- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 July 2004)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0099470160
- ISBN-13: 978-0099470168
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (110 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 852,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Brighton Rock (Vintage Classics)
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Product Description
Review
" A superb storyteller with a gift for provoking controversy."
-- "New York Times"
" Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations . . . For experience of a whole century he was the man within."
-- Norman Sherry, "Independent"
-- "New York Times"
" Greene had the sharpest eyes for trouble, the finest nose for human weaknesses, and was pitilessly honest in his observations . . . For experience of a whole century he was the man within."
-- Norman Sherry, "Independent"
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
Product Description
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, life-embracing Ida Arnold, who is determined to avenge a death.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
43 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The ultimate anti-hero,
By A Customer
This review is from: Brighton Rock (Mass Market Paperback)
A fan of Graham Greene, I consider this the best of his books I have read so far. Quite long for a Graham Greene book, I found this book literally impossible to put down and finished it in one sitting.In Pinkie, Greene has created a character repulsive in his seeming amorality and ruthlessness, and yet one that you cannot help sympathising with. Considered one of the greatest villians in fiction, Pinkie's character slowly comes into focus as a victim too - and someone for whom redemption is visible on the horizon but always out of reach. I have always found Greene a master at handling moral ambiguity, and Brighton Rock is an example of Greene at the height of his powers. Read this book for a well-crafted story, and one that makes serious points about the weaknesses of moral absolutism. Personally I think the ending is sheer genius.
39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully crfated, gripping and disturbing book,
By phil99@silvermead.net (East Yorkshire) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brighton Rock (Essential Penguin) (Paperback)
It begins with one of the best opening lines in fiction, and ends with one of the best closing lines. In between, Greene reveals a seamy, dark underside to 1930s Brighton, where behind the facade seen by holidaymakers and racegoers the bookmakers are in thrall to razor gangs offering protection. Hale, the seedy journalist who dominates the early pages, soon emerges as merely incidental; Pinkie, a seventeen year old gang leader, is the central character, leading those around him deeper into his own downward spiral of evil. Greene never reveals how Pinkie knows Hale; but Hale's fear of the boy is clearly drawn, and like Hale himself, you realise the inevitability of his murder, and of the consequences that unfold thereafter.Tremendous charcterisation of most of the main players - Pinkie is frighteningly nasty, the more so for his total lack of conscience; Rose, his weak-minded girl, is also entirely convincing, as is Hale, the catalyst for the story as it unfolds. I would have wished Greene could have done more with Spicer particularly, perhaps also Dallow and Colleoni, and I'm a little less convinced by Ida Arnold and her motivation for getting involved to the point of being Pinkie's nemesis. Pinkie himself, though, is one of fiction's great characters, and perhaps merits a better demise than Greene gives him here. But in spite of these minor reservations, this is a tremendous book, still relevant now even after the slums that gave birth to these characters have been taken off the Brighton landscape, and still able to disturb the reader by picturing what humanity is capable of becoming in the absence of conscience.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My favourite book,
By Miriam Simons "Miriam" (Perth) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Brighton Rock (Paperback)
I love Greene generally but I have to say that this my favourite - not just my favourite Graham Greene but my favourite book. So tawdry, so sad - it is a bitter and nasty world painted delicately. I reread it once a year!
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