#### SPOILER ALERT ####
The Confidential Agent - Graham Greene
Loved, loved, loved this one!!
I love the way that Graham Green writes. He chooses his words carefully but freely (not as purposely as Golding), chooses his description of his characters carefully, gives them depth and body within 3 minutes of you meeting them and he progresses through the story at a lovely pace. Never once do you get bored or wonder when the chapter is going to end. You feel for the characters and want to follow them on their journey, even if you know it will not end well. When reading the blurb on the back of this one I was not sure I would be laughing or crying when reading it. I could not see the funny in it but as Greene always does he delivers! You feel both the happiness and sadness of the characters. The most amazing thing of the whole book is that Green achieves this whilst he never even gives you the main character's name. He is always just known as D.
D is coming to England to try and secure some kind of deal involving coal. he comes from some war torn country where he has chosen the side of the rebels (you have to make a choice at one point right?!). Unfortunately for D thee are those that do not want him to succeed and they try and make things difficult for him... not that D needs any help in that department. D seems to stumble haplessly from one disaster into another. He is betrayed by those eager for money, he meets a woman who gets him into all sorts of trouble he ends up first hinted then the hunter.. well.. he is not much of hunter. He does not have the stomach for it. He loses the papers that would secure him the deal, then he loses his passport and nobody believes his story that he was not involved in the murder of the girl cleaning his room at the hotel he is staying.... there is more murder, mayhem, he has to go on the run and his situation becomes quite desperate. There seems to be a brief glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel but in the case of D it is the light in the train of utter despair and destruction coming down the track rather that the promise of escape.
There is a small promise of happiness at the end as against all odds D manages to get away and find his escape route back home.... but you just know it will not last. The boat is bound to sink, or turn out to go to the wrong port.... bound to.
Yet for all its' tragedy there are some really funny bits in it too. The language institute and the people in it are hilarious. The idea of a specially created language Entrenationo that would bond people all over the world is brilliant. I went to a lecture a few years go at the Graham Greene Festival in Berkhemstead that was delivered by David Crystal. It was all about the use of language in Graham Greene. Accents and speech impediments are never a good sign in a GG character. Now, every time I read one of his books I watch put for people with accents or speech problems or something. Greene had a thing about languages and he uses it in his work very slyly though effectively.
Then there is the scene in the embassy where D has to prove he is who he says he is is hilarious. D getting bamboozled by some kids in the coal miner's village to give up his gun and his one final bullet.... tragic but funny.
There is so much more I could say about this book but I would be here forever extolling it's virtues. It is just simply brilliant.
Title: The Confidential Agent
Author: Graham Greene
247 pages
ISBN nr 0-099-28619-X
Books to be read: 121
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