Claustrophobic, tense, highly atmospheric. Very evocative of provincial Argentina, with characters who are fascinating in their context, but who also suggest various moral, political, social and religious types outside the links with their physical environment. Really engaging. The ending has stayed with me. Still mulling it all over.

I have to admit that didn’t love this book. Certainly didn’t enjoy it as much as I did Greene’s masterpiece of humor and suspense, Our Man in Havana. The Honorary Consul is a quieter book, to put it nicely, oddly cold and lifeless in places, and my sense is that it was marred by Greene’s perceived need, late in his career, to “say something” meaningful about the Catholic Church. Still, as with anything by Greene it’s extremely well written, and I did notice an instructive use of the objective-correlative that was used in association with one of the novel’s minor characters.

For an analysis of the use of the objective-correlative for characterization in The Honorary Consul, read the rest of my review here: http://bit.ly/1Zwq16Q

Retrato do rapto de um Cônsul honorário britânico por engano, na Argentina.

I can see why this was one of Greene's favourites; love, whisky, betrayal, faith, corruption, and "machismo"...all tied up with a bungled kidnapping. Not my favourite but certainly up there!

A British/Argentinian doctor has chosen a small town on the border with Paraguay to build his practice. As one of only three Brits in the village, he generally keeps to himself, but he has a "friendship" with the honorary British consul, a sort of buffoon whose focus is being able to drink to a certain measure each day. However, a contact from some former school friends puts the doctor -- and the consul -- in the middle of a political action that becomes a crisis. While there is intrigue, the plot moves slowly. The main interest is following the character exposition of both men. As a more serious book than I've been reading lately, it caught and held my interest.

My first read of this tale, and what an enjoyable read it was too … Greene weaves his story with care and attention, giving deep textures to his main characters and their settings, some of which had faint echoes of another writer’s descriptions of another part of South America, in so much as the mud and the earth sometimes seemed to seep through the pages, along with a faint lingering smell of whiskey.

A finely drawn tale of deceit and betrayal in its many forms. Protagonists are middle aged, middle class ex-pat Brits, more or less lonely and alienated in an Argentine town close to the border with Paraguay. They are men of a different time, and some of the attitudes are somewhat dated now. For the most part it is tense and admirably lean, with a dose of black humour. As with most of Greene catholicism is never far from the surface, but in the closing stages this becomes a bit too explicit and something of a distraction, which probably lost the book a star, in my eyes at least.

Argentina, with its political unrest, foreign intervention, widespread corruption, low regard for human suffering, and countless infidelities among the characters, give the story its momentum.

So this was GG's favourite among his novels. Hmm. Compared to the others I've read, I'd say it is certainly more controlled: the ironies are more subtle; the characters are less stridently symbolic; the story carries the themes rather than the other way around. But somehow, in the absence of those same heavy-handed Greenisms which sometimes rankle in the earlier "serious" novels, this new restraint comes off as battle-fatigue rather than maturity. The world's moral/political conundrums and the eternal inconstancies of human nature are still at the forefront here, but gone is the exuberance of language, gone is the cutting wit of youthful arrogance: Greeneland is still Greeneland- still brilliantly drawn, but the descriptive voice has….conformed.

نویسنده ماجرای هیجان انگیز خودش را با بخشش و عشق به پایان می‌برد. دکتر پلار، لئون و کنسول در سایه‌ی عشق موفق می‌شوند که خودشان و پدرانشان را ببخشند. جمله‌ی کلیدی«متأسفم...بخشش می‌طلبم.» قهرمانان داستان را تطهیر می‌کند و سند دیگری بر فساد دستگاه پلیسی و سیاسی حاکم است. دکتر پلار می‌گوید:«آدم کم‌کم به این فکر می‌افتد که رند بزرگی جایی نشسته است و دوست دارد که به همه چیز پیچشی بدهد. شاید چهره‌ی تاریک خدا شوخ‌طبع باشد.»گراهام گرین یکی از خداوندگاران جهان داستان‌ها و رندی شوخ‌طبع است.

3.5 stars

I've yet to read a Graham Greene novel that I haven't loved. Like his best (in my mind, The Quiet American), this novel is stocked with fully-formed characters, complete with genuine human flaws, struggling to work their ways through a morass of moral challenges.