The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) @ richardeward.com

The Heart of the Matter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
by Graham Greene
from Penguin Classics

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• Worthy of a claim to greatness
  Over forty years ago a new English teacher at my school answered a question asked by an eager student. The question was, "What do you think is the greatest novel written in English?" He didn't think for very long before replying, "The Heart Of The Matter."
  We academically-inclined youths borrowed Graham Greene's novel from the library and eventually conferred. There were shrugs, some indifference, appreciation without enthusiasm. We were all about sixteen years old.
  I last re-read The Heart Of The... more info

• A better book than "The Da Vinci Code"...
  Graham Greene does something in The Heart of the Matter which is extremely difficult to do: he depicts the inner turmoil and emotional breakdown of a human being in a non-pretentious, non-self-conscious, completely BELIEVABLE way.
  So many other allegedly great authors have tried to do the same thing, with very few successes. Most often you get turgid "prose" which reeks of pseudo-intellectual showboating, turning the character in question from a flesh-and-blood entity into a cipher, which leads to a... more info

• Who know "what goes on in a single human heart"?
  The setting for Greene's novel, although never named, is Sierra Leone, where the author himself spent some time as an intelligence officer. But law enforcement, subterfuge, and colonialism serve as mere (if occasionally satiric) sideshows for the crisis of faith of one well-meaning, upright policeman, Scobie, whose fatal flaw is a sometimes-misguided sympathy for those closest to him.
  Even Scobie's troubled relationship with his wife is described early on as one in which "pity and responsibility... more info

• Last half is worth it...
  What most struck me was the sense of isolation and despair (and removal from God) that one human being can effect in himself through a series of acts that create value conflicts that cannot be easily remedied once certain events have occurred. The planning of a suicide and the carrying out of said suicide were described without any romance but also in a way that I perceive as an accurate portrayal of one who is intent on pulling off the "real deal." In that I would say this is a masterful work of fiction,... more info

Similar Products: