Brighton Rock (New Windmills): Amazon.ca: Books

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Customer Reviews

25 Reviews

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4.4 out of 5 stars (25 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Madness & Guilt at The Beach, Jun 17 2004

By

A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: 20th Century Brighton Rock (Mass Market Paperback)

Having worked my way through about a third of Greene's output, I was quite looking forward to this entertainment about a teenage gangster in 1930s Brighton. At first, the atmosphere met my expectations, with the seedy underbelly of the holiday getaway exposed, with shabby bars, and razor gangs fighting for their slice of the protection rackets. However, the story's themes left me largely unsatisfied, as cardboard characters go through the motions of embodying larger ideas and forces. The book starts with the murder of a corrupt London newspaperman, who is killed by a minor Brighton gang. This gang is led by Pinkie, a 17-year-old sociopath who has filled the void left by the death of the previous leader. Although the newpaperman's murder goes off without a hitch, and the gang appears to be in the clear, problems starts when a hooker with a heart of gold starts poking her nose into the affair. With little to motivate her other than a fleeting connection to the dead man and an awfully stubborn notion of justice, Ida sets out to unmask the truth. Meanwhile, Pinkie's not totally convinced that the gang's tracks are covered and does a little checking around himself. Both PInkie and Ida realize that there is an unwitting witness who, a 16-year-old waitress, named Rose. The story then boils down to a tug-of-war between Pinky and Ida for Rose's loyalty.

Pinkie is a misanthropic pessimist, who looks to violence as the solution to most problems, and is profoundly mentally disturbed, especially when it comes to sex, which a repressive Catholic upbringing has sullied. Ida is his opposite, a fun-loving, happy-go-lucky (and disproportionately represented) type, the hooker who enjoys her work. Pinkie is a brooding thug, with little motivation other than to be on top of the world, preferably with his boot at its neck. Ida is all about carpe diem, living in the moment, and not worrying too much about what tomorrow will bring. Rose sits between them as a naive blank slate, with nothing driving her beyond senseless schoolgirl infatuation. Watching these characters circle each other with scheme and counter-scheme never gets very interesting. They are much much too broad to be believed in, and as vessels of larger themes they never measure up. Nor are the supporting characters of any help, each one more thinly sketched than the one before. It's all very melodramatic, and ends in the only way possible. In interviews, Greene admits his own dissatisfaction with this book. He started it as a straight detective story, and then reconfigured it, which is why the tone veers so strangely partway through.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars sterile, May 24 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: 20th Century Brighton Rock (Mass Market Paperback)

I read this book because Truman Capote (a great writer) claimed it in an interview as a great novel. Boy was I disappointed. Nothing propelled me to keep turning the pages, and the Catholic symbolism in the book was ridiculously incessant, and only something a fanatical converted Catholic like Greene could have included to such a degree. Pinkie holds a wire flower and pierces his palm with it. Well, that is obviously symbolic of the nails through Jesus' hands...but for what purpose to the story, or to that scene that has nothing religious or metaphyscial in it? And while Greene is capable of great writing, I didn't find any of it in this book.

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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars "Only God may judge me", April 12 2004

By

Henry Platte (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 20th Century Brighton Rock (Mass Market Paperback)

If you can get over the fact that the menacing antihero is named Pinky, and resist the urge to put words his mouth along the lines of, 'Eh, Dallow, wot are we going to do tonight? Wee-hee-hee; narf!', you'll find this to be one of the most rewarding thrillers out there. Its style gathers enormous momentum, with long, elaborate sentences like gasps of air, and it's difficult to put down. The character of Pinky is one of Greene's most compelling; like any great villian, he arouses both sympathy and disgust, and his eventual failure is almost dissapointing. Greene's usual themes of guilt and redemption and poverty are well turned-out. Also interesting is the half-revealed backstory, never made explicit; the pace of the novel is such that there's no time for exposition. It's a brilliant, vicious knife-thrust of a book, and one of Greene's best.

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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Flip Side Of Catholic Grace
Even by the exulted standards of British literature, Pinkie Brown is one uniquely depraved villain. When he goes to court a lovestruck lass, he brings a bottle of acid to threaten... Read more

Published on Jun 6 2004 by Bill Slocum

5.0 out of 5 stars A harrowing realism
A few of Graham Greene's works have been successfully adapted into film, but BRIGHTON ROCK is not one of them. Read more

Published on May 27 2004 by Rocco Dormarunno

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard Candy
BRIGHTON ROCK

To oversimplify perhaps, 16-year-old innocent Rose and the 17-year-old Puritanical killer Pinkie represent a Christian version of good and evil-they're almost... Read more

Published on Oct 21 2003 by John Green

4.0 out of 5 stars Brighton Rock Rocks
I enjoyed BRIGHTON ROCK. I had never read anything that Graham Greene wrote before picking up this volume, and I was very impressed by so many aspects of it. Read more

Published on Mar 3 2003 by Andrew McCaffrey

5.0 out of 5 stars For Hardcore Graham Greene Fans
Greene's greatest novels explore the moral responsibilities of the average man in unwinnable situations. Read more

Published on Feb 12 2002 by Ethan Cooper

4.0 out of 5 stars The grim underbelly of the English Seaside
Graham Greene writes crisply, and the colours and textures with which he paints an inter-war Brighton are vivid, if uniformly gray and brutal. Read more

Published on Oct 28 2001 by O. Buxton

5.0 out of 5 stars Palpable fear on every page
Set in the underworld of Brighton between the wars, this book seethes with menace. Pinkie, the boy gangster is stalked by the implacable Ida, the good time girl turned avenger... Read more

Published on Sep 25 2001 by W. Weinstein

5.0 out of 5 stars Fancy a sip of Vitriol?
'Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.'

Thus begins Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock: a dramatic statement of impending... Read more

Published on July 16 2001 by Ian Vance