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Brighton Rock (Paperback)

by Graham Greene (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 256 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New edition edition (1 Jul 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099470160
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099470168
  • Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 10.8 x 2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 508,946 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #99 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Greene, Graham

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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"

"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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88% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

26 Reviews
5 star:
 (11)
4 star:
 (10)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (26 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully crfated, gripping and disturbing book, 25 Jul 2001
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.

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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate anti-hero, 16 Jun 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: Brighton Rock (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.

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars My favourite book, 6 Sep 2007
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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Brighton Rock
The time and setting may be 1938, but this book has lost none of its edge over the years, displaying the versatility of Graham Greene. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Patricia Anne Karlstad

5.0 out of 5 stars Brighton Rock
Hi, erm i'm not going to give a huge review about its history and everything im just going to say what i thought of it. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mrs. H. J. Hewlett

2.0 out of 5 stars An unhappy slog
I'm afraid I'm one of the minority who found this book highly put-downable. Only one character is at all likeable (Prewitt) and he only has a very small part to play. Read more
Published 18 months ago by muddy-funster

2.0 out of 5 stars What is the Point?!
My problem with this novel is exactly what I've written in the title - what is the point? I don't get this story, I don't understand what Graham Greene's aim was when he sat down... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Marlyly

4.0 out of 5 stars A gripping study of an utterly amoral character
A very good novel. The Boy is one of the most chilling characters in 20th century English literature, a terrifyingly amoral youngster. Read more
Published 20 months ago by John Hopper

4.0 out of 5 stars Understanding the last page
A previous reviewer has misunderstood the last page of this book. He states that the girl is returning to "find the energy she needs " to face survival without Pinkie. Read more
Published on 19 Jun 2007 by Jadi

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Greene's finest
A story of a 17-year-old gangster in a seaside town seemed an unlikely idea for a successful novel and later film, but the sick adolescent, Pinkie, was made convincingly evil - to... Read more
Published on 28 May 2007 by Paul Rance

4.0 out of 5 stars The pangs of love and conscience of two young Catholics
This fiction is extremely strange when you enter it. Bookmaking is the environment in which the novel is situated, set. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2007 by Jacques COULARDEAU

4.0 out of 5 stars good but sad
I very discriptive novel capable of taking the reader to very deep , dark places. An addictive male lead with a self destruct button contrsting brilliantly with the brassy female... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 2005 by C. S. Trewhella

2.0 out of 5 stars Guilt and Madness at The Beach
Having worked my way through about a third of Greene's output, I was quite looking forward to this entertainment about a teenage gangster in 1930s Brighton. Read more
Published on 18 Jun 2004 by A. Ross

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