Graham Greene

Re-reading Graham Greene's 1942 novel, The heart of the matter, and right away from 1st chapter I'm immersed in the British colonial culture of w Africa - the snobbism, racism, loneliness, class structure (narcissism of small differences - those "in" and "out" of the "club" nearly indistinguishable in manner and stature to those on the outside ), the criminality (bribery, exploitation, corruption) - and above all the tenuous social position of the British hanging on in the last moments of colonial rule as the world around them is at war. The heart of the matter so to speak, however, is the dwindling marriage of a Scobie and his pallid, "literary" wife , Louise - friendless, nervous, insecure, sickened that scobie has been passed over once more for promotion - and the arrival of Wilson, a shy intellectual and an obvious match for Louise - w outsiders. Very sad scene at the club when S overhears a crude, callous remark about his wife and hopes to protect her from the knowledge that she is such a social pariah, tho he knows she intuits this already. Also hints of a complicity in crime - diamond smuggling - between police chief Scobie and the syrian shipowner, Yusef. Many forces at work in first 30 or so pp and headed for collision sure to be sad and tragic - hints of Brief encounter and maybe even Greene's own end of the affair? - or british melodrama of illicit love among the misaligned, the misfits, and the misunderstood.

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