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Title: The Power and the Glory (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Graham Greene, John Updike ISBN: 0-14-243730-1 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 25 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.45 (67 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The Power & the Glory
Comment: A magnificient story about a priest outlawed during a insurrection in Mexico during the 1930's. The "whisky priest", according to other reviews travelled his area in Mexico performing his duties as a Priest. I disagree. He was represented as truly "human" man, who happened to be a priest, who could NOT do his duties particularly during trying and difficult times. When it came to escaping the territory and possibly living in a comparativly free (religiously speaking) area he did feel enough responsibilty toward his religion, not to leave. This cost him his life. To me he was a real person, weak and again, very human, ending up with more integrity than he began. Many other interesting characters in this book well worth reading about. Lots of religious discussion here. Graham Greene is a wonderful author.
Rating: 5
Summary: An Excellent Read
Comment: The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene is quite simply one of the best novels in 20th century English literature. It is based on the author's travels in Mexico during the revolutionary uphevals of the first half of the 20th century.
The setting is in a Mexican state that has outlawed the Catholic Church and forced all priests to either marry or be shot. This leaves only two priests in the entire state: one captitulates and marries, the other is the whiskey priest (an alcholic who has, among other things, fathered an illegitamate child) who decides to try to escape. Although most of the people he comes into contact with disdain his presence, he feels bound to serve them in his priestly capacity. Even though he is a horrible example as a priest (and the children will most likely form their views of the Catholic faith from him), he still, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders has the power to say Mass and give the body and blood of Christ to the people, hear their confessions, forgive their sins and baptize their children and feels duty bound to do these things despite the great risk to his safety and his own feelings of complete wretchedness and inadequacy.
Hounding the whiskey priest's trail is the most pious of athiests, the lieutenant who sees the extermination of the Catholic Church and the priests in particular as the first step towards a new world free from superstition and the corruption (both real and imagined) that Church imposes on his native Mexico.
The book starts off slowly, but once it gets going, Greene makes it almost impossible to put down. Although all of the main characters are either anonymous or known by their first name, Greene portrays them (and the Mexican state) so vividly that the reader almost feels like he/she is really a part of each scene (which might be why many of Greene's novels have been successfully translated to the silver screen). John Updike relates in his introduction that a woman who endured the Mexican persecutions of the Church who read The Power and The Glory afterwards, reportedly said prayers for the soul of the whiskey priest at her next Mass. I cannot think of a higher compliment to any author.
The highlight, for me anyway, was the exchanges between the lieutenant and the whiskey priest after the priest is captured. The righteous indignation of the lieutenant and the gentle, erudite answers of the priest make the last few chapters of the book virtually impossible to put down.
I highly recommend The Power and The Glory as a great book exploring the topics of sin, grace, duty and sacrifice in a manner that appeals not only to Catholics but to people of all faiths or no faith at all.
Rating: 3
Summary: Efficient but Not Very Memorable
Comment: This is the 2nd book by Graham Greene I have read, and much like the other, this one was written quite efficiently. That's about the best thing I can say about Green the writer: he's very, very efficient. Everything reads very smoothly, the story flows, the characters flow in and out.
But there is a problem with that: Nothing really stands out in a book written this efficiently, as nothing really stood out in the other Greene book I read. Nothing very memorable happens, no character had any truly memorable eccentricity--though the happenings and the characters are quite realistically developed.
Greene just writes a little too much like everyday, mundane life for me, I guess. The situations he writes about might call for more spectacular things to happen during the story, maybe; in another author's hands they probably would; in Greene's, we get authentic, real life, but real life, everyday real life, is not the stuff of legends or even is it the stuff of memory very often...
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Title: The Heart of the Matter (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140283323 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The End of the Affair (Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140184953 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Our Man in Havana: An Entertainment (Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140184937 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1991 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Quiet American (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140185003 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Brighton Rock (Twentieth Century Classics) by Graham Greene ISBN: 0140184929 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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