The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene

I'm still trying to decide whether I enjoyed this book. I finished it this morning with a 'I think i missed something' raised eyebrow and a re-reading of the last two pages to see if it was hiding there.

Graham Greene is clearly a talented writer with a gift for interesting characters who don't follow the normal stereotypes - the book is littered with individuals who cannot easily be classified as 'good' or 'bad' and who behave in a very human way. I found the lack of sympathetic characters made it an occasionally depressing read, although you are certainly drawn into the fate of the 'whisky priest'. The main character, I thought him a believable tortured 'sinner' and his struggles with his own character and with the circumstances of his 'mission' rang true, although he is introspective to the nth degree and there were times I felt he needed a good slap!
All in all I'm finding it hard to decide whether the book's elements of 'ungrace' and 'religion' are outweighed by those of humility and a real understanding of grace. There are some real moments of lucidity:

"Man was so limited he hadn't even the inguenity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and corrupt." (p.97)

"But at the centre of his own faith there always stood the convincing mystery - that we were made in God's image. God was the parent, but He was also the policeman, the criminal, the priest, the maniac, and the judge. Something resembling God dangled from the gibbet or went into odd attitudes before the bullets in a prison yard" (p.101)

And finally...
"'There. It's as I say. Believing in God makes cowards.' The voice was triumphant, as if it had proved something.
'So then?' the priest said.
'Better not to believe - and be a brave man.'
'I see - yes. And of course, if one belived the Governor did not exist or the jefe, if we could pretend that this prison was not a prison at all but a garden, how brave we could be then.'
'That's just foolishness' (p.126)

I didn't find the book hard to read in the sense of not wanting to continue it. I was certainly caught up in his fate and needed to see what happened, despite the sense of inevitability about the conclusion.

One of the reasons I found the book hard to enjoy was a sense of 'worthiness' about the whole thing, not helped by a previous owner's odd pencil scribblings in the margin! It brought back the feeling of reading Hardy for GCSE coursework and such...struggling under a burden of 'themes' and motifs and feeling like I should be taking some higher 'understanding' and 'appreciation' from the whole affair.
Despite all this, I have a feeling the 'whisky priest' will stick in my mind for a while and he has certainly given me leave to stop and think, so perhaps a good read after all...