Ogni volta che si legge un libro di Graham Greene non si può evitare di rimanere ammirati dalla sua capacità di architettare storie e di saperle scrivere così bene. Le sue sono vicende umane minime, scritte come in punta di penna, che ci offrono personaggi indimenticabili raccontati con semplicità eppure riuscendo ad esplorarne a fondo pensieri, aspirazioni e angosce. Anche “Il console onorario” non fa eccezione. In un Sudamerica un po’ stereotipato le vicende di amore e di morte, il rapporto con Dio e quello con il proprio destino sono il filo conduttore di una piacevolissima lettura. E come sempre arrivati alla fine ti prende la voglia di andare alla ricerca di un nuovo libro di Greene ancora da leggere!

One of the nice things about reading Graham Greene is that it's helpful to learn a bit of the history (which he seems to take for granted that the reader knows) that is the backdrop to his novels, which are disparately situated but have many thematic similarities.

In this case, the plot centers around provincial diplomatic maneuvering in the "strong man" regimes of Argentina and Paraguay in the early 70s, with careerists just trying to get by vs violent revolutionaries. The ambiguously placed central character is named Plarr, whose missing father is British and mother Paraguayan. A schoolmate of Plarr, a defrocked Jesuit priest, turns up to provide the requisite dose of theological discussion.

Other books by Graham Greene I've read are better, but this one also has some very interesting dialogues - the one that stands out is the discussion on the nature of God and man's relation to God that takes place in the final chapters of the book. I love how Greene just pours out this argument that brews in all of us - why are these things happening? What kind of "God" would allow Hitler and Stalin to be born? and many others. It is also evident, like in his other novels, that there is no right answer in real life. Just like there is no "black" and "white" when in comes to people (unlike what other novels that we've read might have made us think).
Greene's "heroes" are not hero-like. They are complex human beings with inconsistencies (internal fighting with external) and that is what makes them real. The one slight problem with "heroes" from this book is that I could not really connect to them (while in Power and Glory and End of the Affair I felt the connection almost immediately), but it is still a good novel.

Vintage late-period Graham Greene: well-plotted, with interesting characters, a sustaining premise, and enough plot and relationship wrinkles to challenge a mid-size steam iron. Reads well, too. Unfortunately, the book starts out very promisingly and rather peters out in the second half into long, static discussions about the nature of God and faith, discussions that I'm sure were more interesting to Catholic convert (and liberation theology supporter) Greene than to someone like myself, for whom religion seems rather like a bowl of oatmeal without the bowl. Still, despite the fact that it loses its forward momentum halfway through, it's a good read. Get it? "Good read"?

Crikey, sometimes I just crack myself up.

a pathetically tragic novel full of men who complain that it’s just so hard to love or make a choice or do good. but really they’re worried that it’s so difficult to be a version of themselves they can build into myth. and while that might’ve been cute for one character, or as a cross current in a more complex book, it becomes almost a parody of itself—one which explicitly lambasts the paternalistic pretension of the argentine novel of machismo. and, after the first 60 pages or so, it does all this while being painfully boring in a way only a book by a (white) man can be.

i would’ve probably left this in the curaçao airport if i didn’t desperately wanna recoup something of the $18 i spent on it. considering how much i hate the brand new printings of penguin classics, i’ll be glad to get this out of my sight.

I’m seeing a pattern in Graham Greene books – start off with clever premise, introduce interesting characters, put them into a gripping action scenario -- then go off the rails for the final 100 pages of the book with a whole bunch of boring philosophical musings and debates about god, faith and Catholicism.
Really, I just wish an editor would have made the author leave out about 60 pages of his Faith on Trial junk for this one, it would have been a much more perfect book.
Interestingly, there is a secondary character in this story about revolutionaries and a love triangle in a small northern Argentinian town that reminds me of my own experience reading Greene. The character is a second-rate novelist who predictably creates heroes who die for their honor and beliefs. It is an amusing element of the story because, while the book’s main character Dr. Plarr dutifully reads and enjoys the works of his literary friend Dr. Saavedra, he always knows how they will end, based on his friend’s penchant for classically heroic outcomes. Well, it seems to be the same way with Greene, doesn’t it? I read him, enjoy his prose, plots and characters, but no matter how clever is the set up – robbery plot, kidnapping, murder – there is always going to be a character with a fallen faith in god who waltzes away with the narrative for the final third of the book. It never works for me and I wish it didn’t happen in all of Greene’s novels.

I have just discovered Graham Greene in the last couple months. At the Border sales I picked up this and Monsieur Quixote and really liked both of them. I really need to read The Power and the Glory. Anyway, this was a good read, different than most books I usually read. In The Honorary Consul the reader meets a group of randomly gathered characters in a small Argentinian town. The main viewpoint is through Dr. Eduardo Parr, a doctor who is serving the poor in the barrio. He is one of three English residents, one other being Charley Fortnum who serves as an Honorary British Consul, an unimportant and nondescript appointment which everyone is quick to demean. In a bungled kidnapping, a group of Paraguayan revolutionaries kidnap him instead of the official ambassador. They demand release of 10 prisoners for his life, one of whom is Eduardo's father whom he hasn't seen in 15 years. The doctor gets involved in the incident, hoping to free his father whom he long since thought was dead. He then begins to negotiate between the two sides secretly, advising each side to avoid any violence. Also hampering the situation is his affair which develops with Fortnum's wife,Clara, a former prostitute with whom he had developed a fascination after seeing her at Madame Sanchez's establishment. He is interested in her thin frame, the birthmark near her hairline, and most of all, her indifference. The plot goes on, with the revolutionaries becoming known to the reader: Leon, a former priest and schoolmate of Eduardo's; his wife, Marta; Pablo and Diego, poor locals hired to assist, and Miquel, a sinister man taking his orders from El Tigre. The remainder of the book is quite suspenseful and ends with some unexpected events.

Greene’s Catholicism and Marxism come together in this tragicomic work set in South America in the early 1970s. Before we in the North had heard about Liberation Theology, Greene puts the critique of the fallen church on the front burner from the mouth of a revolutionary ex-priest—a reverse of Silone’s Bread and Wine. Like Simone Weil or Father Camilo Torres, the priest-turned-revolutionary bumbles his political action by kidnapping a minor “honorary” counsel rather than the American ambassador. Like Camus’s The Plague, the central characters are a rational doctor and a true believing (in Revolution) Priest. Yet for an intriguing set-up and a moving ending, Greene doesn’t have us feel the plight of the poor that motivate his would-be terrorists. With all the characters rootless and with absent, silent fathers, we get an unsatisfying liberation a-theology. This was made into a mediocre movie called “Beyond the Limit” (1983) with Richard Gere and Michael Caine, only available on youtube.

I am so very happy to have found a modern Catholic (and non-cleric) author of fiction who can actually write. "The Honorary Consul" was a very good read, and left quite a lot ot ponder in the way of God's goodness, liberation theology, and love.

The character of the excommunicated priest was particularly interesting because, while he tried very hard to convince himself otherwise, he could never quite shake off his orthodoxy. Even while he speculated stringently on "the night side of God" (271), he couldn't even convince himself. Doctor Plarr describes the priest's situation best when he says "You seem to suffer from an odd lot of scruples, Leon... for a man who plans to murder" (266). And in the end, Leon did in fact return to his religion: "The voice said a word which sounded like 'Father.' ... 'I am sorry... I beg pardon" (298). The irony in this scene is especially strong since it is the unfeeling, non-religious (and, like Leon, also dying) Doctor Plarr who represents a priest - for a priest's confession: "Ego te absolvo."

The title-character himself is very interesting. He has done many things wrong in his life, and his drinking problem forms him into a rather poor and blind judge of character. For he has one strength that turns out ot be his redeeming factor: he loves. He loves his wife, even if for most of the book she does not love him back. Instead, the wife treats her relationship with Fortnum as what Aristotle would classify a "friendship of utility." All of Clara's relationships are shallow - the ones the Philosopher would call either friendships of utility or - in the case of her affair with Dr. Plarr - friendship of pleasure. She does nothing to outwardly manifest this; on the outside she effectively wares whatever mask the man that she is sleeping with wants her to wear. This is undoubtedly the result of her employment as an institutionalized prostitute; she has learned to disassociate sex from love. Through love, though, Clara seems to be coming to love as well - evidenced by the last scene in the book. She and Fortnum do not end "happily ever after," but there is certainly a kind of melancholy hope.

Though this is not a morality play, Greene does, I think, make a good case for the Catholic conception of marriage and sex. There are a number of connections which I would like to make at a later time to Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical "Deus Caritas Est".

A bit of a yarn about politics and faith. The Honorary Consul Charley Fortnum is kidnapped by mistake but survives his ordeal while his 'friend', Dr Plarr, dies. After his escape, Greene describes the consul's car AKA 'Fortnums Pride' as "... a little battered, with one headlight gone and the radiator bent" (Part 5, chapter 5). This could just as well be a description of the consul himself. It had been 'borrowed' by the police after his kidnapping just like his wife had been 'borrowed' by the doctor. Greene describes Fortnum as he "pressed his hands tenderly upon a wounded plate." Fortnum shows more concern for his car than for the wife who betrayed him. Forgiveness is in short supply... and yet at the end of the novel, after Clara lies and tells Charley that she never loved the doctor, Charley realised, "never before had she been so close to him as she was now."

Não estava à espera deste final . Mas os seres humanos são de extrema complexidade com as suas crenças, medos, convicções e sentimentos.
Foi uma bela história.

MCM “who is the better man, the one who did good deeds or the one who nourished his soul?”