The Heart Of The Matter

May 03, 2013 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Book Circle Reads 35

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Graham Greene's masterpiece The Heart of the Matter tells the story of a good man enmeshed in love, intrigue, and evil in a West African coastal town. Scobie is bound by strict integrity to his role as assistant police commissioner and by severe responsibility to his wife, Louise, for whom he cares with a fatal pity.

When Scobie falls in love with the young widow Helen, he finds vital passion again yielding to pity, integrity giving way to...more

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Jun 16, 2010 Paul rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

THE FIRST FACETIOUS REVIEW BASED MAINLY ON FRANKIE VALLI AND SUPREMES SINGLES

*** Spoilers ahoy but we're all friends aren't we?****

As our tale opens, Major Henry Scobie is stuck in a you never close your eyes anymore when you kiss my lips type situation with Mrs Major Henry Scobie aka Louise and there’s a big thought bubble coming out of both their heads which says Where did our love go? Well, after 15 years, what do you expect darlin? Then this new character strolls in called Wilson and he cl...more

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Sep 20, 2010 Kemper rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 100, sky-cake, classic-lit

This is what happens when you live your life trying to get a piece of Sky Cake* in the great hereafter. Not only will you probably make yourself miserable while you’re here on earth and waste time that could be spent eating delicious actual cake, but you’ll most likely fuck up the life of everyone else involved with you.

*(For the detailed explanation of the concept of Sky Cake, check out comedian Patton Oswalt’s routine of the same name.)

Henry Scobie is a police officer in an unnamed British col...more This is what happens when you live your life trying to get a piece of Sky Cake* in the great hereafter. Not only will you probably make yourself miserable while you’re here on earth and waste time that could be spent eating delicious actual cake, but you’ll most likely fuck up the life of everyone else involved with you.

*(For the detailed explanation of the concept of Sky Cake, check out comedian Patton Oswalt’s routine of the same name.)

Henry Scobie is a police officer in an unnamed British colony in West Africa during World War II. Scobie is incorruptible, but not naïve. Even though it's not a glamorous posting, he actually loves his work and the area. However, when he gets passed up for a promotion to the top police job, it puts stress on his marriage to Louise. Scobie doesn’t love her anymore, but does feel responsible for her. He can’t resolve his wish to stay with her desperate pleadings that they should leave.

Despite his desire to just do his job and try to keep the peace and limit the diamond smuggling that is flourishing during the war, Scobie is soon facing a host of problems. Rumors are flying that he was passed over for sleeping with native women or taking bribes from Yusef, the local smuggling kingpin. A new British official named Wilson seems to have fallen for Louise and may have a larger secret agenda, Louise is falling apart and Scobie can’t raise enough money to send her out of the country.

Trying to fulfill Louise’s wish to leave will cause Scobie to bend his own code, and that sets off a chain of events that trap him in an ethical dilemma that he can’t square with his own Catholicism. It’s bad enough to make mistakes that put you in a situation that someone you care for will be hurt no matter what, but when the Catholic rule book assures you that you’re going to be damned for eternity if you can’t do things exactly according to the manual, it makes for a rather shitty moral dilemma.

Great writing, believable characters, a unique setting and a tragic situation made for very compelling reading.
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Sep 08, 2008 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lapsed (or practicing) Catholics; anyone with a slightly masochistic streak

Every time I read Graham Greene, I vow to read more Graham Greene. He digs so utterly, completely into the souls of his characters--really, you know them better than most of the real people in your life. Major Scobie is no exception. In fact, everything about this man is laid bare.

Scobie is a good man. He is upstanding and moral in a place (British colonial West Africa), time (WWII), and profession (the police) that values deception, injustice, and corruption. The petty colonial British society...more Every time I read Graham Greene, I vow to read more Graham Greene. He digs so utterly, completely into the souls of his characters--really, you know them better than most of the real people in your life. Major Scobie is no exception. In fact, everything about this man is laid bare.

Scobie is a good man. He is upstanding and moral in a place (British colonial West Africa), time (WWII), and profession (the police) that values deception, injustice, and corruption. The petty colonial British society in the unnamed West African country where he is stationed finds it disagreeable that he has nothing to hide, so they make up scandals to pin on him. Another reviewer mentioned the unsympathetic and shallow portrayals of the women in Scobie's life; they are that way because the whole society is that way. If one looks at the other important male characters around Scobie, one finds that they are equally shallow and unsympathetic. It's not misogyny that drives Greene's portrayals; it's disgust for upper-middle-class colonial British society (see Forster's A Passage to India for another take on that). The point is that Scobie is different than they are.

But back to Scobie himself. He is a Catholic who truly believes in God, suffering, and redemption. He won't take communion in a state of sin, but he also won't confess when he knows he has no intention of quitting his sin and feels no remorse. There is a scene towards the end, when his wife practically begs him to go to Mass--and communion--with her, and he finally agrees. The wrenching torment he feels at receiving the Host in his disgraced state is as harrowing and traumatic as a battle scene would play out in any other writer's work. And after he's taken it, he feels as bereft as any soldier who's lost a limb would. My heart actually beat faster, and I felt a sucking horror on reading it (maybe that's just because I'm Catholic, though--hehe).

Scobie is moral in the the traditional societal sense--but he also feels an irresistible responsibility towards others. The turning point for him is when his wife insists she must get away to South Africa--for her sake, for his sake--to give him some peace, she says. He can't afford to send her, but he knows how much she wants it, so to make her happy, he gets a loan from a disreputable businessman. The loan is on the level, but it leads to other favors being asked, and hence to corruption for Scobie. Then comes another temptation in the form of a fellow human who is weak, desperate, and alone. Again Scobie must (or feels he must) be the savior, and becomes the lover of a young widowed shipwreck victim. It wasn't what he intended, but intense friendship, especially when pity or gratitude is a component, does at times turn passionate, even without the consent of the parties involved.

In the end, Scobie is so conflicted and unable to see a way to making everyone happy--everyone he cares about, anyway--that he decides the only solution is to remove himself from their lives. And he does so; but in doing so, he condemns himself to eternal damnation, at least in his mind. He makes this ultimate sacrifice of his own salvation because of his love, pity, mercy--whatever you want to call it--for those who are petty, misunderstanding, undeserving, and unworthy.

This is true tragedy: the hero has a tragic flaw, that which is within himself, that leads him to his own demise. It was very affecting. Bravo, once again, to Graham Greene.

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Feb 20, 2008 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, brit-lit, worlds-lost-dead-and-dying, owned, 20th-century-postwar-to-late, grand-opera

Four stars, because of the quality of the writing. But I am going to disagree with the label that goes with it, that of "really liked it." Because I did not. I feel no affection for this book, and I doubt that I will ever re-read it for many reasons that I will state below. But for those just reading this to get a quick glance about whether they should read it or not: you should, in short. It is worth it. I just would not expect to fall in love.

The book focuses on Major Scobie, a policeman in a...more Four stars, because of the quality of the writing. But I am going to disagree with the label that goes with it, that of "really liked it." Because I did not. I feel no affection for this book, and I doubt that I will ever re-read it for many reasons that I will state below. But for those just reading this to get a quick glance about whether they should read it or not: you should, in short. It is worth it. I just would not expect to fall in love.

The book focuses on Major Scobie, a policeman in a British colony of West Africa, where Greene himself spent some time. It's set during WWII, which serves to set up the mood of distrust, fragility and vague apprehension that is to haunt the novel and our hero. Major Scobie is a Catholic, and he is married to a shallow, mild horror of a woman named Louise. Insert her unhappiness, his distance, another woman, another man, and you have your novel right there. Those are the basics. Okay, now I can move forward with this.

The book is essentially a character study of Major Scobie. And in that function, it is incredibly thorough, and makes sure to search into every area of his soul, several times over. We really do see the man laid naked in front of us. Which is appropriate, given that he's meant to be Christ figure (and casts himself in that role several times.). Even one of the priests says that "when people have a problem they go to you, not to me," and bemoans the fact that priests are not as useful as policemen. It's an interesting thought, but in any case. To me, he was an embodiment of abstract Catholic virtues, set out in one man, going about life as the Catholic Church would have you do. This made real sense to me for the first part of the novel, where Scobie is deconstructed very well, and Greene's conceit was quite effective, I thought. He shows us the difference between living your life as a man and living your life as an abstract virtue. Scobie stays untouched by the animal side of humans, the love, the anger, all vice ridden emotions found in the world that are not learned, but come from within. We do not see him exhibit any of these emotions. And honestly, you sort of dislike him for it. He is inhuman, which drives his wife and everyone who knows him crazy, and honestly, it drove me a little crazy too. But. I appreciated it as a message about living in the world rather than living apart from it, untouched by it. Scobie's major motivation is pity and compassion, which is exactly what Catholicism would tell you to do. But it seems so distant, so resigned, that its rather awful. You end in pitying Scobie as much as you do the clearly inferior characters around him. Or at least, I did. Graham Greene peppers this study with a great many insightful observations about death and the attachment that we really have for people, and what love really is.

**spoiler alert***

Which builds into the second half of the novel, which annoyed the flying fuck out of me, confused me and I'm really not sure if I agree with the premise of it at all. Essentially, Greene has Scobie become involved in an affair with a shipwrecked widow named Helen, who has absolutely no one. It's an incredibly sordid affair like one would expect to see in a soap opera, and Scobie is meant to seem all wrong for the role. He has Scobie motivated by pity for her, has him express that it is the weak, the ugly who demand his allegiance, not the beautiful and the intelligent. So this is what makes him succumb to Helen. And then on top of that, he says that he stays with her out of pity. That it was love in the beginning (which I don't believe, as they never show it at all, but skip forward to the part where he is lamenting how love is over) and then it is about duty and responsibility and keeping her happy because if he left, then she would be in pain, and he doesn't want to cause anybody pain. And then his wife comes back, and everyone tells her about the affair, and then she's in pain. And he can't leave either of them because they need him more than God does. That's a direct quote from him. Which is how he squares it with his sinning conscience, carrying on with the whole thing. And then he kills himself because people who love you forget you the second you die, and then nobody will be in pain anymore, and so he's sacrificing himself for them. I just cannot agree with the whole premise and excuse that Scobie makes for his conduct there. I don't believe he ever knew what love was, I don't believe in his reasoning for why he would have succumbed to Helen in all noble motivations. As a Catholic and a girl who's done it before herself, I can certainly see why you would be attracted to someone out of pity. Why you would feel love for people who need you. Fine. But there were many other ways to help Helen other than screwing her, sir. I don't buy that such a distant guy would have "fallen in love" due to pity. I buy that he stays with his wife out of pity and responsibility. I don't buy the whole affair, so I can't believe in his moral dilemma. Helen is painted as such an awful whore character I cannot believe why he would have been there at all. (We'll get to that in a second.) Then he goes screaming to God over and over again. I get the penchant for drama. I'm Catholic. Yes, it was interesting to try to see a man live exactly as the Church would tell him, and still to be a human being. But I don't buy that it happened to Scobie. I just hate the whole sordid interlude. I know I'm supposed to hate that its so sordid. But I just think that he made Scobie a much less interesting character throughout it, and everyone else involved were mere representations of what he needed to progress along his moral dilemma, not real people.

But. Given that. The last few chapters where he methodically plans his suicide, tries to save everyone the pain around him, quietly goes about his business, and the meditation on what it is like to know that you are leaving the world… that was good. That was heartbreaking. It was that effective quiet whisper of endless pain that I just thought was incredibly skillful and well done.

Okay, I really need to talk about what really offended me in this book though: the terrible misogyny. The characters in this book are horrific. There is an extremely strong Madonna/whore complex that runs throughout it, and is represented by the cardboard cutouts that are Louise and Helen. These women are represented exactly as a man who knew nothing about women but what he read in books would represent them as. Grasping, shallow, bitter, angry, small, but with amazing flashes of insight that awe men!.. and yet they are so childish at the same time, so fragile!.. and then they are so stupid the next second. I hated all the women in this book, and I'm pretty sure Graham Greene did, too. I hated that Louise and Helen weren't women, weren't people, but were mere representations of his moral dilemmas, one dimensional harpies who enacted him scenes, had emotional fits, and generally made his life a living hell. Poor baby man who only wanted peace, but no no, these screeching women just insist upon ruining his life! Women are the root of all evil. If it weren't for them, Scobie would be a perfect Christ angel! No wonder Greene converted to Catholicism, if this was his opinion of women. The Church agrees wholeheartedly. Women must be madonnas who look after your home, to be worshipped, who look after your spiritual well being, and stick by their men when they are unfaithful- i.e: Louise. Or they are lost souls who are ready to fuck the first man who comes by when their hero does not support them- like Helen. They have no inner strength of their own except in those first meetings that drew our hero to them, before they became harpies, like all the rest of women are! The two girls were virtually indistinguishable in their manner sometimes. Maybe that's why I just couldn't get into Scobie's dilemma. The women involved made me want to barf, and his bad taste in them, and his opinions of them as people just revolted me just as much.

End opinion: Graham Greene's writing: good, elegant, with quiet insight. Graham Greene's misogyny: godawful.
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Dec 30, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

"The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being--it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. He involved himself in what he always knew was a vain struggle to retain the lies."

There are a lot of quotable lines in Greene.
He's very good at mapping the territory of despair. His characters are very real, as is the setting. The novel is both cinematic and introspective. I've read only one o...more

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Mar 14, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, politics

It’s hard for me to review The Heart of the Matter without mentioning The Power and the Glory, so I won’t even try. While many people think The Power and the Glory is Greene’s tragic masterpiece, I think the case could be made for this book. In a way, The Heart of the Matter is the reciprocal of The Power and the Glory – instead of leading a fairly villainous protagonist on a path to redemption through death at the hands of the ruling authority, it takes a basically good authority figure, the po...more

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Jan 09, 2008 Ariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Erin!

Recommended to Ariel by: Louis

Shelves: 2008

This one snuck up on me...I wasn't crazy about the beginning, aside from a choice phrase describing memory as a wound that would be awakened by the smell of gin in the afternoon. Maybe my feelings about the first half weren't helped by reading it on a plane, either.

But then...well, typical Graham Greene. First, that the gin in the afternoon bit was far from the only sentence that seems to reach out and slap you across the face with a few well-placed words. His prose is so simple...I tend to buy...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've always been a fan of Graham Green ever since I did a paper on "A Burnt Out Case" in school. Again, I think he deals with some of the great questions of life. His characters have so much angst - more than I can identify with yet he writes so well that they are real. Set in a costal town in Africa during the war, the themes are guilt, loneliness, grief, love, adultery, responsibility, loss morality, corruption, colonialism just to name a few.

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Oct 27, 2007 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Repressed gin enthusiasts

OK, so I sort of knew coming into this that Graham Greene is one of Those Writers -- not one with anything specific about them that I ever heard, but definitely a guy who some folks love, find wildly influential, etc. And there are aspects that live up to all that back-jacket hype: The depictions of a corrupt (surprise!) colonial Africa, the mild touches of dry, British wit scattered throughout courtesy of the conflictedly helpless (or helplessly conflicted) main character and, naturally, a big...more

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Dec 03, 2007 Andie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There will be no end to my affair with Graham Greene. The Heart of the Matter is considered one of his best, and it is from the Catholic trilogy period of his writing (The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair being the others). Henry Scobie is the tortured soul at the center of the story. An agent for the British government stationed in Liberia, Scobie has a love/hate relationship with almost everything around him. The environment, the native people, his coworkers, his wife, and especia...more

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Nov 30, 2008 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars

this would make an awesome book for discussion. greene creates a really interesting tension between one man's ready mercy for others and distrust of mercy from God, as well as drawing to the fore the relationship and distinction between pity and love.
This book has left me pondering several things, one of which is the main character's capability for truly loving God without being able to comprehend his mercy, or at least being able to trust in it.
Also intriguing was Greene's treatment of suicid...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Heart of the Matter is very pure Graham Greene, centered on a tortured but good man's loss of faith, his infidelity, the impossibility of reconciling human passion and divine order, and the ragged reality of British colonialism expiring in the dust of World War II.

The heaviest burden in this novel could be putting up with the protagonist's (Henry Scobie) literal interpretation of Roman Catholic edicts. Trapped in a loveless marriage (as they say), Scobie succumbs to a surprising and moving a...more The Heart of the Matter is very pure Graham Greene, centered on a tortured but good man's loss of faith, his infidelity, the impossibility of reconciling human passion and divine order, and the ragged reality of British colonialism expiring in the dust of World War II.

The heaviest burden in this novel could be putting up with the protagonist's (Henry Scobie) literal interpretation of Roman Catholic edicts. Trapped in a loveless marriage (as they say), Scobie succumbs to a surprising and moving attraction to a shipwrecked 19-year-old, yet cannot break his sacramental ties to his wife (of course, he sleeps with the 19-year-old, but he won't just tell his wife, and thereby the Church, that in his heart the marriage is over...long since over.)

This being 2009, and the novel being written in the 1940s, one must make allowances for Scobie's pain. Graham Greene himself endured a lot of pain over similar quandaries. And yet it's hard to see Scobie ending up a suicide as a result--believable, but hard.

The lightest burden in the book (full of West African tedium, petty intrigue, and personalities distorted by the experience of living an expatriate, overseas life) is definitely the early romance between Scobie and the shipwrecked Helen (who lost her husband of one month when a German sub sank their ship). They flirt lightly in the first pass through and then simply realize, on reencountering one another, that "this is it; you're the one." It's not often that a writer has the mastery to propose a sincere coupling of this kind without having done more spadework, laid deeper foundations, and so forth. Henry and Helen are fast but not frivolous, a match that cracks the shell of solitude in which Henry has been encasing himself out there on the West African coast these last fifteen years.

The surrounding cast of misfits, dreamers, schemers, time-servers, compromised servants, and gossipers reinforce Greene's basic message that quotidian reality is a thin experience sustained, in the main,by unthinking, shallow people. This gives piquancy to Henry's chance at escape, and brings him down, as well.
The novel has a few choppy passages, where the narrative seems to flow along faster than the explanatory details, and one of its best characters, the Syrian Yusef, lacks the kind of background one would like to explore, but Greene is a strong, interesting tale-teller, very economical, and superb in capturing human thoughtlessness and incidental cruelty without writing all of life off as not worth the candle. Somehow the studied way in which Scobie emulates Christ, sacrificing himself in the service of belief, justifies the passing tragedy of being merely human. (less)

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May 12, 2013 Fraser Kinnear rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, travel, english

Outside the rest-house he stopped again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one hadn't known, just as the stars on this clear night gave also an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?

This is my third Graham Greene book, and I think I'm very much drawing from my enthusiasm from the my first book in order to...more

Outside the rest-house he stopped again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one hadn't known, just as the stars on this clear night gave also an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?

This is my third Graham Greene book, and I think I'm very much drawing from my enthusiasm from the my first book in order to enjoy him still. The Heart of the Matter is a wonderful novel, with some beautiful passages, but I can no longer connect with Greene's protagonists. Greene writes about tired men, ones struggling with their religion and their relationships and themselves. I think, until a much later stage in my life, these men will remain as curiosities.

Interesting that I found the same tiredness in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Orwell's Coming Up For Air. Was this a shared sentiment among Britons at the time? Their tiredness is expressed in different ways: Greene is focused on pity here, Orwell was nostalgia, Waugh was sin and commitment. But tiredness and defeat nonetheless.

A couble nice passages, among the many:

When he was young, he had thought love had something to do with understanding, but with age he knew that no human being understood another. Love was the wish to understand, and presently with constant failure the wish died, and love died too perhaps or changed into this painful affection, loyalty, pity...

and this:

'You don't come back every day, darling.' The strained good humor, the jest with dry lips, went on and on: at lunch he laid down his fork for yet another 'crack.' 'Dear Henry,' she said, 'I've never known you so cheerful.' The ground had given way beneath his feet, and all through the meal he had the sensation of falling, the relaxed stomach, the breathlessness, the despair - because you couldn't fall so far as this and survive. His hilarity was like a scream from the crevasse.

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Feb 21, 2013 Kate rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: crimy, horribly-depressing, god-no-god, relationships-slowly-turning-toxic, plot-diamonds, the-sea, the-bitch-goddess-success, book-club

Thoughts:

1. "Scobie" sounds like a type of bacterial infection. Greene might as well have named him Major Henry Impetigo. At least "Impetigo" has some dash to it.

2. If you're ever talking to a friend and that friend says, "You know, I don't think colonialism was really THAT awful," give them a copy of this book, and then unfriend that friend.

3. I have a hugely difficult time understanding why anyone would ever want to spend time with Widow Helen, let alone fall in love with her. I mean this is a...more

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Jan 26, 2013 Mia rated it 3 of 5 stars

I honestly have no great love for this book. I love nearly every book I read, I just get so attached to storylines and characters that I sometimes overlook the plot holes or mediocre writing and just get absorbed in it. This book, though, is an exception. I disliked the characters : I hated Louise's self pitying, I hated Scobie's determination to fix everything that moves and I detested how pathetic everyone living in Sierra Leone was.
I also disliked how difficult the book makes physical contac...more

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Jan 24, 2013 Babak Fakhamzadeh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sub-saharan-africa

Excellent novel set in an unnamed, but easily recognizable, Sierra Leone, during the second world war. Greene was based in Freetown for some two years at the beginning of the war. This, after having done a jungle trip from, roughly, Freetown to Monrovia a few years before, on which he wrote the travelogue Journey Without Maps.

The Heart of the Matter is a more interesting, and a much more even, piece of work, though the central character, torn between his Catholic religion and the love, or perha...more Excellent novel set in an unnamed, but easily recognizable, Sierra Leone, during the second world war. Greene was based in Freetown for some two years at the beginning of the war. This, after having done a jungle trip from, roughly, Freetown to Monrovia a few years before, on which he wrote the travelogue Journey Without Maps.

The Heart of the Matter is a more interesting, and a much more even, piece of work, though the central character, torn between his Catholic religion and the love, or perhaps sense of duty, towards his wife and his mistress, feels unfinished. Or perhaps painted partially.
If he's as much a Catholic as he seems to be, how can he go through both with his adultery and his final act? And if he's the type of person who can really get lost in the situation he's in, how is it possible this didn't happen decades before, the central character being around 50, having been married for 15 years?
He -is- a wiser person, yet isn't he?

The story is interesting enough in itself, but it's the setting which is more compelling, Greene capturing the mood, the futility, of the colony very well, particularly the colonizers' approach to the locals, and their attitudes to the colonizers, being very recognizable.
Two things have since changed, however. Or perhaps three. Though Freetown is now slowly mending itself, Greene's description seems to depict a town with more order to it. Greene calls, what I assume are, the Lebanese, Syrians, and Greene occasionally uses the term 'to dash' or 'dashing' for paying small bribes, or rather, tokens of appreciation. The latter term is still in use in Ghana (or was while I was there), but has disappeared in Salone. Here, the term which is used on occasion is 'to buy a soft drink'.

Greene himself worked for the foreign office, while in Salone, and it's easy to assume that two characters in the book are reflections of Greene while in country. With Greene having become a Catholic at 22, it's not unlikely that the central character and the person who tries to be his nemesis, a 'spy' working for the British government, represent aspects of Greene himself.(less)

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Jan 22, 2013 Siddharth Shankaran rated it 4 of 5 stars

Graham Greene has the masterful knack of laying bare the human conscience in both grace and conflict. His path to grace , however goes through the Catholic system of faith, and this book draws heavily from the Christain ideal of Kierkkegard, expressed in The Sickness Unto Death. Eternal damnation,however, if it was for Scobie, is also for all conscious beings, and there is no running away from it, no matter how eloquently Greene would want to describe it.

What this book however, would certainly d...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Daniel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ever since I read "The Quiet American," followed by "The Human Factor," I have counted Greene as one of my favorite authors for his clear, beautiful prose and his uncanny talent for creating a fictional portrait of human emotions that evokes similar sentiments in the reader. With "Heart of the Matter" now digested and ready to stand alongside its brethren on the shelf, my respect for Greene's work waxes all the greater.

The setting in this book makes you feel uncomfortable, and Scobie's outlook o...more

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Aug 13, 2012 Abigail rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone: despite the rating this is pure literature

Rating: 3.5 ***Spoilers ahead***
Graham Greene wrote that: "The character of Scobie was intended to show that pity can be the expression of an almost monstrous pride." Yet few readers consider Scobie to be morally atrocious. In the end, they apply as much pity to him as he suffered for Helen, Louise and everyone else. To readers, Scobie was 'a good man', exonerated of all his sins.

Not this reader.

In many ways this was a novel that I was both infinitely prepared for but also damn near impossible f...more Rating: 3.5 ***Spoilers ahead***
Graham Greene wrote that: "The character of Scobie was intended to show that pity can be the expression of an almost monstrous pride." Yet few readers consider Scobie to be morally atrocious. In the end, they apply as much pity to him as he suffered for Helen, Louise and everyone else. To readers, Scobie was 'a good man', exonerated of all his sins.

Not this reader.

In many ways this was a novel that I was both infinitely prepared for but also damn near impossible for me to like. I happen to live in what is now 'ex-colonial' backwaters almost as hot and as humid as the coast of West Africa. I picked up a sad little copy of this book from a public library; an edition from the 50s yellowed by time and heat. I read this novel half-asleep due to heat vexation.Thereofore I read this novel in an almost too-correct frame of mind: while decaying myself. I also have the (dis)advantage of living in one of the most Catholic countries in the world and took the interesting position of an ex-Catholic who is very, almost gleefully knowledgeable about Catholicism reading a book attempting to explore humanism and Catholic theology. Part of the reason I picked up the book in fact was the exploration of Catholic themes: I doubt I would have enjoyed it as much if it was filled with what to me would be a very boring exploration of Protestantism (given Greene is English I half-expected it to be so).

At the same time I am not sympathetic with any novel that portrays colonial backwaters so harshly; neither am I sympathetic to characters riddled by guilt and pity.

Greene's The Heart of the Matter is an odd beast to rate: on the one hand you can immediately recognise the impeccable literary quality, the excellently spaced structure, the interesting use of animals and background characters to give an overall sense of moral and physical decay. On the other hand, one immediately notes the obsessive nature of the novel, the constant droning repetition, the occasionally arcane and unnecessarily complex theological problems that boggle the mind of someone who considers herself to have struggled with the problems of Catholicism her entire life. It is thus that I have settled on an even 3.5; it's so well written yet oh so flawed.

The character of Scobie is undoubtedly the biggest problem; I would say the depiction of Louise and Helen as overtly hysterical was also problematic but I cannot tell whether the condescending almost sexist attitudes towards the women were a reflection of Greene's mind or Scobie's. Given that Greene intended for Scobie to be his dark knight of monstrous pride, I would bet that the condescension emanated from Scobie's ego even though he kidded himself all throughout the novel that he was debasing himself for their sakes.

Perhaps the biggest problem with Scobie was already pointed out to us by George Orwell: if Scobie truly believed in eternal damnation, would he sentence his soul to an eternity of deprivation from God for the sake of two 'hysterical' women?

Still, it seems to me from this harsh question posited by Orwell that he did not truly understand Catholic faith. Helen asks Scobie a similar question when he starts worrying that Louise will force him to take the Eucharist in mortal sin. 'If you truly believed, you wouldn't be here". This is too logical a question to ask of Catholic faith: as Scobie himself notes, when you're Catholic you know all the answers but you go willfully against them. The human will is far more complex than Orwell or Helen can possibly imagine. Indeed, how can one ever have a full concept of eternal damnation? To not only understand hell intellectually but also to feel the very fires of hell is virtually impossible. The human will bases its decision on the now, on what it feels not what it imagines even if one wholeheartedly and sincerely believes. Scobie could not only fathom but also feel Louise's and Helen's impending despair. He felt everything extensively like a walking wound; or should I say, he felt pity extensively for I do not believe that what he called 'love' was indeed love.

This leads me to Scobie's biggest flaws: fine, Scobie is a morally atrocious individual, constantly pitying others but never wanting to be pitied himself, constantly being condescending to everyone by fearing their hysteria, by always trying to get the upper hand by showing a stiff upper lip, loving no one at all unless they are worse off than him, other people's emotions and obligations weigh heavy on him like their existence is a burden...These are all character flaws however and I cannot judge a book's quality by how morally disgusting I find the main character to be. (Though t certainly makes wading through 300 pages or so less enjoyable)

What wasn't truly believable for me was how Scobie could feel so much pity for everyone when every other emotion in him seems to have deadened. He reads like an incredibly old man, even though he was only in his 50s. How could he feel so much pity for everyone yet spare none for himself in the final moments? Here lies a strange contradiction: that Scobie manifests obvious signs of an inflated ego and pride: he's condescending to the women he 'loves', he never listens to them and avoids their arguments, he plays the martyr constantly because he feels their need of him etc.(apparently imagined because Louise truly never needed him). On the other hand he does not display the central attribute of someone with an inflated ego: self-pity.

In the end, what makes Scobie's suicide senseless is not the contradiction created between the act of suicide and his Catholic faith (Orwell's criticism) but the fact that Scobie's personality almost makes no sense. Why so much pity yet none for himself? Why so much condescension and pride yet no egotism? If he was so sensitive, why did he become a policeman in the most corrupt system imaginable? Why did he allow Ali to die so easily when it was obvious that Yusef's actions did not bode well?
Ultimately, these questions remain unanswered. The depiction of Catholicism via Scobie's pity and suicide presents at best a fragmented, at worse an arcane picture of Catholic themes. An excellently written novel which should be appreciated as Greene's first proper attempt at more serious writing though if you are looking for a proper treatment of Catholic themes you might as well skip this one and go straight ahead to The Power and the Glory.(less)

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Aug 09, 2012 Rich rated it 5 of 5 stars

He listened with the intense interest one feels in a stranger's life, the interest the young mistake for love. Book Two, The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene (1948), p 126

“You sent Louise away,” Wilson said, “because you were afraid of me.”
Scobie laughed gently. “This is sun, Wilson, just sun. We'll forget about it in the morning.”
“She couldn't stand your stupid, unintelligent . . . you don't know what a woman like Louise thinks.”
“I don't suppose I do. Nobody wants another person to know t...more

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Jul 18, 2012 Keri rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A book club pick; we're discussing this weekend. Although I enjoyed the writing style right from the start, as I always do with English writers, it took me a while to get into it. I didn't quite understand the point of opening the novel from Wilson's point of view, for one thing, and I could have done without the side plot of smuggled diamonds. I suppose an argument could be made for that, in that it wasn't a side plot at all but a way to explain why Scobie gets so tangled up with Yusef and his...more

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Jul 16, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Originally published on my blog here in May 2000.

West Africa in the Second World War was probably more remote from the rest of the world than at any time this century, a time when the war in the Atlantic made travel by ship extremely dangerous. European colonial staff in the area always felt isolated, and this feeling was increased by the war. It is this loneliness which forms the background to Graham Greene's novel, and it is heightened by attributes which separate the central character even fr...more Originally published on my blog here in May 2000.

West Africa in the Second World War was probably more remote from the rest of the world than at any time this century, a time when the war in the Atlantic made travel by ship extremely dangerous. European colonial staff in the area always felt isolated, and this feeling was increased by the war. It is this loneliness which forms the background to Graham Greene's novel, and it is heightened by attributes which separate the central character even from those of a similar background. Scobie is a senior policeman and a Catholic, as well as having a reputation for an unusually strong resistance to corruption; none of these qualities serve to make him popular amongst the other administrators in the British colony.

Duty is the central factor in Scobie's life: duty to his job, duty to his wife. Since his daughter died, there is little else left to him. Then he is passed over as a replacement for the retiring Commissioner of Police in favour of a younger man, and his wife starts to find remaining in the colony insupportable. He is able to arrange a passage to more cosmopolitan South Africa to give her some respite, but this means that he has to become indebted to one of the corrupt Syrian traders in the colony.. This begins his disintegration, which continues when he meets Helen Rolt, a refugee from a shipwreck, and begins an affair.

Interestingly, the more things go badly for Scobie and the further he puts himself from the church, the stronger his faith as a Catholic becomes. Despite believing himself damned as an adulterer, he is unable to break off the affair. Yet he had originally joined the church only because he wanted to marry a Catholic.

The Heart of the Matter is about loneliness: a lonely man in a lonely place, cut off by his religion from the only love he has experienced since the death of his daughter (which, though not part of the novel, is the defining moment of Scobie's life). As loneliness and alienation play an important part in modern life, The Heart of the Matter is truly a novel for our times.(less)

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Jul 13, 2012 David Clark rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, summer-2012

Graham Greene, author of novels and stories in multiple genres, is perhaps best known for his writing concerning the "Bad Catholic." "The Heart of the Matter" is one of his four so called Catholic novels. (Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The End of an Affair, and The Heart of the Matter) These four explore themes of sin and morality often in the context of Catholicism. Along with Greene's other protagonists, the policeman Scobie in "The Heart of the Matter" is a deeply flawed human being...more Graham Greene, author of novels and stories in multiple genres, is perhaps best known for his writing concerning the "Bad Catholic." "The Heart of the Matter" is one of his four so called Catholic novels. (Brighton Rock, The Power and the Glory, The End of an Affair, and The Heart of the Matter) These four explore themes of sin and morality often in the context of Catholicism. Along with Greene's other protagonists, the policeman Scobie in "The Heart of the Matter" is a deeply flawed human being who struggles--in Scobie's case in vain-- to understand a loving God, their own desires and sin, and a chaotic even evil world. On the last page of "The Heart of the Matter" the tired and cynical priest calls the phrase bad Catholic, "the silliest phrase," implying that all catholics are bad. Greene then goes on to suggest the folly of assuming we humans can known the mind of God when it comes to deciding the morality of an individual. "For goodness sake, Mrs. Scobie, don't imagine you--or I--know a thing about God's mercy. . . .The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn't know what goes on in a single human heart." (p. 306)

Greene is a superb writer and master of the character sketch. He "puts you in the picture" with few words and remarkable deftness. But as fluid as the reading of this 1948 classic was, I could not help but feel like I was reading a cliche'. All of Greene's novels have had multiple stage and screen adaptations and while the themes are eternal and important, Greene's novels have suffered from over exposure. I knew early on how the novel would end and the theologic issues that would precipitate the internal crisis. This did not stop me from appreciating the expert writer's style and skill at bringing the novel to completion. Rather, for me "The Heart of the Matter"--my last volume in the Catholic quartet--was well written but sadly, formulaic.

As a matter of taste, if forced to choose a Graham Greene in this grouping, I'd select "The End of an Affair" and "The Power and the Glory" rather than this novel.(less)

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Jul 05, 2012 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Carol by: Carrie Kitzmiller

I didn't like one of the characters in this book, didn't find the plot interesting, but Greene's prose kept me going. It is my first Graham Greene; I'd like to read more, but I'll wait a bit before I do.

Scobie is a British policeman on the African coast. Life is dreary: unhappy marriage, rain, friendless, disappointing career. How he copes, how he is tempted, how his Catholic faith informs or convicts his choices: this is the stuff of the book.

Favorite quotes:

He never listened while his wife ta...more

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Dec 01, 2011 Liz rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: time-s-top-one-hundred

"A green book by Graham Greene" Says the librarian.
My introduction to this book was just that. We both found it a little too funny.. It is my first "GG" book, but after reading this, I will explore more of his work.

The book, is a spirit damper. Quiet depressing....
It follows a police officer by the name of Scobie, who along with his team are responsible for security of vessels due to smuggling in the British colonized West Africa during World War Two.
Scobie, unhappily married to Louse, a most de...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 3 of 5 stars

In the online world most people understand what you mean by SPOILER ALERT. Unfortunately books aren't stickered with spoiler alerts, but if they were this would definitely have needed one because the rather erudite introduction gave away all the key plot points.

Re-reading it after the novel I have to say I agreed with practically all it - the gist being that the characters are rather thinly drawn, Scobie's moral dilemma is not terribly convincing in some ways, and so on. (I am deliberately not g...more

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May 14, 2011 Rachelfm rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: africa, faith, uk

This book is the first I'm finishing in an inadvertently thematic trio (with EM Forster's A Passage to India and Simon Winchester's The Man Who Loved China) about the quirks and clashes of maintaining the "stiff upper lip" whilst on colonial adventures. What happens when one crosses the line to embrace the "other" and the interior unhinging that results from too many gin & tonics taken during humid, 95 degree nights at the club while complaining about the "native problem."

In its story arc,...more

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Dec 14, 2010 Tom Ireland rated it 5 of 5 stars

You cannot go wrong with a Graham Greene. So my latest book was an easy choice. As soon as The Heart of the Matter dropped through the letterbox, I knew I would be reading it very soon.

Greene is consistent without being boring. His dry, deliberate prose chronicles heartbreaking but very ordinary individuals. The Heart of the Matter is no exception. It is the tale of Scobie, a man ruined by his love for two women. It is less than action-packed, the whole book carries the feeling of heaviness inhe...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Azothgallery rated it 3 of 5 stars

Read May & June, 2010, audio reading by Joseph Porter.

Serving in the international arm of the British Secret Intelligence Service during World War II, Graham Greene was one of the three great Intelligence writers of the 20th century. His novels and screenplays, skillfully and poignantly blending themes of illicit love and espionage, were the basis for some of the top spy films of all time: most notably “The Third Man,” (1949) a murder mystery set in post-WWII Ally-divided Vienna, and the pr...more Read May & June, 2010, audio reading by Joseph Porter.

Serving in the international arm of the British Secret Intelligence Service during World War II, Graham Greene was one of the three great Intelligence writers of the 20th century. His novels and screenplays, skillfully and poignantly blending themes of illicit love and espionage, were the basis for some of the top spy films of all time: most notably “The Third Man,” (1949) a murder mystery set in post-WWII Ally-divided Vienna, and the prophetic “The Quiet American” (1954) -- intrigue and deception set in the Saigon of that time. Many of his novels such as “Ministry of Fear” (1943) set in war-time England, “The Comedians” (1966) set in Haiti during the reign of Papa Doc Duvalier, and the comedy “Our Man in Havana” (1958), were done as crackling and star-studded films grappling with complex issues of morality and terror.

Having himself been stationed in Sierra Leone during the WWII, a similar setting in “The Heart of the Matter,” Greene tells the story of Major Henry Scobie, a long-serving police inspector in a British colonial town on the West Coast of Africa whose job is to control smuggling. He is married to Louise, a solitary woman who loves literature and poetry but is socially isolated. Both are Roman Catholics in the moral sense, though shippers try to manipulate Scobie into overlooking contraband diamonds. Scobie feels responsible for Louise's lack of happiness. But he does not love her, nor even himself. When she finally separates to live in a more civilized city in South Africa, for which passage he must borrow money, he later floats into a passionate relationship with a young woman who arrives among a lifeboat of shipwreck survivors. This story presents religious dilemmas of corruption, morality, and sin, as eventually when Louise returns to Scobie out of her realization of love for him, he silently goes to church with her, though still involved, and receives the sacrament, though knowing himself in a state of sin.
(less)

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