Book Review: THE TENTH MAN by Graham Greene

The Tenth Man by Graham Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"And when God came the Enemy was always present. He was God's shadow. He was the bitter proof of God."

I immediately thought of decimation when I saw the title... The Ancient Roman punishment where every tenth man is killed, which 20th century commanders still did. Heavy stuff.

But then I saw how thin it was. "It's only around 150 pages, it will be a nice book to relax with on a Sunday morning," I told myself, as I haven't fully recovered from the past 3 Greene heavyweights of the previous weeks (THE QUIET AMERICAN, THE POWER AND THE GLORY, and THE END OF THE AFFAIR).

Greene's gift was writing about The Eternal War in a world where God is in everything, even base impulses or shallow things like inexplicable attractions of one book over another.

Once again I entered the mind of a craven pathetic excuse of a human being, and ashamedly saw myself in his thought processes. When the Germans in a POW camp selected our protagonist for execution, he gave up all his wealth to exchange places with another.

That was just the set up. The heart of the drama lies in the aftermath of the war. How does one live, knowing that one was party to a murder? How does one move on, after meeting the mournful sister and mother of the bereaved, seeing proof that more than one life was destroyed by one's cowardice?

I'm amazed at how complete the novella is. Make no mistake. It may look like a lightweight, but it packs nearly as heavy a punch as the other longer, Catholic novels!

What IS the attraction of Greene for this reader? Perhaps because the sinner in me feels seen and understood. In his novels I find both shame and hope, despair and joy. Not a lot of books offer this, and for Greene to consistently offer this in volume after volume is a mark of his greatness.

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Book Review: THE END OF THE AFFAIR by Graham Greene

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I didn't know it but You moved in the pain."

WARNING: This book will break your heart! And oh, how wish I knew what I was getting into, otherwise I would not have read this book while waiting for my ride to work. I wanted to break down and cry after A CERTAIN PART but had to reschedule my breakdown because of professionalism. So I spent the day in agony, all outwardly movements correct, but inside I was screaming, counting down the minutes til I could finish the pages.

And now I'm madly typing at my keyboard, sniffling like a besotted lover. What an experience!

This is no simple, tawdry tale of adultery (although of course it begins that way). This is a story of black souls redeemed. Of saints who started out as sinners, and the beauty and grace of the Catholic faith. Greene writes of loss and pain like no other, and his genius lies in showing Heaven even in the Hell of wartime England, of people's immense capacity for saintly grace despite their morality seemingly lost. This book has the power to convict and convert its readers. The pain and doubt we all feel but don't dare form into words simply flows from Greene's pen as if written in his own blood, so when he writes it is as if he has peered into the smallest, meanest portion of your soul, the one we are most ashamed of and try to hide, even from ourselves. But instead of being repulsed by it, Greene offers comfort: The divine CAN be found in fallenness, and there IS hope yet for even the most wicked and petty of hearts.

Consider this the equivalent of me shoving your nose into this book, crying READ IT READ IT READ IT!

(And if this review barely gave away any details, it is because it would ruin the experience if I did. So be kind, dear reader, and don't give away any spoilers to Obi-wan, the same way I didn't spoil this Greene masterpiece for you!)

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Book Review: THE POWER AND THE GLORY by Graham Greene

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

No wonder this is called one of the greatest Catholic novels. Set in Tabasco, Mexico during the 1930's, written in 1940, it was controversial enough to merit condemnation by the Vatican, prompting the author to write: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Reading the book, one can see why it caused such a stir in Rome. It would have been banned had not the future Pope/Saint Paul VI spoken in its defense. The uproar lay in its realistic portrayal of human weakness in one who is supposed to be Christ's earthly representative.

The protagonist is as fallen as they come: a "whiskey priest," an alcoholic who has literally fathered a child. (Not that rare an occurrence in the Philippines - especially in Pampanga, as journalist Aries Rufo pointed out.)

Extremely aware of how contemptible he has become, this unnamed priest is on the run from the authorities in a time when the government was stamping out religion, shooting priests, and killing those who harbor these fugitives.

Who is worthy of salvation? Is it the pious churchgoer who never misses a day at mass, the innocent girl during her First Communion? Or is it the drunk, the adulterer, the child thief? The sinless, or the sinful?

One reads this Graham Greene novel with brow furrowed. This is meaty indeed, for at its core is the message that salvation and grace are to be found even in the most fallen of God's children. That He moves through even the most corrupt of people, in patterns we may not see. And it is fascinating to go over the narrative and dissect the book for the details, as Graham Greene doesn't hand the meaning to the reader on a silver platter. The realization comes from close reading, of seemingly mundane bits of conversation. Every page, every phrase, is necessary and engineered. And we realize at the end that the sinner - priest has touched each life that encountered his, bestowing grace despite his weakness.

Yes, the priest falls short of what is expected of him. But he continuously goes out of his way to administer sacraments to those who ask for them, even putting his life at risk. He escapes peril twice, and has every opportunity to escape it forever by leaving the country, but duty compels him to offer his all a third time. And it cannot fail to move even the hardest of hearts, because what we read about is Faith translated into concrete acts of love for fellow men: even those who would betray us. Like Christ loved Judas.

"It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful... it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt."

Not only for religious/spiritual folks, this book has a lot to teach us about the meaning of fidelity to a cause: persevering in one's calling despite not seeing a happy ending. What. A. Book!

If you liked Shusaku Endo's SILENCE, you will LOOOOOOVE The Power and The Glory.

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Book Review: A TIME TO KEEP SILENCE by Patrick Leigh Fermor

A Time To Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It was a fitting book to spend the dinner hour with. At under a hundred pages, it was short enough for one leisurely sitting, and did indeed relax this reader so much that if I start typing weird letters, it's because I have fallen asleepppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp.

* slaps self awake *

The three star rating is due to the brevity, hehe. Something this nice ought to be longer! It's three essays written about three visits to monasteries, either living or dead (like in the case of Capadoccia).

Fermor belonged to a different time, but as a modern he knew of "the tremendous accumulation of tiredness, which must be the common property of all our contemporaries."

He found blessed peace in the monasteries he visited, where "no demands were made upon my nervous energy: there were not automatic drains, such as conversation at meals, small talk, or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison everyday life."

It makes this reader want to live, even briefly, amongst contemplatives "who reduce the moral overdraft of mankind," for, Fermor says, "they alone have as a body confronted the terrifying problem of eternity."

Reading this book before yet another working weekend was restful and restorative, and that is always a wonderful thing. My mind is peaceful. On to live, and fight, another day! But first, good nighttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

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Book Review: ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"What's an angle of repose?" I asked my engineer/math teacher brother before voting. It turns out that my picking this book to accompany me at the polls was, again, a weird twist of literary destiny, for the book had much to say about the need for a sense of history ("We need it to know what real injustice looks like."), about despair ("Quiet desperation is another name for the human condition."), about perseverance ("It is worth any amount of unhappiness to be given the opportunity to learn and grow and become something good and true, perhaps even noble."), about how a people shape a nation ("A benchmark in the nation's understanding of itself") and looking at the future with hope ("Well just look at this with the eye of faith.")

Not to worry, Stegner provides at least 3 descriptions of what an angle of repose is, but my favorite was "the angle at which 2 lines prop each other up."

They say Monday's election showed a split in our society. To extend the geometry metaphor, it is as if there are two separate groups living in two parallel realities, two vertical lines that do not connect... but in truth, we need each other to build this country back up from the depths it has fallen.

"What though the world be lost?
All is not lost.
Honor is not lost."

I fell in love with Stegner's CROSSING TO SAFETY, and was grateful when a secondhand copy of ANGLE OF REPOSE became available! Basing it on the real life of Mary Hallock Foote, Stegner's frame narrative is that of a crippled historian writing a book on his grandparents, and ultimately finding the meaning of his life by unearthing that of his ancestors.

The Pulitzer is very much deserved, as reading this novel reminded me of what I felt while reading Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN: that intense absorption into a work so complete, so thrillingly ALIVE, that one's soul is crushed and uplifted, and one can't do anything except smile tearfully, gratefully, upon the book's closing.

The greater the pain, the sweeter the joy. The darker our night, the brighter our tomorrow. I will be re-reading Stegner throughout the next six years, and more.

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Book Review: THE SPIRE by William Golding

The Spire by William Golding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When I put this book down (after devouring it over a prolonged breakfast the day before a national election), I could only breathlessly mutter one word, uttered with both layers of meaning, sacred and profane: "Holy."

This kind of glorious and ambiguous writing is what English teachers and book clubs live to dissect. It can be read as a tribute to the miracles wrought by vision and faith, but can also be a warning against religious fanaticism blind to common sense.

Since it's May 8, 2022, the day before history is to be made in my country, of course I read it in a highly charged political light. What happens when a man believes himself chosen by God to unite people under his vision, that he himself is magnificently underqualified and unprepared for? What happens when those under him obey out of fear (because the book is, after all, set in the Middle Ages) because of the protection of his rank?

Let's examine the physics. A mere 4 feet of foundation. A cathedral whose very existence on such a flimsy foundation is already a miracle unto itself. But then the dean wishes to add a tower and a 400-foot high spire, amounting to an additional 6500 tons of weight!!!

Golding's words transport us into his own clear vision of what it's like to be inside a church where pillars bend under enormous weight, where workmen fall and stones plummet as the earth moves, as the stones sing in agony.

How one interprets this book reveals much about the character of the reader. The faithful will cry out, "But look at Golding's inspiration, Salisbury Church, and how it still stands 764 years later through God's grace!" Realists will point out man's genius behind Early English Gothic architecture.

Golding himself wrote: "What holds it up? I? The nail? Does she? Do you?" and also reminds us that "Life itself is a rickety building." Much like democracy and its institutions.

Not all visions, Golding reminds us, are Heavenly in nature. And madness is contagious.



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Book Review: MOON TIGER by Penelope Lively

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"When the times are out of joint it is brought uncomfortably home to you that history is true and that unfortunately you are a part of it."

Moon Tiger is a kind of mosquito coil, or so Penelope Lively tells us, and coming from a country with its share of dengue outbreaks, the use of it as a metaphor for how memory twists and turns into ash did not escape this reader.

This is a very short read, but a fascinating one! It also demands much of its reader: this is literary fiction at its Booker Prize winning finest, with a unique frame narrative: our heroine is dying at the end of a long and eventful life, and her past flies before our eyes, thankfully, in such fascinating form. We are given flash backs, out of order, and some from the other person's point of view. So it is less memoir, and more of a commentary on the shifting nature of History, on how we are all prisoners of our upbringing, our time. And how complex love is. How The Narrative changes, like sand, depending on one's view. And written in such beautiful language!

Lively's heroine is VERY opinionated, and delivers critiques on everything, from religion to education, warfare and table fare, offering cutting psychological portraits and gorgeous lines along the way. She makes the reader question their complacency about a set world-view, by offering her own experiences growing up in multicultural Egypt, and reminds us also of our place in history. Quite fitting to read this a few days from a very historic election! Our individual choices do matter and send out ripples whose ends we cannot know.

Adding Penelope Lively to the list of authors whose books are worth looking out for. What is it with this generation of writers who have lived through World Wars? There is so much wisdom and truth in their books!


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