★★★★☆ | Literary Fiction | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
This classic novel from Graham Greene explores the fine line between love and hate in post-war London. Short chapters and crisp writing make this book feel like a tight suspense novel, but one that surprises with its probing, deeply human themes: fate vs. individual responsibility, the problems with either atheism or blind faith, the angst of romantic longing, and the corrosiveness of jealousy.
I have never known a woman before or since so able to alter a whole mood by simply speaking on the telephone, and when she came into a room or put her hand on my side she created at once the absolute trust I lost with every separation.
This is one that raised questions that will stick with me for a long while.
Highlights
If a woman is in one’s thoughts all day, one should not have to dream of her at night.
Hatred is very like physical love: it has its crisis and then its periods of calm.
The saints, one would suppose, in a sense create themselves. They come alive. They are capable of the surprising act or word. They stand outside the plot, unconditioned by it. But we have to be pushed around. We have the obstinacy of nonexistence.