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A review by savaging
The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
4.0
I'm a testimony that you don't have to be Catholic -- or even much of a theist -- to like this book.
You will begin to like the main protagonist (the one not-completely-and-disgustingly-racist white guy in the book -- that helps), and you'll read with the anxiety you feel watching Meet the Parents, knowing things are going to go as wrong as they possibly can.
Christian authors can be great when they don't risk a happy ending, when they go as low as they can, like Dostoevsky. Where the only hope for redemption is the way a reader loves a character in spite of all their idiotic mistakes, and so you think, well, why wouldn't a god feel the same way?
"If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?"
You will begin to like the main protagonist (the one not-completely-and-disgustingly-racist white guy in the book -- that helps), and you'll read with the anxiety you feel watching Meet the Parents, knowing things are going to go as wrong as they possibly can.
Christian authors can be great when they don't risk a happy ending, when they go as low as they can, like Dostoevsky. Where the only hope for redemption is the way a reader loves a character in spite of all their idiotic mistakes, and so you think, well, why wouldn't a god feel the same way?
"If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?"