Short stories aren’t usually my cup of tea, but the two here are excellent. I guarantee they will leave a lasting impression on you. I recommend both highly. The two are completely different from each other. One is a mystery set in Vienna after the Second World War. The second is about a young boy left at home with the servants while his parents are gone. Both are atmospheric. Both envelope you in a particular time and place. In both the prose is excellent. The mystery starts off complicated--I wondered if I would be able to keep track of who is who. You do. Graham Greene is an expert at drawing a comprehensible and exciting story. Both stories pull you and grab you attention all the way through. Grab this book. It’s a winner!

Thank you, Rosemarie, for recommending it to me.

In the audiobook, Maetin Jarvis reads the first story. George Blagden reads the second. Both read expertly, Both I have given four stars.

***************************

*The Heart of the Matter 5 stars
*The Third Man & The Fallen Idol 4 stars
*The Quiet American 4 stars
*The Human Factor 4 stars
*The End of the Affair 2 stars
*Travels with My Aunt 2 stars

THE THIRD MAN.

Graheme Greene wrote this as a precursor to writing the script
to the famous film of the same title, a classic of the film noir.
It is a delicious read and a perfect little gem of a mere 98 pages.
The film script stays faithful to this book mostly.
The director Carol Reed's changes bettered his novel, Greene said.
And I have no complaints.
And Orson Welles added to the film script the famous lines
about the Swiss having only added the cuckoo clock to Western Civilisation.
Artistic collaboration gets a Full Score in this film.
But the book is no less for being a solo production.
Humour, atmosphere, a mystery murder, an unlikely hero, a marvellous villain,
post-war intrigue in occupied Vienna...and all so skilfully handled by a Master.
Read the book.
See the film.
Over and over and...over, of course!!!!

The Fallen Idol was a film, again by Carol Reed,
but based on a short story or novella by Greene.

While by no means Greene's strongest work, he can still spin the most pedestrian material into something memorable. The story is of a young boy left in his expensive family home with the butler and his wife, and then getting drawn into the cracks that appear within their marriage. It is in the shift of perspective to 60 years later that this gains its extra interest.

Having watched the film, seen the musical it was time to read the book. My surprise was that Rollo's name was changed to Holly for the film. Normally I would have to read the book first but the plot was so close to the film it didn't seem to matter.

I had read The Third Man years ago - great novella (and great film). Had only seen the film of The Fallen Idol (aka The Basement Room). Terrific story full of dread and suspense.

'A world for Martins had certainly come to an end, a world of easy friendship, hero-worship, confidence that had begun twenty years before in a school corridor. Every memory (...) was simultaneously tainted.'

There is an air of soiled corruption that pervades this visceral tale of black-marketeering and murder in post-war Vienna.

Brilliantly Greene uses a layered narrative structure to distance the reader from the novel's protagonist, Rollo Martins, ruthlessly exposing his flawed and disappointed character.

Martins' vulnerability is foregrounded as he navigates his way across a city-landscape of ruins and immorality.

Greene's story telling is concise and spare, but never rushed, climaxing in a thrilling encounter in the sewers beneath Vienna, emblematic of the hidden lives we all lead.

This volume also includes the short story 'Fallen Idol', a gripping story of the loss of childhood innocence and the lives of quiet desperation led by many.

Nothing spectacularly inventive here, but this is a fun read. I'm coasting around for novels that take place in Vienna which I will be visiting in a few weeks and this one is the most famous, so here we are. While I didn't get much of a feel for "the city" as this story all takes place post-WWII, this is nonetheless a well-written murder mystery with interesting characterization. I would have liked to have gotten to know our unpretentious yet witty and admirable protagonist more. I would have also enjoyed the hijinks of the 4 police powers in Austria (France, America, Britain, and Russia) as their humorous interactions were the best part, to me. I wish the author leaned more into his talent for comedy.

Well set-up, strong ending. Satisfying.

The Fallen Idol was alright, I honestly didn't need another story about a crappy guy murdering his "bitch" wife so soon after Rebecca, though.

The Third Man film’s obviously much better known than the book. Was interesting to learn in the introduction / preface, the book was only written to help set up the characters / setting / feel for the film. It was never originally intended to be published as a stand-alone book.

It kind of explains why this book has a bit of a rough, unfinished feel to it. The parts which drove the movie - the characters, setting and feel are all done really well here. For example, you get a real feel for how Vienna was, just after the war as the Allied occupiers ran the city.

Story-wise, it mainly follows Rollo Martins, who’s just arrived in the city to find his friend Harry Lime has died and is about to be buried. He goes to the funeral where he meets a British military policeman called Colonel Calloway.

From him, he learns there was more to Harry than he knew, and he was operating as a black market dealer in penicillin. Rollo goes round the city meeting up with Harry’s girlfriend and some of his ex-colleagues and soon starts to get suspicious about how Harry died.

Other than some abrupt and confusing switches in who’s narrating between Rollo and Colonel Calloway, it’s mostly well-written and driven by action and events.

The drama / tension comes from a witness who saw a mysterious “third man” at the scene when Harry was killed. However, the identity of this third man is now quite well known (it’s even mentioned in the introduction), so reading the book knowing who that was kinda kills some of the drama.

It’s got a decent pace with enough action to keep it going and it doesn’t hang around longer than it needs to. The setting is probably the stand-out as the story on its own is a bit flat if you know the identity of the third man. Decent read, and interesting from a historical / film connection point of view.

Tagged on at the end, is an entirely separate novella called The Fallen Idol. It’s only 5 chapters long, and it’s a decent enough little story.

7YO Philip lives in a big house. His mum and dad are away, so he’s being looked after by the butler Baines and his wife.

Baines is friendly. Mrs Baines is more strict. It turns out Baines is having an affair with a younger woman. Mrs Baines finds out, there’s a struggle and she falls over the stairs balcony to her death.
Philip runs away and is found by the cops. He eventually blurts out what happened, even though he considers Baines his friend.

It’s all told from the kid’s point of view which is interesting. That’s pretty much it as far as the story goes. There’s no real mystery, just a relation of the events surrounding a murder told from a kid’s point of view. It’s fine, but so short, there’s not actually much to comment on.

"The Third Man" did not engage me, not sure why. Halfway through I didn't really care how the mystery would be solved.
But I have to say: the setting and premise are quite similar to "The Good German" by Joseph Kanon. Funnily enough, the cover of Kanon's book has the following quote from The Boston Globe: "Kanon is the heir apparent to Graham Greene". If by that they mean he rewrites Green's stories and sells them as his own, they are right.

"The Fallen Idol," aka "The Basement Room," is a shorter and subtler story. I enjoyed it a lot, I think it fits my slightly fatalistic worldview of late. Highly recommended.

Graham Greene worked with English director Carol Reed to turn both these stories into movies (Reed also adapted other Greene stories for film), first with The Fallen Idol, which was originally published in 1935 under the title The Basement Room. This tells the story of a boy who witnesses his family’s butler kill his wife while his parents are away on a holiday, and it’s the only time I’ve ever read a Greene tale told from a child’s perspective – though it’s hardly a children’s story. The Third Man was a germ of an idea that sat dormant for years in Greene’s head, and which he sparked to life with Reed’s help. It was Greene’s belief that a story had to exist in a more conventional prose form before it could be turned into a screenplay, so Reed helped him build the story as it is published here (Greene said he did most of the dialogue), which “was never intended to be more than the raw material for a picture”. This was a more typical Greene story, concerning suspicious goings-on in Vienna during post-war occupation by England, France, the US and Russia, and though it may not be Greene’s weightiest work, I found it pretty satisfying. There’s a subtle and recurring gag around an author being mistaken for a more famous author, which reads like Greene poking fun at the literary community, and while it was amusing it was tangential to the story at best, and I can’t imagine this made it into the film. I wouldn’t know because I’ve never seen either of these films, but Greene warns readers that they will encounter numerous scenes and ideas here that don’t appear in either of them. In any case Greene was said to be happy with both movies, and indeed he dedicates this book to Reed. Another book called Shades of Greene collects the 18 of his other stories that were adapted for television, and all of these 18 are also included in the larger Collected Short Stories, which waits for me in my leaning to-read tower. It’s a testament to Greene’s abilities that even something as slapdash as a pre-screenplay can be so entertaining and feel so finished.

I’m just a bad writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls…

This book contains two of Graham Greene's short(ish) stories that were made into films. The first is set in post-war Vienna occupied by Britain, the US, France and Russia. It is a satisfying thriller, although the surprise twist wasn't so surprising, most of the interest (both drama and humour) comes from the conflicted Rollo Martins. Although it was written simply as a stepping stone towards a screenplay, there is some wonderful imagery.

"... bowing her head against the wind, a dark question mark on the snow." How gorgeous is that?

There are a number of humorous moments, revolving around a case of mistaken identity (in a rather Shakespearean farce) and in the interactions between the military police of the four powers.

" American chivalry is always, it seems to me, carefully canalized - one still awaits the American saint who will kiss a leper's sores."

Of the two stories I preferred the second - The Fallen Idol - told from the perspective of a young boy who is left in the care of two servants (married to each other), one of whom the boy loves and the other he hates. He is caught in the middle of an intrigue and feels crushed by the secrets he's asked to keep.

My favourite passages are -

"[S]he was darkness when the night-light went out in a draught; she was the frozen blocks of earth he had seen one winter in a graveyard when someone said, 'They need an electric drill'; she was the flowers gone bad and smelling in the little closet at Penstanley. There was nothing to laugh about. You had to endure her when she was there and forget about her quickly when she was away,"

"There had been things between them, but he laid them low, as a retreating army cuts the wires, destroys the bridges."

It's always a pleasure to read effective prose, and the second story also provides plenty of tension.