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Travels with My Aunt, by Graham Greene
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Delightful Graham Greene novel about smuggling currency out of Great Britain.
- Sales Rank: #1191835 in Books
- Published on: 1969
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
'Tis better to travel hopefully...
By FictionFan
When middle-aged Henry Pulling attends the cremation of his mother, he meets his mother's sister, Aunt Augusta, a woman he knows only from old family photographs. It seems Aunt Augusta was something of the black sheep of the family, her distinctly racy and unconventional lifestyle making her unwelcome. But Henry finds himself drawn towards her, her frank stories of a life full of incident providing a contrast to his own rather dull and lonely existence as a retired bank manager in the respectable little community of Southwood. And soon Augusta entices Henry to join her on some of her journeys, first on the Orient Express to Istanbul and later to South America.
This is a gentle little comedy without any of the profundity of Greene's major works but still with a certain amount of charm. Published in 1969, at a time when Greene was in his mid-60s, it does rather read like a tolerant older man's view of the 'permissive' society of the '60s, with its focus on 'free love' and incessant pot-smoking. However, through Aunt Augusta's stories, we are also taken on a light trip back through the century, though her storytelling technique makes it hard to pin down the truth of any event she is describing. From running a church for dogs in Brighton to her rather seedy career in France, from possibly having something to do with the Resistance to consorting with Nazi war criminals, Augusta's exuberant zest for life manages somehow to overcome Henry's normal repugnance for anything not quite respectable. The lesson he must learn from Augusta is the simple one that there is a difference between the tedium of merely existing and the joy of experiencing life.
The writing is, of course, excellent, especially the stories of their travels and the various places they pass through. It's not a travelogue, so there are no tourist brochure style descriptions – instead, it's a vague, impressionistic picture of the process of travelling and the places passed by as seen through Henry's untutored, and often uninterested, eye. The reader is more likely to be told about the availability of ham sandwiches than the great architecture of a given town. This changes a little when they head off to South America – in this section, we begin to get a much clearer picture both of the natural world and the strange and rather corrupt society Henry finds himself sucked into.
The humour runs at a consistently gentle level throughout, never becoming riotously funny, but never getting lost either. Unfortunately a good deal of the humour is centred on Aunt Augusta's younger lover, Wordsworth, a man from Sierra Leone, and to modern eyes his portrayal feels horribly stereotyped at best and somewhat racist at worst. In fact, given Greene's age and the time of writing, Wordsworth is actually rather affectionately portrayed – indeed, he's about the only likeable character, the only one with a true, warm and generous heart. But still, I found some of the dialect and his rather childish naivety made for pretty uncomfortable reading in places. Otherwise, however, the contrast between Henry's buttoned-up mentality and Augusta's free-wheeling acceptance of all life has to offer gives plenty of opportunity for Greene to quietly mock the society of the time.
This would not be the book I would recommend to people wanting to sample Greene for the first time. Much better to try one of his more serious novels where the depth of the subject matter tends to withstand dating a little better. In truth, I think profundity suits his style better than humour. But, overall, I found this a pleasurable if rather light read – one where the journey is more enjoyable perhaps than the destination.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Surely a masterpiece
By Philip Spires
Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene
Henry Pulling is a recently retired bank manager. He was offered an arrangement after many years of devoted service when his bank was taken over by another. He is looking forward to spending more time with the dahlias that are his pride and joy, and also rubbing shoulders with his former customers in Southwood, an unremarkable London suburb that seems to be populated entirely by retired officers from the armed forces. He mentions Omo quite a lot and is vaguely embarrassed by the fact that he shares initials with a well known brand of sauce. And then he meets his long lost aunt, Augusta Bertram.
Henry's mother has just died. His father died forty years before. He never really knew the father and his relationship with his mother was perennially tense. After the funeral, Agatha takes him on one side and calmly informs him that his father was something of a rogue and that his "mother" was really his step-mother, his true biological mother being one of his father's bits on the side. Henry Pulling finds himself attracted to his aunt, not because she is something of an eccentric, unpredictable old bird, but also because she retains, somewhere, the secret of his own origins. When she suggests they travel together, he eagerly accompanies, despite the fact that he has never been one for straying far from the nest.
Graham Greene has Henry and Aunt Agatha travel as far afield as Brighton, Istanbul and South America. Together, via stories from Aunt Augusta's past, they relive the first half of the twentieth century, from late Victorian roots to 1960s drug culture, from fascism to dictators, from war to peace. Throughout, Henry Pulling comes across as a genial, predictable gent in his late fifties, whilst Aunt Augusta seems to be a confirmed member of Hell's Grannies. Europe - the world even - seems to be littered with her conquests, with hardly a country passing by without some faded memory of hers coming back to life.
As it unfolds, Travels With My Aunt reveals itself as a true masterpiece of twentieth century fiction. The characters really do live through the century's history, but the events are never pressed onto the surface of their lives. On the contrary, they are entwined within the fabric of Aunt Agatha's being, a character whose complexity unfolds as the story progresses.
Throughout Henry Pulling is a truly comic character. He seems out of his depth, naïve, a product of an over-protected suburban existence, over-burdened with the assumptions of his upbringing. But he comes into his own and eventually it is no surprise when he describes his new life, which is almost as far removed from a suburban bank manager's office as it is possible to get. And, of course, the story's denouement, when it arrives, is also no surprise. And is not less because of that.
There are many laughs along the way, not least as a result of Henry's being constantly taken aback by his aunt's bluntness and lust for life. Particularly memorable, however, were scenes where Henry put his personal foot in it. On Paraguay's national day, he carries a red scarf on his aunt's advice so he can show allegiance to the ruling party and the dictator. He just happens to be outside the military and political headquarters when he sneezes and uses the scarf as a hankie. A nearby soldier records the snotting into the national emblem as deeply insulting and irreverent, duly beats him up and slaps him in jail. Situation comedy at its best.
Travels With My Aunt is quite simply a must read and must re-read book. Graham Greene's immense skill provides a simplicity of style and construction to communicate a complex plot alongside powerful characterisation, and all this accomplished with true but elegant economy. It is a beautifully crafted book, expertly written, full of surprises and humour, all set against a deadly serious plot: surely a masterpiece.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Dragged Away From His Dahlias
By Stephanie De Pue
"Travels with My Aunt" was penned by its greatly praised British author Graham Greene rather late in his long life, and his long, prolific, greatly-honored literary career. In fact, Greene wrote it past the point at which he divided his work into 'novels--' serious, like "The Power and the Glory," and 'entertainments,' lighter, like "Our Man in Havana." He probably would, however, have called it an 'entertainment.' Mind you, this novel never has been a critical favorite; nor has the movie, starring Maggie Smith, who was Oscar-nominated for the role of Aunt Augusta, made from it. (Most of his books were filmed).
The novel is told in first person by its narrator Henry Pulling, a never-married, presumably virgin, stuffy, retired bank manager, looking forward to a lifetime of cultivating his suburban dahlias. At his mother's funeral, he meets his Aunt Augusta, absent from his life since his christening. She shakes him up, drags him on exotic travels, and gives him some better reasons to live. (It's noticeable that there's a certain family resemblance to Patrick Dennis's "Auntie Mame," penned roughly a decade earlier. But these two books involve protaganists at different ends of life: a boy, and a retiree, and, let's face it, anything written by Graham Greene, no matter how late in his career, has his touch, and his thoughts.)
The plot's episodic, and not as tight as some of the writer's great spy stories. But the book's well written. Furthermore, you can see the Greene touch in some of the book's flavorful characters. In addition to Aunt Augusta, there's the Turkish cop, Colonel Hakim, one of several powerful third world law 'enforcers' created by Greene. There's 'Tooley,' the airhead hippie girl met on the Orient Express (played by Cindy Williams, of "Laverne and Shirley," in the movie.) And 'Wordsworth,' as Augusta calls him, an emigrant from Sierra Leone, a part of the world with which Greene was very familiar, as he'd spent World War II there as a spy. Wordsworth (played by Lou Gossett in the film) is fiercely in love with Augusta, a woman at least twice his age, and devotes his life to her.
One of the more challenging results of the first-person narration is that the reader, like Henry, doesn't know what Aunt Augusta is up to, until we're told. There's a longish period, in terms of this short book, when Augusta is out of touch, and Henry thinks of really solidifying his suburban retirement -- as if it could be much more solid, he's already pretty well set in concrete -- by marrying a sad local spinster. In another interesting use of the first person, Greene does not always tell us what Henry's thinking: when the narrator at last realizes some of the central facts of his Aunt's life -- some of us might ask what took him so long -- he doesn't share his thought processes with us.
"Travels" is short, and funny. And the subject matter is touching: a man no longer young, discovering family he didn't know he had, rescued from a dread life cultivating his dahlias by that family. What could be bad?
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