A review by deegee24
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene

4.0

Greene's novel is mainly about the spiritual torment of its main character, Scobie, a practicing Catholic and colonial police officer stationed in an unnamed British colony in West Africa during World War II (based on Greene's own experience in Sierra Leone). Though I'm not Catholic, I found it refreshing to read a 20th century novel that shows the pain and guilt that can result from marital infidelity and other "sinful" behavior. Some have found Scobie to be a thin and unconvincing character, but I disagree. Greene rejects the stream of consciousness narration of the modernists, but his characters reveal themselves sufficiently through more traditional means. Nor do I accept George Orwell's claim that a colonial police officer could not experience pangs of remorse for his misdeeds. My main disappointment is that the colonial African setting is important only insofar as it is a place where corruption and criminality run rampant in the shadows, and where the boundary between the law and lawlessness is unstable. The book could just as easily have been set in the Vienna of The Third Man. This seems like a missed opportunity to say something more serious about the specific history and culture of West Africa or the last declining years of British imperialism.