Tag: Graham Greene

Book reviews: ten not-so-rapid

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Well well well. It appears that the whole keep-up-to-date-with-reviews intention is something that withers in the overwhelming heat of oh-shit-work-deadlines and oh-shit-spring-gardening.

Pictured: the Australian outdoors

Consequently, it’s been a while since I’ve written. The good news (for me!) is that I’ve not stopped reading, and so have a raft of things to pontificate about now that I’ve finally got some time to get thoughts down.

(I was considering some kind of Droste effect of a photograph of me editing this post editing this post editing this post but I realised that I lack the technical elan to carry this out without using AI, and given that the world already looks like the image above due to people using this fucked tech to accelerate the Rule 34 singularity, that you could use your brain to picture it instead. I dunno, maybe your version is more handsome or charming or something. We live in hope.)

(Also, did you know that Microsoft once had an OS called ‘Singularity‘? I assume ‘Torment Nexus‘ was taken.)

Continue reading “Book reviews: ten not-so-rapid” →

Book review: Brighton Rock

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Brighton RockBrighton Rock by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’d known about Brighton Rock for ages – a combination of general awareness of Graham Greene and the Morrissey song ‘Now My Heart Is Full’ but I’d never read it. Now that I have, I can see why someone like the Smiths frontman would namecheck it: it’s a sordid, grimy window on the thirties, a look at the world of tough men and the children who wish to become them. Rough trade under the garish lights of a seaside town, immortalised in fiction and iconic film.

This is the second Greene I’d read (The Third Man being the much shorter first) and it pulled me in from the outset. I’m intrigued about the rest of his work, now. The story’s pretty simple: a murder is committed by Pinkie, a sociopathic pup with distinct lady problems. Ida, a voluminous seeker of good times, takes umbrage at the foul play she suspects has befallen a brief acquaintence, and decides to root out the truth. What follows is a sea mist-shrouded examination of the mental life of both the pursuer and the pursued, framed by the prospect of turf takeover from larger interests. Continue reading “Book review: Brighton Rock” →