Reading this for bizarrely incorrect reason. Meant to read The Human Factor after enjoying 554 above, but both it and The Honorary Consul have fallen into the bath at some time in the past, and I chose the more visible on the bookcase hardback, rather than the modest paperback, both of which share water stained pages.
It is quite a typical (and not great) Greene book: set in South America, the central character is a morally dubious Anglo-South American Dr Plarr with ties to revolutionary rebels, one of whom is an ex priest; the honorary consul is a pissed up Englishmen Charley Fortnum who is kidnapped by them in error.
Plarr’s superiority over the consul, whose ex prostitute wife is his mistress, is gradually stripped away as he realises that Fortnum loves Clara in a way that he doesn’t, and Plarr dies in a shootout at the end of the book.
Comments