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Travels With My Aunt

by Graham Greene, Gloria Emerson (Introduction)

3.85 of 5 stars 3.85 · rating details · 3,960 ratings · 322 reviews

Described by Graham Greene as "the only book I have written just for the fun of it." Travels with My Aunt is the story of Hanry Pulling, a retired and complacent bank manager, who meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time at what he supposes to be his mother's funeral. She soon persuades Henry to abandon his dull suburban existence to travel her way—to Brigh...more

Paperback, 254 pages

Published September 28th 2004 by Penguin Classics (first published 1969)

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Sep 17, 2011 Mariel rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: The Golden Girls

Recommended to Mariel by: eenie meenie miney mo

Travels with My Aunt was my first Graham Greene (films don't count! Or do they?) . I didn't know which to choose because I didn't have internet access at the time of the big moment. The jacket said it was the only book that Greene ever wrote for the fun of it.

Maybe he had fun. I sure as heck didn't. Maybe it was the times (publication date is 1969) ... An old woman who proclaims way too loudly that she's having a great time to make her cliche of a stiff upper lip Englishman nephew feel more bef...more Travels with My Aunt was my first Graham Greene (films don't count! Or do they?) . I didn't know which to choose because I didn't have internet access at the time of the big moment. The jacket said it was the only book that Greene ever wrote for the fun of it.

Maybe he had fun. I sure as heck didn't. Maybe it was the times (publication date is 1969) ... An old woman who proclaims way too loudly that she's having a great time to make her cliche of a stiff upper lip Englishman nephew feel more befuddled than Hugh Grant at the height of his befuddled niche as the go-to guy for befuddled Englishmen in postcard English life films. Maybe I'm in a bad mood and this was funny in 1969. I thought that it was trying too hard to have fun. Henry didn't know how to have fun and Aunt Augusta is the aging bar slut who brags about what a crazy wild night she had fifteen years ago. I can't stand that type. Have fun while you are having it. No, I don't want to see photos of you getting drunk last week on your myspace or facebook. I was sooooo bored. I didn't care about anything that happened. Their travels were more boring than the most boring part of travels (the traveling part and not the getting somewhere part). There's a tacked on murder that came too late to be interesting. By that time I was desperate for the book to be over. Then he gets together with a flipping fifteen year old and they read religious passages from Browning. Why go through all of that just to creep me out? If he was dissatisfied with his life why not learn about women by hanging out with one who is not in her seventies and related to him? How come Aunt Augusta liked to talk about having fun so much? Talk, talk, talk.

Could Greene have been having that much fun if he wanted to fit in so badly? All of those drugs and swinging parties? The Coleridge joke about the manservant Wordsworth was also painfully obvious.

Okay, now that I've read Pnin by Nabokov that has a complimentary quote by Greene on the book jacket I feel guilty trashing this book. It's kinda sad to try desperately to have fun and not be in on the joke. That doesn't mean I don't find the memory of this book boring as waiting (I hate waiting). At least it makes the whole process seem like an exercise in fun and less than preachy Aunt Augusta and her high wheeling life. Like documentaries about free love, you know?(less)

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Jul 20, 2011 Evan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: travel, graham-greene, __in-my-collection, humor, 2010-reads

"I found myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water. Curran was more alive than I was. I was almost surprised to see that my image was visible in the glass."

So says Henry Pulling, a retired English bank manager who has lived life so prudently, safely, carefully and boringly that he comes to realize that he has left no consequential living memory in anyone he's ever met. His favorite thing in all the world is tending to his dahlia flower garden and reading dusty volumes of Wordswor...more "I found myself to be a ghost returning home, transparent as water. Curran was more alive than I was. I was almost surprised to see that my image was visible in the glass."

So says Henry Pulling, a retired English bank manager who has lived life so prudently, safely, carefully and boringly that he comes to realize that he has left no consequential living memory in anyone he's ever met. His favorite thing in all the world is tending to his dahlia flower garden and reading dusty volumes of Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. When his mother dies, Pulling is suddenly clued in to a lot of realities about who he really is and what his family was really up to, thanks to a long-absent ebulliant aunt, Augusta, who brings Henry up to speed on a good number of the facts of life that the naive naif nephew seems to have missed. Aunt Augusta herself has been long absent because she's been spending her life traveling Europe, living and loving and losing with brio, and becoming entangled in romances and petty criminality, some of which may be fancifully embellished in the retelling to Henry. She whisks Henry off on various travels, and during their course, dull Henry starts to regret the wasted opportunities of his life.

Greene generally classed his books broadly into two categories: serious novels and what he coined "entertainments." This one blends elements of both, weaving an eccentric whimsical tale with dark undertones into a typical Greene story of Anglos entwined in espionage, smuggling and foreign intrigue in Third World countries. One thing that's always interesting about Greene's novels is the timelessness of his political observations; nothing much changes even if the surface issues and names do. There's even a fictional shell corporation mentioned that sounds prophetically like Enron. As usual, Greene casts a bemused observational eye on the strange bedfellows borne of corruption and amorphous morality operating within systems, politics, ideologies. As usual, Catholicism (and other religions) enter the mix and come in for genteel digs.

Though this book might be considered lightweight and trivial Greene to some degree, it accumulates in relevance as it proceeds, building a palpable gravitas. The book is very meticulous and slow; some might rebel in the face of its sometimes Jamesian precision of descriptive detail. The book plods a bit and seems to not have a plot, but there is one; it's just not rushed and is always hinted at with tiny clues along the way. The main point of the book, though, is about how people choose to live their lives, and it's that point of contrast that Greene explores in themes and variations. In some ways, it seems almost too simplistic to make the contrast with such obviously diametrically opposed characters; Pulling does seem too boring to be real. But as it proceeds his character takes on dimension, and the contrast between he and his Aunt provide much food for thought. Aunt Augusta, like Henry, is a literary construct, no doubt, but she's a fun one, speaking the Queen's English but letting shocking (to Henry) revelations pour from her seemingly proper old tongue.

The humor and situations at the outset of the book seem fidgety and forced, one senses Greene trying to outdo Waugh and Wodehouse and failing, but eventually the charms emerge and there are a few genuine laughs and crazy situations and characters, such as the cremation urn used for drug smuggling and the CIA man who keeps a meticulous daily diary of his urine output.

This novel's parts are better than the whole, and I have to admit that I found this to be my least favorite Greene book thus far (*2011 addendum: I would now say Loser Takes All is my least favorite GG). Yet, I think it's a better book than I'm giving it credit for; it covers a lot of ground and at the end is quite poetic. There's a major revelation in the last pages that was telegraphed long before and that's how I'd already suspected that that's where the book was going.

The novel is a bit of an oddity and will not be everyone's cup of tea and it's definitely NOT the place to start to engage the work of Graham Greene, but readers familiar with his motifs and style will find it strong on observation, occasionally delightful and a worthwhile example of his eclectism.(less)

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Apr 05, 2013 Rebecca Huston rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-century, fiction, 2013-12-2-challenge, 2013-mt-tbr-challenge, paraguay, 2013-around-the-world-in-52-books

I was very happy with this one, as middle aged banker Harry Pullings is yanked out of his dull, complacent retirement by his Aunt Augusta. Forced to travel with her across Europe and eventually Paraguay, he finds a world full of adventure and absurdity with all sorts of strange encounters, and shameless manipulation by dear Auntie. Overall, this gets five stars from me. Recommended.

For the longer review, please go here:
http://www.epinions.com/review/Travel...

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Aug 10, 2009 C(h)ristine rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book--it was recommended to me highly by a friend, and I could totally see why: Greene is a master of his prose (check out the opening lines) and there were brilliant chapters in the novel. The characters were great--this is an example of how if you can write great characters, a reader will stay loyal to your novel out of a pure desire to follow them for hundreds of pages. But the plot was sort of lacking (I skipped entire chapters out of impatience with the slow...more

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Jul 13, 2007 Avital rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: english

This was my first Graham Greene's novel. Oh, the ashes. Anything funnier? I laughed so much with the wild aunt and her nerd nephew, I couldn't wait to read his other comedies. Naturally, I was disappointed with his following books, which goes to show how subjective is each reading. Anyway, I'm over it now, and loving his books.

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Jul 27, 2012 Bev Hankins rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mcpl-book, fiction

What can I say about a book that begins with a funeral and the ashes of the recently departed being jumbled up with a stash of pot? One of my good friends (upon reading my post about this challenge & my proposed reading list) suggested that I start with this one. He said that I would enjoy it. He was absolutely right. I thoroughly enjoyed this romp which takes a boring, middle-aged man through an adventure of self-discovery with his rather risque Aunt Augusta. The book is totally worth it ju...more

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Jan 19, 2010 Rauf rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-list, fromthepit, fiction, greeneland, meh

The Aunt, Augusta Bertram, was duplicitious and manipulative.
The Nephew and Narrator, a middle-aged man whose only love in life was cultivating and nurturing his dahlias, Henry Pulling, was a character you often find in a Graham Greene novel. Self-obsessed, kind of clueless, sexually-frustrated; not knowing and realizing that he was being dragged into a some kind of conspiracy until something bad happened, or almost happened.

This was not a light-hearted novel, even though there were a few attemp...more

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Aug 20, 2008 Philip rated it 5 of 5 stars

Henry Pulling is a recently retired bank manager. He was offered an arrangement after many years of devoted service when his bank was taken over by another. He is looking forward to spending more time with the dahlias that are his pride and joy, and also rubbing shoulders with his former customers in Southwood, an unremarkable London suburb that seems to be populated entirely by retired officers from the armed forces. He mentions Omo quite a lot and is vaguely embarrassed by the fact that he sha...more Henry Pulling is a recently retired bank manager. He was offered an arrangement after many years of devoted service when his bank was taken over by another. He is looking forward to spending more time with the dahlias that are his pride and joy, and also rubbing shoulders with his former customers in Southwood, an unremarkable London suburb that seems to be populated entirely by retired officers from the armed forces. He mentions Omo quite a lot and is vaguely embarrassed by the fact that he shares initials with a well known brand of sauce. And then he meets his long lost aunt, Agatha Bertram.

Henry’s mother has just died. His father died forty years before. He never really knew the father and his relationship with his mother was perennially tense. After the funeral, Agatha takes him on one side and calmly informs him that his father was something of a rogue and that his “mother” was really his step-mother, his true biological mother being one of his father’s bits on the side. Henry Pulling finds himself attracted to his aunt, not because she is something of an eccentric, unpredictable old bird, but also because she retains, somewhere, the secret of his own origins. When she suggests they travel together, he eagerly accompanies, despite the fact that he has never been one for straying far from the nest.

Graham Greene has Henry and Aunt Agatha travel as far afield as Brighton, Istanbul and South America. Together, via stories from Aunt Agatha’s past, they relive the first half of the twentieth century, from late Victorian roots to 1960s drug culture, from fascism to dictators, from war to peace. Throughout, Henry Pulling comes across as a genial, predictable gent in his late fifties, whilst Aunt Agatha seems to be a confirmed member of Hell’s Grannies. Europe – the world even – seems to be littered with her conquests, with hardly a country passing by without some faded memory of hers coming back to life.

As it unfolds, Travels With My Aunt reveals itself as a true masterpiece of twentieth century fiction. The characters really do live through the century’s history, but the events are never pressed onto the surface of their lives. On the contrary, they are entwined within the fabric of Aunt Agatha’s being, a character whose complexity unfolds as the story progresses.

Throughout Henry Pulling is a truly comic character. He seems out of his depth, naïve, a product of an over-protected suburban existence, over-burdened with the assumptions of his upbringing. But he comes into his own and eventually it is no surprise when he describes his new life, which is almost as far removed from a suburban bank manager’s office as it is possible to get. And, of course, the story’s denouement, when it arrives, is also no surprise. And is not less because of that.

There are many laughs along the way, not least as a result of Henry’s being constantly taken aback by his aunt’s bluntness and lust for life. Particularly memorable, however, were scenes where Henry put his personal foot in it. On Paraguay’s national day, he carries a red scarf on his aunt’s advice so he can show allegiance to the ruling party and the dictator. He just happens to be outside the military and political headquarters when he sneezes and uses the scarf as a hankie. A nearby soldier records the snotting into the national emblem as deeply insulting and irreverent, duly beats him up and slaps him in jail. Situation comedy at its best.

Travels With My Aunt is quite simply a must read and must re-read book. Graham Greene’s immense skill provides a simplicity of style and construction to communicate a complex plot alongside powerful characterisation, and all this accomplished with true but elegant economy. It is a beautifully crafted book, expertly written, full of surprises and humour, all set against a deadly serious plot: surely a masterpiece.
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Jul 19, 2009 Alexander rated it 5 of 5 stars

In matters of style, one of the most thrilling things I've read in recent memory, probably since last summer, when I read Brideshead Revisited. The writing was a pleasure all on its own, and the narrator, and the stories that make up the larger story, all beautifully done. I fault only the presence of perhaps two too many coincidences (maybe more), but I don't really grudge it--it just seemed like gilding a lily. Otherwise, this story of a retired banker whose aunt arrives at his mother's funera...more

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Feb 28, 2009 Charlotte rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: humour

Written with the humanity typical of Greene, this is a story of a relationship between two highly contrasting personalities. One a staid ex-bank manager who's favourite pastime is taking care of his dahlias and the other an elderly lady (the aunt of the title) who wants to continue grabbing life by its horns and thereby living with the maximum excitement. Their travels take them to countries which contrast with the English staidness so encapsulated in the bankers character, but where the aunt fl...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Corwin rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a lot of fun and was a thoughtful portrayal of a man awakening to himself in middle age out of a dreary, gray clockwork life that he hadn't known before was unsatisfying because he had no basis for comparison until an irreverent whirlwind of an aunt plucked him out of the dahlias and onto the Orient Express in an adventure that culminated in his finding himself a continent away and in another life. It wasn't a ham-handed moral tale; while it was witty there was a brooding quality to it...more

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Jun 22, 2012 robxyz rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: finished, on, nov, 6, 2008

Romanzo piacevole, scoperto per caso curiosando in giro su aNobii, racconta l'incontro del cinquantenne protagonista con la propria arzilla settantacinquenne zia, due personaggi agli antipodi come inclinazioni: bancario in pensione con la passione per il giardinaggio lui, la cui massima evasione sono le cene a casa di un ricco cliente nel quartiere adiacente al suo; avventuriera giramondo dai modi eccentrici e dal passato e presente sentimentale movimentato, la simpatica zia. Per me lo stile del...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Cleo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned-books, classics

I wasn't sure what to expect of Graham Greene, whether I would find him dull or interesting. And I heartily enjoyed Travels With My Aunt. Apparently, Graham Greene described it as "the only book I have written for the fun of it" (which doesn't speak so well for his other novels), and it was quite amusing, but also somehow serious at the same time (in a way.) The narrator of the book is Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager with nothing much to do. He meets his Aunt Augusta at what he believes to...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Mark rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

British humor. I get some of it (Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , The Office) but not all of it (David Lodge, Sacha Baron Cohen). As for Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt, let's say I got about 60 percent of it. At no point did I laugh out loud (as my dad does when he reads Anthony Trollope or the aforementioned David Lodge), but I did enjoy Henry's exasperation, early on, with his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta and her shall we say supralegal activities, not to mention the e...more British humor. I get some of it (Monty Python, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , The Office) but not all of it (David Lodge, Sacha Baron Cohen). As for Graham Greene's Travels with My Aunt, let's say I got about 60 percent of it. At no point did I laugh out loud (as my dad does when he reads Anthony Trollope or the aforementioned David Lodge), but I did enjoy Henry's exasperation, early on, with his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta and her shall we say supralegal activities, not to mention the eccentric folk she tends to attract.

There were a handful of scenes that did make me smile: Henry learning from the very polite Detective-Sergeant Sparrow that his aunt's friend Wordsworth hid some weed in the urn containing Henry's mother's ashes; the vision of the short-tempered admiral sitting alone in a restaurant on Christmas with an incongruous paper crown perched on his head; Detective-Sergeant Sparrow irritating his partner, Inspector Woodrow, by eagerly poring over the parish magazine and chatting with the vicar while Woodrow tries to get on with the business of interrogating Henry; Aunt Augusta's tale of the doggies' church in Brighton. Alas, there weren't as many of these moments as I'd hoped for, but I nonetheless enjoyed the book quite a bit.

I can't remember the last time I read a book with an intentionally boring protagonist/narrator used for comic effect. Henry Pulling is a total bore, but in a rather endearing way. How pathetic, I thought, that he reads Sir Walter Scott for fun. (Was there ever a more boring novelist in the history of the English language?) I found his stilted, sad relationship with the equally blank Miss Keene completely affecting and, as his adventures with Aunt Augusta transformed him into a slightly less boring version of himself, I wondered if Miss Keene's hinted-at experiences in Koffiefontein were having a similar effect on her as well. In any case, I found Henry to be a capable and sympathetic narrator.

Ultimately, the book is about not wasting one's life. Not a very funny premise, which is perhaps why I didn't find it very funny--for I took the book's ruminations on authentic friendship, love, loneliness, and living in the moment (whether within the law or above it) as seriously as they deserve to be taken. I'm interested, now, to read some of Greene's other novels, for this was my first. Recommendations are welcome.

[Finally, a special tip of the hat to Katia, my lone goodreads pal, for recommending (and giving a copy of) this book to me, waaay back in 1996. Look, Katia--I finally read it!](less)

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Aug 08, 2012 Anna rated it 5 of 5 stars

Graham Greene has a style to him that will inevitably catch you and keep you glued to the pages. The political and diplomatic background information he infiltrates can only be that accurate due to his experience as a secret agent in west Africa. The nuances and anecdotes are the salt and pepper of this brilliant travel journal.
He creates characters so vivid that the moment you set down the book the world around you seems grey and lifeless. You travel with his aunt and Henry at the same time, enj...more

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May 06, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 5 of 5 stars

A total departure from all others in the current list of Greenies I’ve been reading. It’s a, strangely believe it, comedy. And damned good. “I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time at my mother’s funeral” is the opener. Thus saith Henry Pulling, recently retired bank officer, dahlia cultivator, and all around stuffed shirt prude. Aunt Augusta, on the other hand, is a rip-snorting high liver with a criminal past and (as it turns out) future with a joie de vivre Henry can only dream of.

The main...more

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Mar 20, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in October 1998.

Henry Pulling meets his Aunt Augusta at his mother's funeral, after many years without seeing her. Travels With My Aunt is the account of how she inexorably drags him into her strange, hedonistic lifestyle, a lifestyle more generally associated with teenagers than with a woman in her eighties and her retired bank manager nephew. In her company, he travels bemusedly, first to Istanbul on the Orient Express, becoming involved with drugs and curr...more

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Jan 26, 2012 Jane Hoppe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Though I very much enjoyed Graham Greene’s humor and the way Henry’s and his Aunt Augusta’s adventure unraveled, I felt detached from the characters. In that way, I suppose I was in the voyeur position that Henry was in as the story begins—as a bank manager just learning about clients’ lives but never becoming part of them. I also cannot say because Henry was winsome to me, I applauded his epiphanies. I liked that he stopped being a hermit as he began caring about people he encountered on his qu...more Though I very much enjoyed Graham Greene’s humor and the way Henry’s and his Aunt Augusta’s adventure unraveled, I felt detached from the characters. In that way, I suppose I was in the voyeur position that Henry was in as the story begins—as a bank manager just learning about clients’ lives but never becoming part of them. I also cannot say because Henry was winsome to me, I applauded his epiphanies. I liked that he stopped being a hermit as he began caring about people he encountered on his quirky travels. I liked his slow acceptance of his bossy aunt’s eccentricities and openness to discover past secrets of his family. But ultimately, I didn’t admire that Henry chose his aunt’s attitude that to have fun you cannot have a conscience. I never traveled out of my voyeur position to care about anyone in this story.

Having said that, I must also say Greene’s writing is very, very clever. Here is just one example of witty dialogue: “The question of names,” said my aunt, “is an interesting one. [Henry] is safe and colourless. It is better than being given a name like Ernest, which has to be lived up to. I once knew a girl called Comfort and her life was a very sad one. Unhappy men were constantly attracted to her simply by reason of her name, when all the time, poor dear, it was really she who needed the comfort from them. She fell unhappily in love with a man called Courage, who was desperately afraid of mice, but in the end she married a man called Payne and killed herself in what Americans call a comfort station.”

Greene creatively describes his characters, such as Tooley, the young hippie who befriends Henry on the Orient Express. The author’s outrageous stories range from mildly amusing to outright hilarious, such as the hijacking of World War II general’s car. The bizarre story of Uncle Jo’s believing that moving to a different room in his house every week would stretch out his life seems to be a metaphor for Aunt Augusta’s wanderlust. I enjoyed how Greene wrote this novel, even if I didn’t empathize much with his characters.
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Sep 25, 2011 Христо Блажев rated it 4 of 5 stars

Греъм Грийн тормози заклет домошар с екзотични пътешествия и шантава леля: http://www.knigolandia.info/2010/01/b...

“Пипи Дългото чорапче” е любимата ми детска книжка. “Пътешествия с леля ми” на Греъм Грийн спокойно може да бъде нарочена за продължение на приключенията на порасналата и вече поостаряла Пипи, макар че сигурно авторът би подскочил, ако чуеше това мое мнение.

Пенсионираният банков чиновник Хенри Пулинг е краен домошар и сухар. От всичко на света най-обича гергините си, а погребението...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Harsha Priolkar rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, favorites

Travels With My Aunt is the story of Henry, a retired banker and his aunt Augusta, who in her seventies is much more ‘alive’ than most people in their twenties! They meet after an entire lifetime at Henry’s mother’s funeral and from that instant, he finds himself, inexplicably and imperceptibly drawn to this woman who is both a blood-relative and complete stranger. Worse – she is everything that he is not and although he pities her initially and offers his companionship grudgingly, even condesce...more Travels With My Aunt is the story of Henry, a retired banker and his aunt Augusta, who in her seventies is much more ‘alive’ than most people in their twenties! They meet after an entire lifetime at Henry’s mother’s funeral and from that instant, he finds himself, inexplicably and imperceptibly drawn to this woman who is both a blood-relative and complete stranger. Worse – she is everything that he is not and although he pities her initially and offers his companionship grudgingly, even condescendingly at first; he soon realizes that the ‘need’ and the ‘desire’ for company and new beginnings, are both his rather than hers!

I love Greene’s language and his writing style – layered yet simple and direct. He tells his story with a masterful, quiet confidence that makes you believe in his over-the-top characters that would otherwise have been reduced to mere caricatures. Instead he imbues them with human qualities – frailty, courage, panache, foolishness, greed, love, joy, guilt, tenderness, anger, and grief – that keep them real and relatable, even in fantastical situations. I love too the transformation within Henry as he journeys with his aunt, listening to her escapades. Augusta has had a colourful life, and although she’s had her share of the hard knocks, she’s not one to indulge in nostalgia or waste time on regrets. Indeed quite the opposite, as we see when she tells off Henry after he has been rather disparaging about Mr. Visconti – the love of her life, “Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing in self-pity, but never, never despise. Never presume yours is the better morality.” Touché!

Travelling with her exposes Henry to a life and to people it is safe to assume he would never have encountered in his previously sheltered existence and as he slowly begins to understand her passion for living, he inevitably develops a taste for it himself. Greene expresses this change subtly and very cleverly I thought, “As I began to know her better, I began to regard her as bronze rather than brazen, a bronze which has been smoothed and polished by touch, like the horse’s knee in the lounge of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, which she once described to me, caressed by generations of gamblers.”

And so a reticent, reluctant, reserved, respectable Henry finds himself embroiled in all manner of shady dealings & people, in exotic locations – Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay and Argentina. With a quiet aplomb, that reveals an underlying subconscious need for change as well as a steely strength of character in contrast to his deceptively contrite demeanour, Henry deals with the surreal situations that his aunt seems to wander in and out of with accomplished ease and considerable poise. He finds her conversations disjointed and her stories unbelievable yet fascinating, and when he returns home alone, separated from her, if only for a while, he begins to see that he has outgrown his old life. “I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert.”

I was terribly sad when the book wound down to its end. I’m going to miss all the fantastical characters, hapless Henry, audacious Augusta – an empress among women ;) Curran and his Dog-Church, the inimitable Mr. Visconti, the wondrous Wordsworth, the two Tooleys, Ms. Keene and Ms. Paterson, Hatty, and even Hannibal the pachyderm! They all enriched my reading experience in ways I’m sure are yet to be revealed! This book gave me hope! Who says ‘coming of age’ stories are only for the young? They are in fact so much more interesting when they involve a 50-yr-old bachelor and his 70-yr-old aunt ;)

Witty, subtly profound, exciting and engaging – this is a MUST read!
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May 01, 2011 Laura Rittenhouse rated it 4 of 5 stars

Henry, a rather conservative, retired banker sees his long lost septuagenarian aunt at his mother's funeral. His Aunt Augusta is anything but conservative which he discovers within moments of meeting her. At Augusta’s whim, a force Henry is powerless to ignore, this odd couple take a simple trip through Europe. This short experience introduces Henry to the pitfalls and excitement of living life on the fringes of legality, an everyday occurrence for Augusta.

At the end of their brief trip Henry re...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Emily rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Off-the-wall, slightly revolting book with dubious themes padded heavily in comedy.

I honestly did't know what to make of this book. At times I was all into it, at times I wanted it to end, but after about four chapters, I was unequivocally tired of the self-absorbed, hedonist aunt and kept hoping she'd fade. She was a little too over-the-top. The more I got to "know" her, the more unsympathetic she became. By the end, I figured her to be completely selfish, yet the type that gets used badly by m...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Martin rated it 4 of 5 stars

The title of the book and the description provided on the back of my edition were far from compelling, but I picked up the book nonetheless on the strength of the author alone. I consider Graham Greene a truly gifted writer and in the end found the book enjoyable, though it's fairly unconventional for a Greene work and should not be considered par for the course. The prose is not as well crafted as in his other novels, but the memorable characters and stories framed within the narrative carry th...more

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May 19, 2012 Hubert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, boston-20s-and-30s

At first I found this book slight, superficial, and slow going; the only reason to read it, at the beginning, was to immerse oneself in Greene’s deftly constructed dark humor. The main character is a retired banker, Henry, whose mother has passed away. At her funeral, he meets his Aunt Augusta, a free-spirited woman in her 80s with whom he takes various trips around the world: to Istanbul via the Orient Express, to Brighton, to Paraguay / Argentina.

Throughout the book we learn of Augusta's illus...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Sundarraj Kaushik rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A nice read about a retired bank employee leading a peaceful life in some idyllic town of England. His life takes a turn when he passes away and meets his aunt, his mother's sister, at the funeral. He has not met her for many years. She draws him into her circle and starts taking him for her tours abroad. It is truly a different experience for somebody who had never traveled out of his town.

During these trips she relates details of her life which involve various escapades that she had with the d...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Etta Mcquade rated it 3 of 5 stars

When Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager and a rather boring individual, meets his 75 year-old aunt Augusta for the first time in over 50 years at his supposed mother's funeral, he learns that his mother is not his mother, and that his aunt lives a bizarre life. Soon after, he leaves his dahlias, to travel with her to Brighton, Paris, Istanbul and Paraguay. I should have been aware of her low-key immorality when the cover calls her "a veteran of Europe's hotel bedrooms," but had to keep readin...more

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Sep 13, 2011 Mary Alice rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed, greene

You never know what you're going to get when you pick up a Graham Greene novel. This one's a comedy, with life and death overtones. Aunt Augusta prolongs her life by traveling, and looking up old friends....very old friends. She has no use for the dead. She is Catholic, but doesn't "believe what they believe". An old lover, an Italian Nazi-sympathizing swindler, arranged for her to be received into the Church. He wanted the best for her.

Critics say that this book is a romp -- unlike Greene's oth...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Alaric rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Clear 4*s. Life is full of coincidences - several happened to me this week! The one in this case is that the last book I read was the Comforters by Muriel Spark, and that book (a forerunner by about 10 years) also featured an elderly lady who is breaking the rules.

Travels with my aunt though features none of the painful catholicism that is always a feature in Muriel Spark's books. The writing is good prose, and evocative, the type of book that makes me drift off momentarily into little reveries...more

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Aug 20, 2011 Becky rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Insomniacs

Shelves: library, 2011, classics, disappointing, made-my-eyes-bleed, reviewed, challenge-1010

Ugh. I was so utterly bored by this book that I wanted so badly to abandon it. But I forced myself to continue, even though I skimmed big chunks of it.

It just seemed like nothing was happening. And the things that DID happen annoyed me. Seriously, the "manservant" of the aunt you JUST met put marijuana in the urn containing your just-that-day-fresh mother's ashes, and that's just that? And then, when the police come to claim the urn for testing, they'll just need a tiny pinch so that they can t...more

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Sep 22, 2011 Teresa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wasn't sure what to make of this novel at first. I was all set to give it 2 stars, but after the tedium of Aunt Augusta's stories (she's highly offended later when Henry, pleading tiredness, doesn't want to listen to one of her stories at the moment, but I understood why completely!) has passed into the background, the story picked up considerably and I was able to go with its flow.

This is a 'comic' (in both senses of the word) novel and it works as such -- it's just not a favorite genre of mi...more

7 likes · like · see review

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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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“They think my mother's ashes are marijuana.” — 6 people liked it

“I have never planned anything illegal in my life,' Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?” — 3 people liked it

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