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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"I sent...the book to Moscow, to my friend Kim Philby...", 12 Jun 2003
Publishing this novel in 1978, Greene says in his autobiography (Ways of Escape, pp. 256 - 257) that he had actually started it ten years earlier, abandoning it when his friend and former colleague, Kim Philby, defected to Russia. He did not want this book to be considered a roman a clef. Like Philby, Maurice Castle, the main character in this novel, is a double agent, and Greene goes to great pains to bring him to life and try to make his inevitable defection to Russia believable. Having earlier lived in South Africa, Castle had fallen in love with Sarah, an African woman. Another double agent had helped her escape from South Africa so she and Castle could be married. Now living in England with Sarah and their son, Castle continues to provide information to the Russians as payback for the help he received years before.The cloak-and-dagger intrigue here is rooted in the Cold War, and Greene's own sympathies with the Communists, well known, are noticeable throughout the novel. When a leak is suspected in Castle's section of British intelligence, a secret plan is devised to eliminate the culprit quietly to avoid another Philby-type embarrassment to the government. It's of only minor consequence to the higher-ups that they kill Davis, an innocent man. The Russians' rush to "save" Castle, whose work for them has really been of only minor importance, seems more like wishful thinking than reality. Codes created from duplicate copies of old books, messages left in a hollow tree, and warning signals made with rings of the telephone now seem to belong to an age much earlier than the mere 24 years which have evolved since the book's publication. Castle is well drawn, for the most part, though he seems a rather clumsy agent-about-to-defect, someone who, though supposedly devoted to his wife and child, has not thought far enough ahead to guarantee their ultimate safety and happiness. Sarah, unfortunately, is an undifferentiated, flat character, and Castle's devotion to her must be accepted, rather than felt, thereby limiting the impact of the ending. Parts of the book are very moving, and Castle is often a sympathetic character, but I thought the book lacked the philosophical and structural tightness of his earlier, more famous novels. Mary Whipple
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by Graham Greene
by Graham Greene
by Graham Greene
by Graham Greene
by Graham Greene
