Orient Express in Around the World in 80 Books

May 05, 2014 Steve rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

If T.S. Eliot, during his Prufrock-Sweeney-Wasteland days had sat down to write a novel, it might have come out looking like Graham Greene’s Orient Express (or, my preferred title, Stamboul Express). Written in 1933, this early novel was considered by Greene to be one of his “entertainments.” I’ve always felt this tag by Greene to be a ridiculous one. It may be a lesser novel, but it’s certainly well-written fiction. In this case, Greene throws a bunch of strangers together on a train in Ostend, If T.S. Eliot, during his Prufrock-Sweeney-Wasteland days had sat down to write a novel, it might have come out looking like Graham Greene’s Orient Express (or, my preferred title, Stamboul Express). Written in 1933, this early novel was considered by Greene to be one of his “entertainments.” I’ve always felt this tag by Greene to be a ridiculous one. It may be a lesser novel, but it’s certainly well-written fiction. In this case, Greene throws a bunch of strangers together on a train in Ostend, Belgium, which is headed to Istanbul. Among them there are a revolutionary (who is late to his own revolution), a chorus girl, a Jewish merchant, a lesbian journalist and her companion, a fat cat burglar, and others. Basically it’s a Ship (or train) of Damned Fools, with each self a Hell to him or herself. Several times I noticed how Greene would linger over characters staring into the windows and mirrors, each of them feeling lonely, empty, a bit lost before their own image.

Yeah, the set-up does, without the brooding, sound like Agatha Christie, but in Greene’s hands the story turns into multiple reflections on good and evil, God (or not), sex, class, and anti-Semitism. Stuff does happen. There’s a murder, shots fired, sex (on a train!), a Kafkaesque trial, a chase. And there are also some fine descriptions (geography, clothing, train travel) that capture the period. Still, there were times I thought the novel just flat out anti-Semitic. Myatt, the Jewish merchant, is constantly shown checking his ledgers, considering costs, advantages to be gained, fanning his success before others like a well fed peacock, etc. And yet, when faced with the choice of love and cutting his losses, he often shows himself a good man trying to do the right thing. Oh, in the end I do think the book anti-Semitic in a murky Greene way, but because it’s Greene it also allows for sympathies and the human heart as well. Certainly nothing like what’s coming in the future Nazi-Mordor. ...more

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May 17, 2013 Judy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: graham-greene

This was Greene's fourth novel - and by now he was really coming into his own as a writer. The book is set aboard the Orient Express travelling between Ostende and Vienna in the early 1930s, and was Greene's first novel to be set in the real world of his present day. I enjoyed the way he keeps switching viewpoint between several different characters.

Greene originally categorised this as an "entertainment" and it was filmed, though I haven't seen the movie, which seems to be very hard to get hol This was Greene's fourth novel - and by now he was really coming into his own as a writer. The book is set aboard the Orient Express travelling between Ostende and Vienna in the early 1930s, and was Greene's first novel to be set in the real world of his present day. I enjoyed the way he keeps switching viewpoint between several different characters.

Greene originally categorised this as an "entertainment" and it was filmed, though I haven't seen the movie, which seems to be very hard to get hold of. However, although the novel is very entertaining, it does have serious themes, as most of the characters are at turning points in their lives and wrestling with their consciences.

I was especially drawn by the portrayal of the central couple, young Jewish businessman Carleton Myatt, and the penniless and hungry chorus girl he befriends, Coral Musker. As the pair begin a tentative relationship, this delicately-drawn sexual bargain between two lonely people is far more realistic and touching than the intense romances in the previous two early Greene novels I've read, 'The Man Within' and the suppressed novel 'The Name of Action'. In this book,the couple wonder whether they are making a mistake and their feelings keep going round in circles. Greene is always brilliant at presenting characters who hesitate and can't make up their minds.

Unfortunately, Myatt is in part a Jewish stereotype, and there is quite a bit of derogatory language from the narrator, although there are also many passages where Greene presents him as an individual and fully shows the pain caused to him by the anti-Semitism of some of the other passengers. There's a similar problem with the portrayal of a lesbian, hard-drinking journalist on the train, Mabel Warren, where some of the time she seems like a prejudiced caricature and yet at other times the character is more fully and sympathetically realised. It's almost as though the individuals keep escaping from their caricatures, and it creates a strange, uneven tone.

Another powerfully-drawn character is Dr Czinner, a revolutionary doctor who has been living safely in exile, but must now decide whether to join his comrades again although this seems bound to bring about his doom. He makes a sharp contrast with the burglar Josef Gruenlich, who is only interested in looking out for himself.

I found the book a compelling read and intensely visual, as so often with Greene - it really seems to be crying out to be filmed. It's just a pity that one or two of the plot twists towards the end seemed a bit too neat and didn't really ring true for the characters. ...more

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