The Quiet American

The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by Graham Greene. It was something I had long intended to read, and in Venice a few months ago I found the novel in a hostel. However, I was reading another book and didn’t finish in time to swap it. Later, travelling through Eastern Europe I was reading books by Paul Theroux, and he often makes reference to Greene, so my interested grew further. Last week, I saw the book was on Kindle and downloaded it. I was not disappointed.

The book is set in Vietnam during the final years of French colonialism. The events in the book could be described as allegorical, I suppose, although they are partially prophetic. They concern three main characters: Thomas Fowler, a British journalist; Alden Pyle, the “quiet American” who appears to be working for the US government, and perhaps the OSS; and Phuong, a Vietnamese woman whom both men love.

The book is told in the first person perspective by Fowler, who is a cynical old man – although I don’t recall his age ever being given. He is separated from his English wife and living with his Vietnamese girlfriend, but his wife won’t divorce him. When Pyle arrives, Fowler takes a strong dislike to him, and that dislike grows as Pyle announces he is in love with Phuong.

Pyle is pleasant, education, and naïve. He has read a great deal about Indo-China (mostly by an author called York Harding), but he has no real experience. Despite this, he assumes he knows what’s best for the region, and is engaged in attempting to find a “third force” to run Vietnam once they have kicked out the French. He represents the American attitude towards the post-colonial world: that between colonialism and communism there must be some third option. While this is logical, the ill-formed American causes death and pain, just like his country would do in the decades following this book.

The book is based upon Greene’s own experiences in Indo-China during that period, and apparently based upon a conversation with an American much like Pyle. The insights into colonial era governances and post-colonial American attitudes are fascinating, but I was particularly taken by his perspective on war. Fowler is against the war, yet trapped in it. There are countless poignant lines about death in the book, and some excellent, vivid scenes portraying the horrors of war. One that stuck with me was:

·         …we didn’t want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came.

He also describes the normality of life against the backdrop of war with beautiful little details:

·         … it seemed impossible to me that I could ever have a life again, away from the rue Gambetta and the rue Catinat, the flat taste of vermouth cassis, the homely click of dice, and the gunfire travelling like a clock-hand around the horizon.

Finally, although one gets the feeling that the characters exist more as allegorical constructs than anything else, at least Fowler’s feelings come across as real. When Phuong leaves him for Pyle, he says:

·         I began to plan the life I had still somehow to live and to remember the memories in order somehow to eliminate them. Happy memories are the worst, and I tried to remember the unhappy. I was practiced. I had lived all this before. I knew I could do what was necessary, but I was so much older – I felt I had little energy left to reconstruct.

I will look out more books by Graham Greene…

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling

I haven't been reviewing much here lately. Since getting back from holiday last month the main reading that I've done has been for my own next book. I've been reading Allen Ginsberg's letters and journals, as well as other related Beat Generation books. My own book will be about Ginsberg's travels, and one of his most famous journeys was to India. On his way there, he read Rudyard Kipling's classic, Kim. I decided to get myself a cheap Kindle version and give it a read.

Kim is the story of a young boy whose parents - Irish immigrants to India - died when he was young, leaving him to be raised on the streets of Lahore. He is a street-smart kid who is neither wholly Irish nor Indian, and can pass for either when he needs.

In the course of the novel, Kim searches for his identity while becoming the chela (helper) of a Tibetan monk on a long quest. Kim finds himself mixed up in the Great Game, which was the struggle for influence over Central Asia by Britain and Russia, while crossing India with his monk in search of a mystical river. Kim attends a British school whilst also maintaining his friendships with locals, and studying Buddhism under his monk.

Most interesting is that the book is a vivid portrayal of life in India during the nineteenth century. The vast and diverse land is explored in extraordinary detail along with its disparate cultures. 

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

I'm currently back in the U.K. for a short visit and whilst here I've been reading a few books and enjoying the summer sun. One of those books was Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which I always thought I'd read. I suppose it's one of those books that's so famous one assumes one has read it...

As it turned out, I hadn't read it at all. I was riveted almost from the start and proceeded to read the book in less than a day - which is surprising, given that I'm a slow reader. I spent a beautiful summer's afternoon enjoying the story unfold from the mouth of the riverboat captain, Marlow, who goes in search of Mr. Kurtz, a trader who's venture into the heart of Africa has seen him ascend to the level of a god among the natives.

I really enjoyed this book and what it says about European colonialism as well as the human condition.

My Secret History, by Paul Theroux

I found a paperback copy of this book recently and, after having read The Mosquito Coast a few years ago and greatly enjoyed it, I decided to delve into this mammoth work.

At first, I thought it was an autobiography of sorts. From what little I knew about Theroux's work, it all seemed to match up. However, right at the start of My Secret History he takes pains to state that although certain similarities might seem to exist, it's purely a work of fiction. As an author of work of fiction that most readers assumed was autobiographical, I know his pain and will thus take him at his word that this is all made up.

Yet it is deliberately autobiographical-seeming. The novel tells the life of Andre Parent - a writer, would you believe - as he goes through various stages of his life, from boyhood to manhood. Like an autobiography, it is not neat and convenient, with all ends tied up. It is messy and real. Everything about it is entirely believable.

The book is broken into six chapters over the protagonist's life. They jump about a lot in terms of place as Parent moves from America to Africa to England to India, bouncing back and forth in pursuit of something. It is usually women he is after. From an early age, he has an irrepressible appetite for sex. At times he seems morally virtuous like some sort of hero, and elsewhere he utterly reprehensible. He is at times an unreliable narrator, but always an enjoyable one. 

Sarah, by J.T. Leroy

This short novel is written in such an engaging, witty prose that it is a pleasure to read, in spite of its horrific subject matter.



Sarah follows a young boy  through several years of prostitution and substance abuse as he waits to hear from his mother, Sarah - an abusive, drug-addicted prostitute.

The boy, calling himself Sarah, flees their pimp, but soon finds himself working for another, posing as an angel-faced little girl for paedophile clients.

Obviously, the story is harrowing, but it is nonetheless gripping. J.T. Leroy writes with an unbelievable talent for viewing the world through the eyes of child, and is astute at capturing the language and landscape of the American South. 

The Spy, by Paulo Coelho

Paulo Coelho’s latest novel could perhaps as justifiably be called a work of creative non-fiction, albeit it’s a very creative sort of non-fiction. In The Spy, he details the life of Mata Hari, a woman who was executed as a spy. Coelho bases his novel upon copious amounts of research into the woman’s life, based upon recently released information from MI5 and other agencies.

His conclusion is that Mata Hari was not, in fact, a spy. This does not mean that she is not a fascinating character with a place in history, however. Coelho paints a vivid picture of her life as she travels from her homeland – where she was born Margaretha Zelle – to Indonesia to France and Germany. It begins with her execution and moves from there, told from the perspective of her final letter.

It seems that the author wishes to portray his subject as some sort of feminist hero – a woman who was not a spy, but rather a liberated woman who was executed for daring to live a life outside of the control of men. Perhaps that was true, but what I got from this book was not a great deal of sympathy for its protagonist. Instead, I found her annoying, vain, and self-obsessed.

I like that Coelho didn’t idolize her, though. She comes across as pitiful. She is a prostitute who whores herself because she likes expensive things. She dances naked because she wants people to think she is beautiful. She name drops the famous people she encountered, yet thinks herself entirely above them. She is in many ways quite pathetic, and yet that makes her very human. She was most likely not a spy, and instead just a normal woman whose life was shattered and destroyed.

The book is very short and I finished it in just three sittings. I’m not sure I would’ve bothered if it was much longer. Coelho’s story is not hugely interesting, in spite of its fascinating subject matter. It leaves too much unanswered, and yet says so much that isn’t of any importance.  

Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley

Noah Hawley, creator of the TV show Fargo, is known for his engaging, complex, thrilling screen-writing, and he has now brought that skill set to a novel.

Before the Fall is an unputdownable book which I wished I had the time to read in one long sitting. It begins with a plane crash. Eleven people are on a small jet which crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. One of them, a down-on-his-luck painter, pulls a small boy to safety. The boy is the son of the wealthy family on board.

Where do we go from here? A huge plane crash and epic escape through icy waters seems more fitting for the end of a book...

But Hawley weaves a fascinating story that cuts to the core of modern life. This novel is set last year - 2015 - which still seems futuristic to me. Yet he paints a vivid picture of our modern society. Yes, the tender story the saviour and the child might be timeless, but for me that wasn't the key theme of the book.

While Hawley blends backstories with twists and turns in the days following the crash, only explaining why the plane crashed at the very end, what made the book interesting to me was the exploration of how we - as a society - deal with tragedies.

One thread of the book explores the fascination we have with celebrity, and comes at it from the conservative stand point. There is a TV channel in the book which clearly represents FOX News, and one of their bombastic hosts. These people doggedly chase our book's hero, trying to sully his name.

If that sounds unfair to conservatives, so be it. It could also have been about Gawker or any number of celebrity-obsessed modern media outlets. Eventually these onlookers come to dominate the story as they bugged phones and hack e-mails, essentially trying to make the news as much as cover it.

I also liked the story of the co-pilot and flight attendant, which unfolds seemingly as an add-on later in the book, but whose importance becomes very clearly towards the end.

I seldom read novels these days but this one made me yearn for more thoughtful yet exciting modern fiction. I highly recommend it, and look forward to more from Noah Hawley. 

The Dark Forest, by Liu Cixin

Last year I was on a Chinese novel kick and read Liu Cixin's (or Cixin Liu, depending on how you want to Anglicize his name) The Three-Body Problem. Whilst not exactly the greatest work of literature, it was very enjoyable. I'm honestly not a science-fiction guy, and I didn't really expect to like it, but it was good. The story barreled along, and I very much enjoyed the fact that Liu really knows physics, making the ideas unique and plausible.


This year, while travelling around Africa (see my other blog for info about the trip), I read the second book in what was Liu's trilogy. The Dark Forest leaves off more or less from where the first book ended, with the Earth stunned by the news that it will be invaded by an alien power in 400 years.

"Four hundred years?!" you may well ask. "That's not exactly moving along at a riveting pace!"

The book covers some of those years, jumping about a bit through the same characters as they engage in hibernation to brace against the passage of time. Primarily we follow Luo Ji, a Wallfacer. Wallfacers are the humans chosen to engage in planning the Earth's defense. Due to the presence of "sophons" on Earth, Trisolaris - the enemy power on its way to the Solar System - is able to monitor human activity but not thought. A few humans are chosen as Wallfacers and granted certain power to secretly plan Earth's resistance.

What's interesting to me is that these books view humanity's future from a very Chinese perspective. Yes, it's a global fight, but when you read books in English, usually the future concern a plucky band of white men... In this case, most - but not all - of the characters are Chinese, and the world's language is a hybrid of Chinese and English.

I also like that Liu is very well-versed in science and makes very detailed and plausible guesses about technology in the future. These are all pretty believable and make it easy to engage with the book as it passes through time.

However, as with the first book, Liu's new one falls down in regards characterization. The characters are all pretty flat and predictable. Some of them seem to be carbon copies of cliches from old movies. His dialogue is dull, too. The women in the book largely exist to be beautiful, while the men go out and solve problems. It makes the book rather frustrating. Some of this might be down to translation - and not just translation of language, but the culture wrapped up in it.

Altogether, the first book in this series was, despite some flaws, a very good book that I highly recommended. The second not so much. I'll give the third a shot when it comes out this summer, but I'm not hugely enthusiastic. 

The Corrections, by Jonathon Franzen

I got this book for free from Amazon last month as some sort of promotion. I never take the free books because I imagine I'll never read them, but this book was something I'd meant for a while to try. Actually, I'd wanted to read it, perversely, because I expected to join the crowd of Franzen haters.
Alas, while I'm not a Franzen fan, I didn't hate the book. My friend had told me I would, but I didn't. It's not a bad book.
The Corrections is the story of a family. It jumps about in place and time but examines their lives in a complex way. It's not the sort of thing I'd usually read but it was pretty wells written, contrary to what I'd been told.
What interested me was that in places it took the point of view of different characters, yet through their eyes we see their flaws, and the good in others. This is the opposite of what one would expected. We seen characters look at others and feel contempt, but the other character's positive attributes, instead emerge.
Yet every character is deeply, irrevocably flawed in this book. They are in need of, as the title tells us, corrections.


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Please excuse typos etc in this and posts in the near future. I'm on holiday and using my iPad to post.