The Honorary Consul [Paperback]

"The Honorary Consul" is the first Graham Greene novel I've read, and it is easy to see why Greene has earned so many devoted fans and seemingly over-the-top superlatives over his long career.

Based on this novel, Greene's strength seems to be creating a rich cast of characters, full of different tics, scars, dreams, virtues, and flaws, and dropping them into a plot of balanced tragedy and farce. By stirring great ingredients into a delicious recipe, Greene created a novel to savour and one, I would bet, improves with each reading.

Set in an anonymous border town just on the Argentine side of Paraguay, "The Honorary Consul" focuses on the hapless, accidental kidnapping of Charley Fortnum, the titular honorary consul. A band of revolutionaries, lethally inept, swipe the British Fortnum instead of their target, the American ambassador, whom they wanted to exchange for political prisoners in the Paraguayan dictatorship nearby. Unfortunately for the kidnappers, Fortnum's title is more impressive than his station, and nobody is all that eager to save Fortnum, much less give in to the kidnappers' demands.

Further adding to the travesty of the situation, Fortnum's only connection to the outside world is Dr. Plarr, a half-British, half Argentinian physician who is also having an affair with Fortnum's wife, a former prostitute. Plarr, whose father vanished into the Paraguayan prison system years ago, is a man incapable of emotion -- when it comes to relationships, he's good at the physics but not the chemistry.

Plarr struggles to help the innocent Fortnum escape his looming fate -- if ten political prisoners are not released from Paraguay, the kidnappers will shoot Fortnum. Through his efforts both with the kidnappers and with several possible saviors, Plarr meets and interacts with a host of characters whose range of quirks and passions would be at home in a Casablanca cafe.

Greene writes with an economic, spare prose that is nevertheless powerful, often using dialogue and soliloquies to advance the story rather than long-winded descriptions of setting. Clocking in at under 300 pages, "The Honorary Consul" is a riveting read that probably goes too fast on the first read. I plan on putting it aside for a few months before taking it up again . . . I'm sure I'll catch a bit more meaning the second time around, but there was plenty for the first trip through.

A dark, occasionally depressing novel of lost opportunities, false passions, and the ultimate quest for truth, "The Honorary Consul" is a heck of a read. Check it out.

This is a well-written story combining the elements of a political/spy novel with those of a Greek tragedy. Set in Argentina, Greene tells the tale of a botched political kidnapping which provides the context for an interesting character study. The ineptitude of Greene's kidnappers and their gradual self-destruction, to me, symbolized the disarray and tumult in the lives of each character. Greene's interesting cast of characters includes a chameleon-like prostitute who tailors her personality to accommodate the varying expectations and inadequacies of her clients, a fallen priest who cannot seem to shed his former skin, a marginalized novelist who is crippled by his pride, an emotionless doctor whose heart is as sterile as his instruments, and an inconsequential "honorary" consul who fails at everything except loving. This novel is by no means cheery, but I came away from it with an important reminder that life is lived in vain if lived without having loved--even if that love is unrequited.

At their best, Greene's novels put ordinary men in difficult moral situations. Then, his characters make heroic, but often self-defeating, moral choices. These great novels include THE POWER AND THE GLORY, THE HEART OF THE MATTER, THE QUIET AMERICAN, and THE COMEDIANS. Read them.

In THE HONORARY COUNSUL, Greene also creates difficult moral situations for his primary characters. But, in this novel, the dilemmas of Father Rivas and Dr. Plarr are without Greene's usual deft balance between choice and disaster.

Instead, Greene creates moral situations that appear doomed almost from the book's beginning. As a result, the choices that Rivas and Plarr make don't seem especially heroic. Instead, these characters seem to be caught in a death machine, which is indifferent to their personal dilemmas.

To a large extent, they are like Charley Fortnum, the novel's honorary counsel, who is kidnapped mistakenly by political revolutionaries. Here, Fortnum, despite lots of misery and recrimination, is basically waiting for the denouement, as the death machine grinds forward.

In Greene's great books, there is also the pleasure of seeing characters move through time and place. In contrast, much of this novel is conversation, with Greene making his points. Many of these are about moral responsibility. But others just seem "writerly", with Greene developing endless ironic connections between apparently dissimilar characters.

Nonetheless, this is a good read and a rewarding book, with the best scene the querulous formation of the Anglo-Argentinean Club.

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