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Brighton Rock

by Graham Greene, J.M. Coetzee (Introduction)

3.73 of 5 stars 3.73 · rating details · 7,836 ratings · 515 reviews

In this classic novel of murder and menace, Graham Greene lays bare the soul of a boy of seventeen who stalks Brighton's tawdry boardwalk with apathy on his face and murder in his heart. Pinkie, the boy with death at his fingertips, is not just bad, he worships in the temple of evil, just as his parents worshipped in the house of God. Crime, in his dark mind, is a release...more

Paperback, 269 pages

Published September 28th 2004 by Penguin Classics (first published 1938)

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May 03, 2013 Richard added it · review of another edition

Book Circle Reads 144

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Book Report: Charles "Fred" Hale, aka newspaper columnist "Kolley Kibber," is in Brighton to hand out paper-chase prizes to loyal readers of his paper. He's also running as fast as he can from someone who means to kill him. Why? We aren't told. Who? That's made very plain within the first thirty pages. Well, there goes the suspense, right? Not right.

In a vain effort to live to fight another day, Hale hooks up with Ida, a blowsy pub-crawling broad wit...more Book Circle Reads 144

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Book Report: Charles "Fred" Hale, aka newspaper columnist "Kolley Kibber," is in Brighton to hand out paper-chase prizes to loyal readers of his paper. He's also running as fast as he can from someone who means to kill him. Why? We aren't told. Who? That's made very plain within the first thirty pages. Well, there goes the suspense, right? Not right.

In a vain effort to live to fight another day, Hale hooks up with Ida, a blowsy pub-crawling broad with a heart of gold and a steely sense of right and wrong. Her trip to the public convenience to wash up a bit before her bit of fun with Hale allows the killer time enough to deal with Hale...permanently.

Ida, once she figures out the gentleman (!) who stood her up (and after she washed and everything!) in Brighton is the murder victim in her next morning's paper, determines that Hale will be avenged despite his lack of family, his murder being ruled a natural death, and her own complete lack of detective experience. The fun of the book, the bulk of the story, is in Ida circling closer and closer to the party we know to be the killer, and the multiple characters trailing in his wake slowly falling to his amoral, sociopathic self-preservation response. In the end, triumph changes Ida. The consequences of her victory over the forces of evil are such that she undergoes a sea change of feeling and desire. Justice never comes without a price. Never. Everyone involved in the story pays. Some with their lives.

My Review: Moralistic, yes; marvelously written, oh my yes! Greene's characters are, as in others of his work that I've read, mouthpieces for a worldview. He elevates them from the dreary, tiresome leadenness of Message Characters by imbuing them with a sense of humor as black as the world they inhabit, the world of carneys and racing touts and waitresses trapped forever in second-rate diners and gangsters whose souls are so dead to beauty that they can't see anything but violence as a solution to any and every problem.

It surprised me how often I laughed as I read on in this grisly, blood-soaked bagatelle. And yes, I meant "bagatelle" -- light, airy, almost inconsequential read that Brighton Rock is. I was completely delighted by the tone of the book, I was half in love with Ida, I was even sad for the killer and his parched, wounded soul.

A marvelous entertainment, then, and one whose substantial moral manages to keep itself underneath the story being told, supporting it. As it should be. Well made, worthwhile fiction. One expects nothing less from Graham Greene, no?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.(less)

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Mar 23, 2012 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Book Report: Charles "Fred" Hale, aka newspaper columnist "Kolley Kibber," is in Brighton to hand out paper-chase prizes to loyal readers of his paper. He's also running as fast as he can from someone who means to kill him. Why? We aren't told. Who? That's made very plain within the first thirty pages. Well, there goes the suspense, right? Not right.

In a vain effort to live to fight another day, Hale hooks up with Ida, a blowsy pub-crawling broad with a heart of gold and...more

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Aug 17, 2011 Krok Zero rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: summer-2011

William Gibson wrote something not long ago -- well, tweeted something, actually -- that has haunted me unexpectedly. Speaking of the sea change in American culture brought by World War II, Gibson noted that "WWII Americans looked like us; 1935 Americans seriously didn't." Somehow, this statement is totally accurate. If the past since WWII is a foreign country, the past before WWII is an alien planet.

Graham Greene wasn't an American, of course, but the same mysterious principle applied across th...more William Gibson wrote something not long ago -- well, tweeted something, actually -- that has haunted me unexpectedly. Speaking of the sea change in American culture brought by World War II, Gibson noted that "WWII Americans looked like us; 1935 Americans seriously didn't." Somehow, this statement is totally accurate. If the past since WWII is a foreign country, the past before WWII is an alien planet.

Graham Greene wasn't an American, of course, but the same mysterious principle applied across the pond. Greene's Brighton Rock is a pre-war novel by a writer primarily known for his postwar output, and as such it is constructed from cultural and verbal materials shockingly different from those composing his later efforts. This strangeness enhances the sense of alienation and ineffable evil afflicting Pinkie Brown, the teenage killer, wannabe gang-leader, and perverse poster-boy for Catholicism at the center of the story. Greene was at least to some degree a devout Catholic himself, but my reading of Brighton Rock paints an awfully ugly picture of the faith: it can conceive only of Good and Evil, not of Right and Wrong; if you resign yourself to damnation -- as do Pinkie and his accidental girlfriend Rose, one of the most tragic characters in any literature I know of -- then you're bound by no code, unburdened by any conscience, capable and willing to execute any misdeed. No one toggled between a ripping good yarn and deeper thematic resonances better than Greene, and to read Brighton Rock is to see him discovering this methodology under the circumstances of exquisitely intense material. The prose is thicker, more of an obstacle than in other Greene, owing to the nature of pre-war discourse -- as foreign as the physical appearances in the photos troubling William Gibson -- but by no means unbeautiful.

I've not yet seen either the 1947 film version (evidently very good) or this year's remake (out soon in the U.S. and receiving tepid reviews so far), both of which apparently alter the ending in a manner that arguably improves on Greene's (I read spoilers for the films), although the final sentence of this book is pretty amazing. As a gangster drama, a romantic tragedy, and an (unintentional?) attack on Catholic values, and certainly on various other levels as well, this deserves its rep.(less)

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Jan 09, 2009 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, brit-lit, 20th-century-early-to-mid, owned, give-me-seven-years

"I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school."
Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods- Good and Evil. The woman could tell her nothing she didn't know about these- she knew by tests as clear as mathematics that Pinkie was evil- what did it matter in that case whether he was right or wrong?

That's pretty much the book right there.

This is a f...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Jessica rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Jessica by: Sketchbook, Paperback Percy

Shelves: greeneland

This is an early novel of Greene's (1938), but a later one for me, as it's the sixth or seventh one I've read of his. As with all of Greene's novels, the setting, the seaside town of Brighton, is as much a character as any of the people who populate it. This setting is very different from that of other Greene novels I've read: Port-au-Prince, London, Havana, Sierra Leone, Mexico and other foreign landscapes.

As with others of his novels (despite what others on goodreads have said), the women port...more

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May 14, 2007 Jared Colley rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone interested in literature where pulp fiction meets high modernism...

Shelves: fiction

This is perhaps my favorite Graham Greene novel, and Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers. One thing I love about this book is its dynamic, multi-layered quality. One can read this book as a pulp, gangster novel that simply relates the struggle of a small time crook, Pinkie, facing the threat of being taken over by the infamous mob boss, Colleoni. Or one can read it as something much more complex - a story making sense of a new stage of capitalist, industrial experience where the urban ci...more

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Feb 20, 2011 Alan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, read-in-2011

ordered this from the library so's I can read it for the Greene group thingie, but have read it back in the 60s (as a teenager). Wonder if my star count will go down (it can't go up)?
...finished this on Saturday and went straight out to watch the film. Won't file my review until what is it - Feb 20th, but just to say
a) my star count has not gone down
b) the new film is worth watching but seek out the original, it's better. Rose is very good in the new film however...

..Feb 20th - had to go out for...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: black-as-night, lit

Greene's most famous work is a game of two halves

I think it might be fair to say that this one is only as famous as it is because of the excellent film noir starring the old man from Jurassic Park. That was a shocker for me I can tell you, Father Christmas as a stone cold killer. It's a fine book, an early entertainment with an obvious study of the effect of the Catholic church on man. But I was at the midway point when I realised that it was suddeny becoming less enjoyable to read. Greene start...more

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Apr 23, 2008 Dfordoom rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: crime-mystery

Graham Greene's Brighton Rock tells the story of a young leader of one of the infamous razor gangs in 1930s Brighton who murders a journalist and then finds that his attempts to avoid any possibility of arrest lead him into ever-increasing complications and violence. A woman who had befriended the journalist sets out to bring his killer to justice. This is a remarkably dark and pessimistic novel. It’s a crime novel, but Greene has other agendas as well in this book. Greene was a Catholic, but he...more Graham Greene's Brighton Rock tells the story of a young leader of one of the infamous razor gangs in 1930s Brighton who murders a journalist and then finds that his attempts to avoid any possibility of arrest lead him into ever-increasing complications and violence. A woman who had befriended the journalist sets out to bring his killer to justice. This is a remarkably dark and pessimistic novel. It’s a crime novel, but Greene has other agendas as well in this book. Greene was a Catholic, but he was an interesting sort of Catholic. One assumes he gained some kind of comfort from his religion, and one assumes it gave him the strength to go on living after his early struggles with depression, boredom and obsessive thoughts about suicide, although sometimes it’s difficult to see that exactly the attraction was. Greene was fascinated by evil, and he was fascinated by the harm that religion could do, as well as the good. Pinkie, the teenage gangster who is the main character in Brighton Rock, is thoroughly evil, and it is a particular kind of Catholic upbringing that has made him evil. Pinkie is obsessed with guilt and disgust over sex, and when he feels the stirrings of sexual desire the guilt and disgust spill over into self-hatred and anger. Pinkie does not try to justify his actions, he does not try to pretend that he is a good person forced to do evil things. He welcomes his damnation, he glories in it. He is certainly offered the chance of redemption, but he struggles against it. Ida Arnold seems to represent the life force, she represents good without hypocrisy. Interestingly enough she is the most positive and decent character in the book, and she appears to have no religious beliefs. Like I said, he was an interesting kind of Catholic! In contrast to Pinkie’s horror of sex, Ida accepts sex as part of life and attaches no moral significance to it. The third main character is Rose, an innocent who becomes involved with Pinkie as a result of having been a witness to events that could implicate Pinkie in murder. Greene’s great strength as a novelist was that he was not only concerned with moral issues, he was capable of dealing with such issues in a complex way and without being tempted by simplistic explanations. Brighton Rock is an outstanding book by a great novelist.(less)

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Jan 09, 2013 Jayne Charles rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was glad to get through this with its teeny tiny print that strained my eyes and intense narrative style that strained my brain. Happily I did manage to stay with the plot despite being constantly worried that it would race off into obscurity and leave me behind. Looking back, though, my understanding of the story is fractured. So many places where I wasn't sure how we got from A to B.....the bit with the watch seller....the bookie.....who the heck was Johnny....and fundamentally, why was Pink...more

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Dec 23, 2007 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Pinky is one of the great literary characters in British literature. I even own an imported DVD film version of this novel. It's good! But back to the book, it really captures that depressed England cold weather thing that is slightly 'under' and in many ways it has a slight ring to "A Clockwork Orange." Pinky just reacts to his world by instinct, and it's a fascinating relationship he has with his much older gang.

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Dec 11, 2009 dara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics, read-in-2009

I was torn between 3 and 4 stars. Overall, a good read though the ending chapters were a bit tedious, and I wasn't satisfied with the ending. It's no The End of the Affair, but it has its moments. (Page 193 is the best page in the book, no contest.)

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Feb 18, 2013 Bernadette Robinson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, crime

As I was reading this book I had to keep reminding myself that it was written 75 years ago. I felt that it could've been written last year. The writing style was easy to get on with and had a good mix of dialogue and narrative. Whilst several crimes took place in the book, the crimes were never written about graphically as they are nowadays and if I'm honest I found this quite refreshing as the evilness was there but it was more in the readers mind than spelt out for us. I do feel that certain b...more

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Aug 08, 2011 SwensonBooks rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: jill

In the day when authors complain editors and publishers don't read beyond the first page, Greene gives them plenty of reason why it isn't necessary to finish a story before judging the potential. The first sentence, the first page, the first chapter are omens of all that follows. If you can't captivate your reader immediately, they won't get any further.

"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him." What an opening sentence. The reader begs to find out m...more In the day when authors complain editors and publishers don't read beyond the first page, Greene gives them plenty of reason why it isn't necessary to finish a story before judging the potential. The first sentence, the first page, the first chapter are omens of all that follows. If you can't captivate your reader immediately, they won't get any further.

"Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him." What an opening sentence. The reader begs to find out more.

Greene reveals characters so complex they continue to haunt you long after the story ends. Getting inside the mind of a ruthless, cruel, sadistic punk provides the reader with a psychic voyeurism into his criminal actions. But it is his use of female characters I find so penetrating and disturbing. There are no heroes and no pretty girls.

"Pinkie," referred to by the narrator as The Boy, works on getting an alibi for his involvement in murder by courting the waitress, an eyewitness to incriminating evidence on him. In his mind, the solution to his problem is to marry this plain girl so that she cannot be forced to testify against him. So what makes this good catholic woman-child fall in love with a mobster who pushes her to kill herself as her last act of undying love? This incredible story is made credible by Greene's telling.

He knows the power that falling in love with being in love can have on a woman. To be the object of desire -- to be loved -- is the primal urge. And Graham Greene gets inside her mind. This split between the rational and the moral is gendered by Greene. Pinkie's criminal logic and Rose's crazy love offer the reader emotional danger in the human process of rationalizing the irrational. But it is on the emotional plane where Graham's female characters are so compelling. The sensibility of right and wrong, honor and trust, confession and sin, means and ends are entrusted to the women of the story. Greene garners the sympathy of the readers for Rose, a girl blinded by her good intentions and naiveté.

Pinkie's nemesis is a woman whose intuition drives her to keep snooping and following the trail of evidence to Rose and Pinkie. Miss Ida Arnold was the last person to see the victim alive. He had flirted with Ida and they agreed to continue their rendezvous around Brighton that summer day. Ida had left him just outside the Ladies' Loo and when she came out, he was gone. A ditched date is an insult and a scorned woman a driving force. But Ida Arnold had heard Hale's premonition of his own death just before he disappeared. Their tryst wasn't a mortal sin and Ida thought him a gentleman enough to honor him with the discovery of his cause of death: not natural. Ida is the female of virtue; it's in her meddling, interfering and pestering way as a woman that she rescues Rose and stops this rogue gangster in his killing spree. Ida is a little bit Angela Lansbury playing Agatha Christie in a seaside resort town. She's annoyingly good.

A novel of the 1930s with criminal activity, racetrack betting and gambling rackets that is told in film noir layered over cinéma vérité. Rowan Jaffee directed a UK film adaptation released earlier this year starring Sam Riley as Pinkie, Carol Marsh as Rose and Helen Mirra as Ida. This adaptation is set in 1960s England instead of the 1930s. I haven't seen it and am not inclined to do so. The movie in my head that Greene created with his words couldn't ever be appreciated on a big screen. It's the internal life of the characters where the real action takes place and belongs in the interior and intimate space of the reader to play out.

Not a big murder thriller reader, I thoroughly enjoyed the distinctive voice of an American whose commentary comes to live inside the story. For most of the twentieth century, Graham Greene offered us the great American novels. His critical observations, national insights and generational reflections appear throughout his essays, memoirs, and short stories that tell us more about ourselves as Americans than about Greene himself.(less)

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Jan 23, 2011 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Thinking it'd be absolute shit I started to read this novel for my British Novel class, and I LOVED it. I couldn't put it down - well, when I had to I'd pick it right back up whenever I had the slightest chance. The characters are complex as hell especially the main character Pinkie - is he a sociopath, psychopath, or just really confused? Later you find out he's just evil but has some flashes of goodness in him which come as a surprise and make him more human. The girl who loves him (whom he de...more

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Sep 02, 2011 Lynn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011, book-to-movie

I really did like this book, but I guess I'm not sure what to make of the "Roman"/Catholic tones, the whole Good/Evil thing. That aside, it was an interesting exploration of the mind/thinking of a rather messed up character who is somewhat sympathetic. I know it is one of his Catholic novels, but the whole theme of Fate and Mercy felt somewhat heavy handed.
So that probably makes it sound like I didn't like it, but I did. I enjoyed the crime aspects and also the exploration of the psyche of this...more

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May 04, 2010 Zygmunt added it · review of another edition

A gangster struggling with his Edge lifestyle must match wits with a Dickensian teenage girl that's in love with him (he buys her from her parents) and a big-chested, big-hearted floozie that is prone to belching after imbibing (he loses) and the results are amongst the author's most ridiculous put to paper. (Keep in mind this is a man that once wrote a novel where a woman prays to god to save her paramour while naked after a V rocket blows him to smithereens and it actually works.)

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May 17, 2008 Logan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Logan by: 1001 Books List

Shelves: fiction, 1001-list

After reading several absolutely fantastic books by Graham Greene, The Power & The Glory, The Quiet American, The Honorary Consul, this book was a bit of a letdown. I like books about organized crime, I like mysteries, I like whodunits- but I didn't love this book.

I think a lot of this had to do with the ham-fisted way in which Greene went about portraying the characters and their internal conflicts. It was all very melodramatic and smacked of daytime television. The characters were caricatu...more

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Mar 11, 2012 Tiffany rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-literature

One of his earliest novels, and it shows what a talent he was. This book had great ideas, though you can tell that the execution still needed a lot of work. Vibrant and original characters, plot, and themes, but the actual writing was a little clumsy and hard to follow. Although, to be fair, this was exacerbated by my lack of knowledge of British slang from the 1930s.

I loved the beginning section, then, like a lot of books, it lagged in the middle. However, it won me over with a fantastic endin...more

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Feb 13, 2013 John Anderson rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

You are Kolly Kibbler and I claim my....

The book begins on rocket fuelled adrenalin rush, as we see the news paper man frantically trying to find a way out of Brighton (where we meet Ida). Before he is murdered.

The book in its entirety is a fantastic read, However there are points where he does seem to wander off tack. In a similar vein as Evelyn Waugh had a preoccupation in Brideshead with the doctrine of the catolic church. We see Greene deploying a similar technique. I also get the feeling th...more

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Nov 15, 2012 Nev Percy rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not to my taste. I give it 1 star on the GoodReads scale as "I didn't like it", which is not to say "it's rubbish". But I can't recommend it to anyone.

People talk about it; it's a 'known book' and part of the canon of modern western literature or whatever, so I figured I should check it out. I suppose it was reasonably well written. For a book from 1938 it was entirely readable to my modern eye. But I failed to be engaged by it, even if I recognised some of Greene's intelligent observations.

The...more Not to my taste. I give it 1 star on the GoodReads scale as "I didn't like it", which is not to say "it's rubbish". But I can't recommend it to anyone.

People talk about it; it's a 'known book' and part of the canon of modern western literature or whatever, so I figured I should check it out. I suppose it was reasonably well written. For a book from 1938 it was entirely readable to my modern eye. But I failed to be engaged by it, even if I recognised some of Greene's intelligent observations.

The central character is a 17 year old boy called 'Pinkie' Brown -- referred to by the narrator as "the Boy" -- who has recently assumed the leadership of a petty "mob" (that is to say, a small gang) of protection racketeers in Brighton. They murder a minor journalist who published something against them, but one of them makes a mistake in their attempt to lay a trail of misinformation. Events proceed and Pinkie feels compelled to kill the one who made the mistake, and who was guilty of being "milky", or weak. And to take up with the 16 year old girl who discovered the mistake, in order to keep her close and ensure she didn't tell. Even a dubious marriage -- as wives cannot be required to testify against their husbands -- comes to seem insufficient, and Pinkie moves to see her off as well. But in the end he is confronted and it's him who ends up dying.

The whole tone is bleak and unsympathetic, seemingly an exploration or elucidation of sociopathic character. But there are only vague references to the poverty of Pinkie's upbringing, and his having been bullied at boarding school and taken in by the previous leader of the mob, to 'explain' his character. As the protagonist it's him that we walk beside, and we possibly recognise some of his reasoning, but character is notably lacking. (Maybe that is apt for a sociopath.)

But the 16 year old girl takes to him in spite all his undesirability and his loathesome treatment of her, which lacks all credibility unless it's intended as a (not really explored) manifestation of something reminiscent of beaten wife syndrome. And the other central character, a sanguine soul with a pragmatic sense of moral decency undertakes a personal crusade against Pinkie that is if anything even less credible. All the pressures that squeeze in upon Pinkie derive from her disbelief-challenging pursuit.

The "Brighton Rock" title is a reference to something stamped through and through a person's character. Pinkie and the girl are both from (or in her case still in) impoverished Catholic backgrounds. They reflect in a less-than-theological fashion upon evil and damnation, but each in their way fatalistically embrace it. The counterpoint of the moral-crusader-woman is cheerfully areligious in her certainties about right and wrong, and what God must therefore think. One infers the author to be intelligent, scarred by Catholicism, and not really to understand women. The reflections expressed are poignant if not ultimately edifying. But there was nothing in these 250 pages that I could say I actually liked or enjoyed.(less)

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Sep 17, 2012 Moira rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed

In February, I only read one book and what a book. I wanted to make it last and last. Brighton Rock was one of those classics that I kept meaning to read but never got around to. I finally picked it up when I saw the trailer for the recent adaptation. I haven't seen it yet but I think it sort of influenced my reading experience. I saw it with the sixties filter with loads of dirty pinks and changing shades of greens like the sea going from calm to temperamental.
The way Graham Greene writes feels...more In February, I only read one book and what a book. I wanted to make it last and last. Brighton Rock was one of those classics that I kept meaning to read but never got around to. I finally picked it up when I saw the trailer for the recent adaptation. I haven't seen it yet but I think it sort of influenced my reading experience. I saw it with the sixties filter with loads of dirty pinks and changing shades of greens like the sea going from calm to temperamental.
The way Graham Greene writes feels so fundamental, essential, how he anchors the characters and the city in the fury of elements like the sea and the wind and drowns them in absolutism.
Writing a summary of this book feels weird to me because it's one of them that is so much more than just a story. I've tried and tried (hence this post being delayed) but only ended up feeling like I have betrayed this masterpiece. The best I can do is a link to Wikipedia. /lame.blogging.com
Instead of a summary, here is an extract that got me thinking.

He had the bit between his teeth; he was like a man
determined to live before he died; all the insults he
had swallowed from police witnesses, the criticisms of
magistrates, regurgitated from his tormented stomach.
There was nothing he wouldn't tell to anybody. An
enormous self-importance was blossoming out of his
humiliation; his wife, the Empire burgundy, the empty
files, and the vibration of locomotives on the line, they
were the important landscape of his great drama.

I love this expression and it got me wondering if all our personal landscapes have any chance to rise against the backdrop of globalization. Don't our lives seem less intense compared to this continuous flux of world news tragedies? It certainly puts things in perspective but aren't we losing something in the process? Of course, there will always be people who make their landscape sound like a Chicago skyline but it makes me wonder if we actually know better what's human with so much information coming our way. Is it a a question of quantity or quality?

earworm + plum pudding (less)

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Jul 25, 2012 Sam rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's always wonderful to pick up a sharp, crisp novel that also happens to be written originally in English after some time spent slogging through weighty works in translation, but there's something especially excellent when that novel happens to be by Graham Greene. Not that I think Greene is necessarily the best example of English prose, but I do think his style displays of the kind of economy and compression (slang, dialogue, perfect pointillistic rhythm) that makes a reader appreciate the jo...more

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Mar 29, 2012 Sophia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Sophia by: 1001 books you must read before you die

Shelves: 2012, uk

Brighton Rock is a curious combination of prototype thriller and morality play. It starts suspensefully with Hale desperately but unsuccessfully trying to escape a mob hit on him in pre-WWII Brighton, England. Pinkie, the teenaged, potentially sociopathic leader of the group, goes to extreme measures to cover his tracks while the police has ruled Hale's murder as a natural death. A woman Hale tries to snare as a potential witness to protect himself, Ida Arnold, ultimately becomes his avenging an...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-crime-detection

BRIGHTON ROCK. (1938). Graham Greene. ****.
This is one of Greene’s finer novels, but one which is difficult to understand since it seems to come off as a morality tale. To get a few details out of the way first: Brighton is a resort city in England on the Channel; Brighton Rock is a candy popular in Brighton, much like salt-water taffy is in Atlantic City. Brighton itself is a popular destination for day trippers from London. Lots to do there: racing, amusements, the pier, etc. In Brighton, in...more BRIGHTON ROCK. (1938). Graham Greene. ****.
This is one of Greene’s finer novels, but one which is difficult to understand since it seems to come off as a morality tale. To get a few details out of the way first: Brighton is a resort city in England on the Channel; Brighton Rock is a candy popular in Brighton, much like salt-water taffy is in Atlantic City. Brighton itself is a popular destination for day trippers from London. Lots to do there: racing, amusements, the pier, etc. In Brighton, in Greene’s novel, two rival gangs are in contention for control of the underworld activities in Brighton. The leader of the smaller gang has been killed off. The new leader, by simple assumption, is a young man (17 years old) named Pinkie – often called, simply, the boy. He lacks maturity and any leadership skills. His reaction to any negative encroachment on his gang’s activity is to murder the intruder. On top of this, he maintains a strong degree of Catholic guilt. When it is learned that he is the killer of a member of his own protection circle, he is tracked down by a woman who believes in fair play and justice for all. This woman, Ida, met the murder victim in a bar while having a drink with him. The victim was a runner for a local newspaper. This means that he was a reporter, but was the final clue in a kind of treasure hunt. If a person recognizes him from his newspaper photo and goes up and identifies him – while carrying a copy of the paper with him – he receives a prize of money. Pinkie is now running scared, and begins systematically eliminating anyone who can testify against him. He takes a different turn when he meets Rose, a young girl who is a waitress at a local cafe. She knows more than she should, but Pinkie decides to marry her to prevent her having to testify against him. She, too, is a Catholic, and believes in mortal sin, and, together, the two of them struggle against condemnation by the Church and by God. Greene was significantly a Catholic writer, but became one only after his conversion from CofE. It would be interesting to see where he was in his conversion when this novel was written. This is perhaps my third read of the novel, and, in about ten years, I’ll probably read it again. It’s sometimes difficult to follow the slang, but well worth it. Recommended.
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Dec 20, 2011 Bill Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book after listening to a review by the presenter of a BBC book club. It works on 2 levels which is presumably why it is regarded by some as a 'modern classic', written in the 1930's. One level is simply as a thriller following the actions of a small time gang leader, Pinkie, in his native Brighton. The other level is much deeper using the trials and tribulations of Pinkie and the wife he took on to prevent her from giving evidence against him to explore notions of good and evil in t...more

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Aug 15, 2011 Fiona rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Fiona by: Because of the new film

I read this years ago around the same time I read The Comedians, so probably in my late teens. I've just re-read the first 100 odd pages of Brighton Rock and it's extremely bleak, violent and Pinky or "the boy" is one of the most odious and violent literary characters I've ever encountered. Extremely well developed major and minor characters, a very evocative setting in Brighton and such an interesting historical picture of Brighton pre-WW2. It's seedy, full of fly-by-nighters, all manner of lus...more

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Jan 28, 2011 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There are only human beings here. No ghosts, demons, haunted houses, strange creatures, aliens or mysterious apparitions. Just human beings. But I've never read any novel more horrifying than this.

Here's a frail-looking boy with a feminine name: Pinkie. He doesn't drink, smoke or gamble. Just seventeen years old and still a virgin. But he is the leader of a small gang and he kills.

Then here's a sixteen-year-old, equally frail, waitress, Rose. She loves Pinkie. She knows something which could imp...more

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Nov 03, 2010 Caitlin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I read the Centennial edition by Penguin. Overall it was a good book. I found it to drag at parts, especially in the middle. The story is about a seventeen year old boy named Pinkie who is struggling to prove himself as a mob leader after the real gang leader, Kite was murdered. Pinkie has no experience, he is abstinent of both alcohol and sex and generally insecure and scared of life. To prove himself he commits murder, and then spends the rest of the book threatening "a massacre" to keep those...more I read the Centennial edition by Penguin. Overall it was a good book. I found it to drag at parts, especially in the middle. The story is about a seventeen year old boy named Pinkie who is struggling to prove himself as a mob leader after the real gang leader, Kite was murdered. Pinkie has no experience, he is abstinent of both alcohol and sex and generally insecure and scared of life. To prove himself he commits murder, and then spends the rest of the book threatening "a massacre" to keep those who know quiet. Pinkie can not suffer alone, he brings innocent Rose into his murderous mindset and forces her to become his wife in order to keep her quiet. Meanwhile Ida Arnold, a good natured lady, who is obsessed with right and wrong, as Pinkie is with good and evil (he can't escape his Catholic upbringing, even as he profoundly misunderstands it.) I never thought about the difference in philosophies of "right vs. wrong" and "good vs. evil." The narrator is not partial to Ida, but her way seems to have much more common sense to it. She never loses focus while Pinkie slowly unravels. J.M. Coetzee writes a brilliant introduction, but is a major spoiler alert, it spoiled the ending for me. It should be read but after the story. I disagree with one of the things he said. He wrote, "And the pace of the action slackens toward the end- too much space is given over to the individual destinies of Pinkie's gang." I feel that it is important Greene does that because it shows Pinkie's paranoia and inability to mangage himself and other people. He is a child playing an adult game, and he will resort to anything to protect himself, even as he utlimately ruins himself. The reader really gets a sense of his immaturity and therefore can have compassion for a thoroughly bad character. The only real criticism I have toward the book is I would have liked to have more character development, especially in Pinkie. He grew up in poverty, in war torn Brighton, his parents were Catholic and inappropriate in their love life, and probably in many many other ways too. But Pinkie's evil nature seems extreme. Maybe he is not meant to be a full character, but a representation of the mindset of so many people in his situation in the 1930s. The last third of the book for me was the best, even if that goes against the grain of Mr. Coetzee. And who can disregard this mysterious line that you must be Catholic to truly grasp: "You can't conceive my child, nor can I or anyone the... appalling.... strangeness of the mercy of God" (268, the priest to Rose.)(less)

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Aug 10, 2010 William Clemens rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book because when I read King Dork, the main character said it was the best book ever written. I disagree. I went back and forth while reading this, loving it half the time, and gritting my teeth to get through the rest of the time.

Pinkie, a young gangster, raised catholic, horrified by sex and embracing evil, tries to take charge of his gang and cover up a murder is driven deeper and deeper into a world of sin and murder. Ida, a busty, life-loving woman attempting to track him down...more

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About Graham Greene

Graham Greene was an English novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenplay writer, travel writer and critic whose works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene combined serious literary acclaim with wide popularity.

Although Greene objected strongly to being described as a “Catholic novelist” rather than as a “novelist who happened to be Catholic,” Catho...more

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“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” — 91 people liked it

“A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced” — 17 people liked it

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