#77 The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (Vintage)

Well, here’s a turn-up for the books (challenge). I was really looking forward to reading another Graham Greene, and The Quiet American is acknowledged as one of his classics, but I really didn’t enjoy it very much at all.

My main problem was that I struggled to follow the story. It’s not that I didn’t understand it (or at least I don’t think so!), but rather it never became readable enough for me to want to fully comprehend the metaphors and the allegories.

At the heart of the tale, set in 1950s Indochina, is a love triangle between a native woman, who wants merely to ensure a future for herself, an ambiguous if jaded English reporter and an American officer who turns out to be more than he appears. It’s a hugely political book, with the trio each representing their nations and wider political beliefs, with the Vietnamese Phuong torn between her two suitors, with tension ever increasing on journalist Fowler, one of nature’s observers, to take sides.

As the evidence mounts of American Pyle’s duplicity and treacherous intentions, despite his honourable behaviour towards Phuong, Fowler realises he has to take action. And so the book, which begins with Pyle’s death, concludes as it was destined. But the route there was so slow and meandering that I only started to care when a particularly horrible explosion takes place late in the piece.

I can see how The Quiet American, with its relevance to the Vietnam war, can be admired, and perhaps even reviled by some due to its anti-American stance, but either way, it never captured my full attention.

So, rating time:

#77 The Quiet American, by Graham Greene (Vintage) - 5/10

Next up: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck (Penguin Group)

Click here for the full list of books so far, and their rating