Graham Greene
Amazon Price: $10.88
List Price: $16.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Penguin Classics
Amazon Marketplace: 61
new & used starting at $4.90
|
Buy at Amazon.com
|
Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( C ) -> Coetzee, J.M.
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> ( G ) -> Greene, Graham
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> Classics -> General AAS
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 41
Average rating: 4.0 of 5
Bleak and disappointing 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.
BRIGHTON ROCK is unremittingly bleak. It features the blighted and ignored dregs of English society of the Thirties and, to be sure, their lives were pretty damn bleak. But other than a portrait of the underbelly of society, noteworthy for its time, there is little to commend this novel. The plot is only so-so. Greene's characteristic humor, even if it be dark and ironic, is missing. There is a lot about Catholicism, repentance, and the efficacy of religion in human affairs, but done in a way that I suspect would be interesting only to those who are obsessed with Catholicism. Were it not for the fact that this was Greene's first serious novel, I doubt that it would be kept in print or read much anymore.
Modern Feminity Revealed 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.
Although Greene's "The Power and the Glory" takes a similar tack in its pursuit of that dread beast, the secular humanist, here the portraiture is done in even finer shades of grey. Furthermore, "Brighton Rock"'s Ida is given more internal monologue, and a larger piece of the action, than the ardent socialist lieutenant of "The Power and the Glory."
Ida is perhaps the purest distillation of what must be referred to as "the modern woman." A distant descendant of Madame Bovary, she is no less dogged in her pursuit of her own good (at least what she perceives that to be), but perhaps without even Emma's vestigial sense of shame. She has absolutely no sexual compunction, but at the same time, believes in her own measure of good and evil. As the novel progresses, and more of her character reveals itself, the portrait of her conscience becomes truly terrifying. It has absolutely no built-in governor. It is like a brain without folds. It is blank Nietzchean will-to-power.
Brighton Rock's chief strength, ultimately, is how prophetic it is. Millions of women in modern-day America (the West in general) are something like Ida. It is harder to say with certainty, perhaps, how many were like this in 1930s and 40s Britain, at the time of its authorship. In either event, credit must go to Greene -- for all of his technical lapses as a prose stylist -- for this spot-on bit of feminine psycholanalysis.
As an aside, the musings on the notion of repentance, and the guilty conscience at the moment of death, are no less profound. There's a phrase which gets thrown around in this book, "between the stirrup and the ground", which sums up Greene's understanding of the relationship between the speed and the thoroughness of repentance.
Editorial Review:
With a new introduction by J.M. Coetzee
A gang war is raging through the dark underworld of Brighton. Pinkie, malign and ruthless, has killed a man. Believing he can escape retribution, he is unprepared for the courageous Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge a death.
