"The Captain always maintained that he won Jim from his father at a game of backgammon.
Fraud, adventurer, robber and thief, the Captain has as many tall stories to tell as Jim has had boarding-school dinners. Now aged twenty-two, a hack journalist and unwitting Judas, Jim attempts to piece together the Captain's story."
Even for Greene I found this tale of love and duty taken to an extreme especially bleak. Its really sad, damaged humans forging a life held together by one mans love for a woman who he is never sure loves him at all.
You never read Greene for the giggles and even though this is written so well and it's one his last, after finishing it I felt like pulling the covers over my head for a week. A positive - it's a short read but not a beach book, more for when your wife leaves, the bank calls in the mortgage and the car's stolen. If these things occur you'll be in the perfect frame of mind to get into this.
And I may have missed it but according to me there's no redemption for anyone at the end which is unusual for a Greene novel.
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