machismo. Equally, as the story progresses the novelist Doctor Saavedra comes to feel as much Greene's self-mocking stand-in as a satire on Argentian literature (from which, in any case, Borges is always fastidiously exempted). After all, Greene had very much Saavedra's tendency to return to the same territory with variations, and I imagine by the time he wrote this, at least a little of the same fear that a younger generation were overtaking him. There's something unexpectedly dignified in Saavedra's rueful admission that "In Argentina we are most of us killed by Martin Fierro." But then, that's another part of what makes me feel Greene would fit now so well: he understood that history isn't tragedy then farce, but an ungainly hybrid of both at the same time.

The Honorary Consul ranks with the best of Graham Greene's work. It takes me back to my teenage years, when I loved such of his works as The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. Greene cared a great deal about crises of faith. When I was young, I had none: I was a good Catholic boy. Then, later, things grew more complex. I love that moral complexity in Greene.

This book is about a botched kidnapping. A mixed group of Paraguayan and Argentinian "terrorists" attempt to take the American ambassador, but they get the Honorary British Consul, one Charley Fortnum, an elderly alcoholic who has married a skinny young prostitute out of the local brothel. The leader of the kidnappers is a lapsed priest, who has married. Yet no one lets him forget he once was a priest. The priest, Leon Rivas, has many of the best lines, as when he explains why he likes detective stories:

Oh, there is a sort of comfort in reading a story where one knows what the end will be. The story of a dream world where justice is always done. There were no detective stories in the age of faith -- an interesting point when you think of it. God used to be the only detective when people believed in Him. He was law. He was order. He was good. Like your Sherlock Holmes. It was He who pursued the wicked man for punishment and discovered all. But now people like the General [Stroessner, dictator of Paraguay] make law and order. Electric shocks on the genitals. Aquino's [an accomplice] fingers. Keep the poor ill-fed, and they do not have the energy to revolt. I prefer the detective. I prefer God.

The Honorary Consul is not like one of Rivas's detective novels: One does not know how it will end. Even though I had read the novel before (years ago), I was still surprised.

I loved this book, and now I want to read more of Greene's work. That's the way it goes: Read a great book, and you never lack for other books to be read.

4,5 stele.
Din nou, o combinație spectaculoasă de comedie și tragedie semnată Graham Greene. Altfel spus, un roman tulburător care nu are cum să te lase indiferent. Și aceasta în condițiile în care intriga este, încă o dată, aproape inexistentă, putând fi redusă la o singură frază: Consulul onorific britanic în Argentina a fost răpit din greșeală de niște rebeli din țara vecină, Paraguay, pentru a face presiuni asupra dictatorului paraguayan, generalul Alfredo Stroessner, să elibereze mai mulți deținuți politici.
În cheia operei lui Greene, este vorba despre tipul acela de operațiune care începe prost și se termină printr-un fiasco. De altfel, avem aici elementul comun dintre romanele lui Graham Greene și cele ale lui John le Carré.
Însă, Consulul onorific nu este doar un roman despre o răpire - chiar dacă una cu adevărat bizară, întrucât victima pare să fie cel mai insignifiant cetățean străin din Argentina - ci și o carte despre condiția umană în general. Ea conține un triunghi erotic mai mult decât ciudat: Charles Fortnum, Consulul onorific britanic, un bărbat în vârstă, alcoolic, soția acestuia, tânăra Clara, o fostă prostituată și doctorul Eduardo Plarr, născut în Paraguay, dar care a fugit cu mulți ani în urmă împreună cu mama sa în Argentina (din păcate, tatăl său nu a reușit să plece din Paraguay, iar Eduardo nu mai știe nimic despre el).
Romanul pare să conțină exclusiv personaje de-a dreptul jalnice. Primul dintr-o nu foarte lungă listă este chiar Consulul onorific. Iată ce le spune despre el rebelilor care l-au sechestrat doctorul Plarr: "Charley Fortnum nu vă e de folos ca ostatic...Un consul onorific nu e un consul în toată puterea cuvântului...Ce naiba poti cere în schimb pentru Charley Fortnum ? Poate o ladă de scotch original?" Ambasadorul însuși nu se poate abține să nu constate: "Nimănui nu-i pasă de un consul onorific. El nu face parte din Serviciul Diplomatic...Necazul e că Fortnum e o cantitate atât de neglijabilă". La rândul lui, doctorul Alberto Plarr este măcinat de faptul că pare să fie complet gol pe dinăuntru, ca și cum ar fi lipsit de sentimente. Pe de altă parte, Clara nu pare să înțeleagă prea bine ce i se întâmplă și care este diferența dintre o femeie căsătorită și o prostituată. Scriitorul Julio Saavedra pare să fie doar un infatuat oarecare, ce ignoră complet faptul că filosofia machismo este complet desuetă și că este privit de mai tinerii săi confrați drept un ins ridicol și un scriitor lipsit de talent. Cât despre răpitori, ce să mai vorbim; mai bine să-l lăsăm pe același doctor să ni-i descrie, fie și în gând: "Doctorul Plarr se gândi: criminalii! Așa erau numiți de către ziare. Un poet ratat, un preot excomunicat, o femeie habotnică, un bărbat care plânge. În numele cerului, să lăsăm comedia asta să se termine ca o comedie. Nu suntem calificați niciunul pentru tragedie".
Și, totuși, fiecare dintre acești eroi ce par să fie de duzină își vor arăta la un moment dat o altă față, semn al măreției și frumuseții lor interioare.
În final, să-l lăsăm pe același doctor să ne spună cât de stranie este de multe ori viața omului: "Nu așa am vrut să iasă lucrurile, repetă doctorul Plarr... Nimic nu iese niciodată cum vrei. N-a fost în intenţia lor să te ia pe tine ostatic. Eu n-am vrut să fac un copil. Aproape că-ţi vine să crezi că există undeva un Mare Glumeţ căruia îi place să distorsioneze lucrurile. Probabil partea întunecată a lui Dumnezeu are simţul umorului". Un simț al umorului foarte tăios uneori. Lectură plăcută!

Ah, Graham Greene. I love Graham Greene. Between books, I think I forget a little bit how great his writing is.

And this book is particularly good. Reading a book like this one, I find myself willing even to go back and read his big god novels again, the ones that don't really interest me. A book like this one, I'm willing to forgive him everything.

One of the high points is the mediocre Argentine novelist. Just when you've come to despise him utterly -- the mediocre, vain, selfish man that he is -- just when you think it's all condemnation, Greene resists the lure of easy judgement and gives you this:

He had to stand on the points of his small gleaming shoes to reach the top of the wardrobe. A cheap plastic shade painted with pink flowers, which were beginning to brown from the heat, hardly dimmed the harshness of the central light. Watching Doctor Saaveda reach for eth glass with his white hair, in his pearl-grey suit and his brightly polished shoes, Doctor Plarr felt much the same astonishment that he had felt in the barrio of teh poor when he saw a young girl emerge in an immculate white dress from a waterless hovel of mud and tin. He felt a new respect for Doctor Saavedra. His obsession with literature was not absurd whatever the quality of his books. He was willing to suffer poverty for its sake, and a disguised poverty was far worse to endure than an open one. The effort needed to polish his shoes, to press the suit ... He couldn't, like the young, let things go. Even his hair must be cut regularly. A missing button would reveal too much. Perhaps he would be remembered in the history of Argentine literature only in a footnote, but he would have deserved his footnote. The bareness of the room could be compared to the inextinguishable hunger of his literary obsession.

A passage like that makes you glad that Greene does not share Doctor Saaveda's disdain for the particular.

A fairly unusual storyline, I’ll give the author credit for that. Hard to categorize it, so I guess the back cover did it justice by calling it a tragicomedy. I liked the political context, the conversations on the church and religion, the complicated interpersonal relationships. The protagonist is pretty much my antagonist, which was interesting to explore. The ending was abrupt but there was something compelling in it.

If you are interested in a complex political environment of South America, this novel would be especially interesting for you.

Having read Nostromo earlier in the year, I was struck by some of the similarities, even though they are about periods two generations apart, but both deal with expatriate groups in South America, and revolutionary activity.

There are also some similarities with Graham Greene's early book, The power and the glory, with a renegade priest, and the strength of a kind of residual Catholicism, which seems to be a recurring theme for Greene. At the time he was writing the book I was reading The rebel priest by Wim Hornman, and I wondered if Greene had read that one too, since its subject, Camilo Torres, is mentioned in The Honorary Consul.*

The book has a very authentic feel to it, with the behaviour of police, revolutionaries, and those accidentally caught up in events being well documented.

It's not possible to say too much about the book without spoilers, so I'll leave it at that.

* GoodReads seems to have linked to the wrong book, with a different title. Not sure how to get it to link to the right one. Try the Dutch version De rebel and then search for other editions there.