Un cónsul honorario (que no es lo mismo que un cónsul) en Argentina, junto a la frontera con Paraguay, se ve en peligro cuando es confundido por el embajador de Estados Unidos en visita. Él tiene una relación con una joven, apenas mayor de edad, a la que sacó de un prostíbulo; ésta le engaña con su amigo doctor quien, coincidencias de la vida, también conoce de cerca a los guerrilleros paraguayos que le están complicando la vida.
¿Qué aprendí de esta novela? Que al parecer el trabajo de servidor civil en Inglaterra es un trabajo sin gracia. Es la segunda novela que leo de Greene (la otra fue El factor humano) en la que los que componen la rama exterior del servicio público (un cónsul honorario en éste, un agente de inteligencia en el otro) son tratados poco más que como desechables por su país. Eso debería matar cualquier entusiasmo por el servicio público. En el caso del personaje titular del libro, Charles Fortnum, su trabajo público es meramente ad honorem, ya que su trabajo como cónsul honorario sólo cumple un rol situacional y temporal.
El otro tema grande del libro, que el verdadero protagonista del libro, el doctor Plarr, menciona varias veces, es el del machismo. Todos los personajes parecen tener una vena machista, aunque ésta no se presenta del modo facilón y simple que uno podría esperar y execrar; aquí no hay ningún personaje que le hable a una mujer como si fuera menos ni nada así. Más bien, se presenta en una actitud permanente, en siempre contestar fuerte y golpeado cuando alguien te insulta o agrede, siempre parecer como que no te pueden pasar a llevar, nunca ser demasiado emotivo y siempre parecer como que tienes el manejo de toda la situación. Ahora, Plarr aduce en ocasiones a que así es la sangre sudamericana, pero tanto él como Fortnum tratan a la esposa de éste como una pobre diabla, una mujer desvalida a la que los dos han ‘rescatado’: uno de la casa de putas al casarse con ella, el otro de un matrimonio sin amor al tener un romance con ella. La verdad es que ella, aunque en muchas ocasiones parece un pájaro recién salido del huevo, necesita mucha menos ayuda de la que los dos creen, como lo demuestra en el hecho de que ella sobrelleva toda la situación mejor de lo que los dos le dan crédito.
Un libro interesante, sólido, de los mejores que tiene Greene.

This time Greene makes a story about a kidnapping in Argentina, but they got the wrong man. Delightful story.

The Honorary Consul: a story set in a northern province of Argentina bordering Paraguay, where there is an ongoing dictatorship supported by the CIA. An attempted kidnapping of the US ambassador by a ragtag group of revolutionaries goes awry and end up with a British Honorary Consul being kidnapped instead.

The story revolves around a colorful array of characters entangled in the events surrounding the kidnapping. The story takes unpredictable turns all the time and the Graham Greene humor adds to the comedy of the story.

But it is by no means just crime or comedy. Through its multiple storylines, the readers are drawn into more in-depth examination of much more serious matters (or matters we take to be much more serious): The relationship (or lack thereof) between a father and son—examined through both Fortnum and Dr Plarr; The post-colonial South America—with the leftover Spanish machismo and the forgotten natives and the townships; God—the comedy of existence. And in some strange way, on love—or absence of it.

I hated my father... I did not much like my wife... But they were not really bad people... that was only one of mistakes. Some of us learn to read quicker than others... Ted and I were both bad at the alphabet...

As always with Greene, beautifully spare language and an agonising disaster made of several lives because of ideology, belief or lack of it, guilt, machismo, and over all, a lack of love passed on from one generation to the next. Brilliant and almost unbearable to read as the characters blunder ever deeper into the mire.

2.5

Perhaps it's because I'm in a bitter and miserable mood, but this felt like a particularly bitter and miserable novel. It isn't unlike Greene's other work: An affair, a political misunderstanding, guilt, catholic symbolism, miserable people doing miserable things and the whole thing lined with dark, British wit. This is typical Greene from front to back. The set-up is solid and there are some great lines and scenes, but I generally found the characters to be too unlikeable and unsympathetic. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood for the usual moping.

I'm finding it more and more baffling that a line is drawn between Greene's "entertainments" and his "serious" novels, because I can hardly see a difference most of the time. None of his "thrillers" are page-turners and all of his books (that I have read) are lined with sub-text and asides and indulge to some extent. The Honorary Consul is particularly heavy-handed at points and not something I would put into the same camp as, say, The Ministry of Fear, The Third Man or Our Man in Havana (all of which are among his better-paced and more "exciting" efforts). I've seen The Honorary Consul dumped into both categories; but I think such a divide is futile, dismissive of some of Greene's best novels, and somewhat patronising towards other author's works that would be considered less "literary" by comparison.

50th book of 2021.

A gift from my dear friend in Mumbai. Another beautifully written and gripping novel by Greene. And what characters here! This is my 11th Greene, and is certainly in the upper-tier. I stand by the fact that his greatest novels are The End of the Affair and The Quiet American. Full review to come, again; I have so many reviews to write once I'm home, it'll be a day's work for me.

I haven't read any other of Graham Green's work. It is funny that I should have started with this, which is referred to as one his later works. I had mixed feelings from the start. For one, I was excited about reading Green. And, I was drawn back by my own limited understanding of his style, though delicate and touching. Enter Plarr, aged and a doctor of patients he f***s. And the rest of the bunch who orchestrate a kidnapping. Need not be said they know nothing about professional kidnapping. Not only are they inadequate in the way they deal, but they pick up the wrong man. Worse still it is their friend. The same man they've been to at Senora Sanchez with and bought pleasure from the girls there, sitting around to talk their little British group in Argentina. Its From this same dungeon where Fortnum, the kidnapped honorary consul picks up his wife, who would later lie and betray his loyal love. But its interesting to note that the characters, especially the male ones, are well drawn. Maybe one or two of the female characters stand out, while the rest are quite obscure. But then this could have been Green attempt and furthering the theme of Machismo?! Overall comment? Good Book. I look forward to finding, and reading; The Power and the Glory. And then, maybe then, I'll be his fun.

Not the Best, but Indubitably Greene

n  Doctor Eduardo Plarr stood in the small port on the Paraná, among the rails and yellow cranes, watching where a horizontal plume of smoke stretched over the Chaco. It lay between the red bars of the sunset like a stripe on a national flag. Doctor Plarr found himself alone at that hour except for the one sailor who was on guard outside the maritime building. It was an evening which, by some combination of failing light and the smell of an unrecognized plant, brings back to some men the sense of childhood and of future hope and to others the sense of something which has been lost and nearly forgotten.n

Who else but Graham Greene? The sense of world-weariness in that opening is palpable. So long as you don't analyze it too closely; the images seem both too forced and too imprecise to trigger that response, yet the emotion still strikes a chord. The Honorary Consul is one of Graham Greene's later works, and far from his best; nonetheless, it has all the master's fingerprints. The distant setting: here a city (probably Rosarios) in Northern Argentina, across the river from Paraguay. The eternal expatriates: Doctor Plarr is the son of an English father and a Paraguayan mother, a citizen of a country he has never seen. The background of a political thriller: the plot concerns the attempt of a group of Paraguayan freedom fighters to kidnap an American Ambassador for use as leverage against the right-wing dictator General Stroessner. And Greene's typical fascination with Catholicism.

The plot fails, because the kidnappers take the Honorary British Consul by mistake, a harmless old alcoholic called Charley Fortnum, who probably has never set foot in England either. The leader of the group, León, is a former priest who has abandoned his calling and married. In the second half of the book, it works out that both Charley Fortnum and Eduardo Plarr are his prisoners, inside a hut in a poor quarter. With the police closing in, and death of one sort or another seeming increasingly inevitable, it is no surprise that their thoughts should turn to the last things. There must be fifty pages of theological discussion between the defrocked priest, the agnostic Plarr, and the atheist but surprisingly perceptive Fortnum. This will bore some readers, but fascinate dyed-in-the-wool Greenies.

One technical aspect of the book that somewhat interested me was the way in which Charley Fortnum, who seems to be a minor character despite his title billing, gradually gathers substance through what others say about him. Then there is one chapter in which he suddenly emerges into the light, so that you wonder whether he, not Plarr, is in fact the leading character after all. But I soon came to see this as a weakness, because it became hard to keep a clear focus. In Greene's theology, the most interesting character should have been León, the ex-priest who can never be entirely ex. Doctor Plarr, the person we know most about, turns out to be hard to know after all. And old Charley Fortnum, treated almost as a comic character at first, seems the closest to reaching a genuine state of spiritual grace.

Normally, we wait for Greene to pull out a brilliant ending which will pull the threads together in an action climax that is an epiphany at the same time. You can see it coming as the police close in, and the discussion inside the hut moves from theological to pragmatic. But the actual events of the climax are so confused that I had to read the relevant pages twice. And I still had no sure idea of who did what to whom, even after reading the postmortem in the final chapter. So no Greene epiphany—and without that, the Greene mechanics and Greene atmosphere are pretty empty. Unless you're a real fan.

There's also a priest here. He giggled too, but only once. I had written before, elsewhere here at goodreads, that I hated "The Power and the Glory" where I found the priest there quite ridiculous. I likewise didn't like "The End of the Affair", finding the characters there unreal.

This one, however, is different. I thought, while reading it, and after reading it: "this is how a story should be told." Highly imaginative plot with a lot of possible logical endings but where no one can possibly make a correct prediction of. Crisp dialogues, every word with meaning, nothing put to waste. Words and statements drop like little bombs, shocking the reader and keeping him awake, fragments shattering inside his skull with a kaleidoscope of bright colors.

I am now in awe of this grand master of storytellers.

Sex, love, life, death, whiskey, Catholicism and South American politics – all familiar territory to Graham Greene – but ‘The Honorary Consul’ (1973) whilst revisiting and exploring all these themes, is by no means a re-tread or a recycling of previous Greene novels.

The story this time is ostensibly centred around a bungled kidnapping attempt, all those whom it affects and its catastrophic aftermath. This is, as is more often than not the case with Green at his best – powerful and compelling. Whilst not perhaps quite up there with classic Graham Greene (‘End of the Affair, Power and the Glory, Heart of the Matter’) it is very close.

‘The Honorary Consul’ is intriguing and compelling – the unrelenting tension builds throughout. Apparently this was one of Green’s favourite of his own novels, the reason being given as the way the characters change throughout the course of the story.

There is a lot here about fathers of all types – both familial and religious and the long shadows that they can cast. There is also much here concerning political causes in the wider sense, in relation to the resultant moral and religious dilemmas at a personal level. Macro idealism vs reality at the Micro level.

Graham Greene writes so very well, the best of his work is so accomplished, so well-constructed and paced throughout with well-drawn and thoroughly believable characters. As with Greene’s greatest novels, ‘Honorary Consul’ is imbued with a sense of reality and authenticity throughout – it is accessible whilst deeply meaningful – profound. This is a novel not to be missed and an important part of Graham Greene’s truly great literary canon.

Extraordinary. Extremely well written. I should go on to read his other works.

«Почесний консул» (1973) - типовий роман Грема Гріна: про пошук себе у дорослому віці, при посередництві кохання і алкоголю. Як завжди - на фоні екзотичної країни.

І головне - на фоні чиєїсь наївної спроби боротися проти об'єктивного зла (диктатури чи там колоніалізму). Герой, ясна річ, співчуває борцям, але не вірить у їхню справу - бо взагалі вже ні у що не вірить.

Фабула: Аргентина початку 1970х, кордон з Парагваєм. Парагвайські підпільники хочуть викрасти американського посла, щоб обміняти на політв'язнів, яких утримує парагвайський диктатор Альфредо Штрьосснер (чи Стресснер?).

Але замість американця, випадково викрадають немолодого англійця-алкоголіка, що має суто символічний статус " Почесний консул"...

У "Почесному консулі" - той самий трикутник, що й у "Тихому американці" ("The Quiet American"):
1) чоловік 50-60 років, що у всьому розчарувався
2) відносно молодий чоловік - 30 чи 30-з-чимось років і
3) місцева дівчина років 19-20, за яку вони змагаються. В'єтнамка чи індіанка. Кожен любить її по-своєму (хоча інколи й сам собі у цьому не зізнається).

Дівчині ж взагалі усе байдуже, окрім шмоток чи темних окулярів (хоча, насправді, це тільки так здається - вона переживає, але того не показує)

Кінець той самий: молодий гине, а дівчина залишається зі старшим.

Паралельно - і сум, і гумор, і біль, і сарказм.

Зауваження: Латинська Америка здається не справжньою, а «очима англійця». Грін бував і у Парагваю, і у Аргентині, і на кордоні поміж двома країнами. Але наскільки він знав і розумів культуру цих країн і народів? Чи не схоже це на американські романи «про Росію»?

Наприклад, у «The Comedians» - найкращому, як на мене, романі цього письменника - дія відбувається на Гаїті епохи Дювальє. Але сам Грін зізнається, що не знає гаїтянського побуту, хоч і багато разів бував у країні. Тому у «Комедіантах» Гаїті складається з інтелектуалів, чиновників, жебраків, борделю і казино. Головні персонажі - іноземці, а дія крутиться навколо готелю і посольств.

Чи не та сама тенденція у «Консулі»? Адже полковник Перес дивним чином нагадує інспектора Віго з «Тихого американця» (тільки що не читає Паскаля).

Інший підозрілий момент: обидвоє головних персонажів поводяться і думають як 100% англійці. Але, за сюжетом, жоден з них ніколи не бував на історичній батьківщині. Не зрозуміло, чому в доктора Пларра така бездоганна англійська, якщо його мама - парагвайка і говорила з ним лише іспанською, а тато хоч і англієць, але дуже мало спілкувався з сином. До того, він ходив до іспаномовної школи.

Річ, мабуть, у тому, що Грем Грін - 100% етнічний англієць що виріс у Англії, у 100% англійському середовищі, сприймав англійську (і англійськість) як щось натуральне. Він багато подорожував по світу, але не мав досвіду імміграції, ані виховання дітей у іншомовному суспільстві...

Втім, ці маленькі недоліки аж ніяк не псують книжку. Бо насправді це історія про людей, а решта - лише декорації.

Резюме: читати варто.