England Made Me in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Feb 16, 2009 Chloe rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-list, fiction

The ties to one's homeland and the myriad different perceptions of "home" form the theme of this early Graham Greene novel. Anthony Farrant is a ne'er-do-well who has left a string of abandoned jobs and broken relationships behind him as he has worked his way around the globe. When his mistress leaves him and he's sacked from his job once more, his twin sister Kate shows up to whisk him away to Stockholm where she serves as the secretary/mistress of Krogh, a powerful titan of industry who is eng The ties to one's homeland and the myriad different perceptions of "home" form the theme of this early Graham Greene novel. Anthony Farrant is a ne'er-do-well who has left a string of abandoned jobs and broken relationships behind him as he has worked his way around the globe. When his mistress leaves him and he's sacked from his job once more, his twin sister Kate shows up to whisk him away to Stockholm where she serves as the secretary/mistress of Krogh, a powerful titan of industry who is engaged in a bit of insider trading that could spur the collapse of the global economy.

Once in Stockholm Anthony becomes Krogh's bodyguard and becomes close to Minty, a fellow Brit who left the Isle under dubious circumstances and eeks out a living as a 1930s paparazzo, shadowing Krogh as thoroughly as TMZ stalks Britney. There's also Lucia Davidge, a young woman on holiday with her parents and in search of a fun tryst and Hall, the muscle behind Krogh's double-dealings who is dedicated to Krogh to the point of obsession. All of these ex-pats are harboring their own dark pasts (in one of the few strokes of genius herein, these pasts are never revealed but skirted around frantically- are there incestuous feelings between Kate and Anthony? Why can Minty never return to England?) and trying desperately to break with them and forge new identities in frozen Sweden.

This early Greene is good, it shows the skill that Greene would soon hone into the keen insight that informs The Quiet American and The Power & The Glory, but too often it gets bogged down in the mire of its character's debauched parting. Minor Characters, such as the young Andersson, are introduced and developed for whole chapters, only to disappear from the pages after the briefest of interactions with the principals. When you know what Greene is capable of, when you so love the precision with which he crafts the morality plays that are his works, things like this just strike me as sloppy. But for these niggling details it would be a four star book. ...more

Like · see review