jereco1962 's review for:

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

3.0

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While Graham Greene was a marvelous writer, his conversion to Catholicism tripped him up a couple of times in his writing. In The Power and the Glory, as in The End of the Affair, it is blatantly evident that his grasp of Catholicism is about a mile wide...but only about one inch deep. He has good intentions, no doubt, but he has set himself up for failure: The central character, a deeply flawed "whisky priest" whose name we never learn, is obviously meant to be redeemed by book's end, but Greene overplays his hand. The man is so thoroughly self-involved, his actions so damning, that by novel's end, there isn't a rosary large enough, nor an act of contrition great enough to save such a blackened soul. Sydney Carton, the man is not. Interestingly, the book's moral compass seems to pass from hand to hand among a group of supporting players: two atheists and a pair of Presbyterians: a young girl named Coral, a Javert-like police lieutenant, and two aging siblings, all of whom display more compassion than our protagonist.