Brighton Rock, Graham Greene
Brighton Rock, Graham Greene
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Brighton Rock

Author: Graham Greene

Narrator: Richard Brown

Unabridged: 9 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/03/2011

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

Originally published in 1938, Graham Greenes chilling expos of violence and gang warfare is a masterpiece of psychological realism and often considered Graham Greenes best novel. It is a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God, a classic of its kind.Set in Brighton, England, among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a seventeenyearold boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. Pinkie is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands.He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hales avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hales death. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.When finished, the listener is sure to ponder some lofty moral issues to which Greene, a Catholic writer, withholds easy judgments.

About Graham Greene

Graham Greene (1904-1991) is recognized as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, achieving both literary acclaim and popular success. His best-known works include Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, The Quiet American, and The Power and the Glory. After leaving Oxford, Greene first pursued a career in journalism before dedicating himself full-time to writing with his first big success, Stamboul Train. He became involved in screenwriting and wrote adaptations for the cinema as well as original screenplays, the most successful being The Third Man. Religious, moral, and political themes are at the root of much of his work, and throughout his life he traveled to some of the wildest and most volatile parts of the world, which provided settings for his fiction. Greene was a member of the Order of Merit and a Companion of Honour.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on September 16, 2019

The story is set in Brighton, a Coney Island type beach resort a day-trip by train from London. Pinkie, a young man who is pure evil, is in control of a mob-like gang. It was never quite clear to me where the actual money comes from but it appears they are making money off the numbers racket or ille......more

Goodreads review by Supratim on January 14, 2017

A great story! Fine writing! Let me begin by saying that this novel draws some materials from Greene's A Gun for Sale. Since I have not read this novel, I do not know the exact relationship between the two books, but I can tell you that this book can be read as a standalone. The edition I read feature......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on December 06, 2020

A near-perfect noir. The Cohen Bros. looked at this type of literature for the basis for "Fargo." Just like that movie, this book takes you inside a world of misfits and fragmented members of a clandestine group: very disorganized mobsters. The bad guys are protagonists & the heroine is (unlike the......more

Goodreads review by Dave on June 11, 2021

"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint"—Charles Péguy. This is the epigraph to Graham Greene's novel The Heart of the Matter (1951) “It didn't matter anyway. . . he wasn't made for peace, he couldn't......more