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Summary: the power of humility
Review: The other reviewers say it better than I can, so I won't bother with praising this classic. I will, however, simply say that I found myself very frustrated throughout the reading. This means that the book was gripping and pulled me in, touching my pride about right and wrong. How true it is that humble love is the most powerful force in the universe! How true it is that I so often want the will of God to be my own. The outlaw priest of this book taught me once again that only those who live the prayer "Thy will be done" have the right to speak to others about the will of God. Very much worth reading! Enjoy!
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Summary: The Inescapable Love
Review: I am only now discovering Graham Greene; this was the second of his works that I've read. It is not a book to be taken up for a little light entertainment; I'm still digesting it, you might say. It stays with a person. Superficially, it is about government oppression and man's inhumanity to man; more specifically, it is about love and its dual power to transform and destroy. Read it on whatever level you choose; basically, it is about a Roman Catholic priest struggling with his faith and intense guilt while trying to elude the forces of a government that has declared his religion illegal. I came away from it moved and disturbed, which in my opinion (humble tho' it be) is the purpose of literature: to create a mirror for the reader herself. What flaws do I posess that masquerade as virtue, what overpowering desire truly motivates my actions? In this novel the main character, the whiskey priest, takes flight not only from his persecutors but also from himself; in the end he finds he can only redeem himself by returning. And there I find another question to haunt me...did the priest indeed find redemption in the end?
Rating: 
Summary: Heroic? It is for you to decide
Review: This novel by Graham Greene had me a little confused throughout it. The characters are coming and going a lot and you can get lost in the thick storyline. The book takes you through the adventures of a whiskey priest on the run from authorities. Churches are outlawed in his state and he is trying to make it to safe territory. The author's attention to detail is evident throughout the book, which in some cases added to the story, yet in others seemed to drag it out too long. The one thing that kept me interested in this book was wanting to get to the big ending. The novel kept my mind wondering what was going to happen next. One chapter would have you thinking one thing and then a few chapters later you were thinking just the opposite. Overall this book was good. It kept me interested most of the time, but occasionally seemed to get to wordy and I would get lost in the details. I would recommend this book to someone who is not looking for that same old happy ending adventure story.
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Summary: Unromantic Passion
Review: The Power and the Glory, is one of the best books I have ever read. Greene takes the raw passion of life and puts it in ink on the page. This novel tells the story of a priest shortly after a civil war in Mexico. A quick backstory, after the civil war southern provinces of Mexico, Tobasco and Chiapas, became very skeptical of the Roman Catholic church and tried to take it away from the people. The preist is the only one left in the province, and throughout the story is on the run from the law. The preist who considers himself a failure must rediscover himself in the midst of being a fugitive. The epic quest every man takes of trying to find himself. Greene uses uncoated realism throughout the book. He puts no sugar on top and leaves no stone of the heart unturned. Every person should read this book to experience the true unromantic nature of the book.
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Summary: Efficient but Not Very Memorable
Review: This is the 2nd book by Graham Greene I have read, and much like the other, this one was written quite efficiently. That's about the best thing I can say about Green the writer: he's very, very efficient. Everything reads very smoothly, the story flows, the characters flow in and out.
But there is a problem with that: Nothing really stands out in a book written this efficiently, as nothing really stood out in the other Greene book I read. Nothing very memorable happens, no character had any truly memorable eccentricity--though the happenings and the characters are quite realistically developed.
Greene just writes a little too much like everyday, mundane life for me, I guess. The situations he writes about might call for more spectacular things to happen during the story, maybe; in another author's hands they probably would; in Greene's, we get authentic, real life, but real life, everyday real life, is not the stuff of legends or even is it the stuff of memory very often...
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Summary: Whiskey Priest on the Run from the Gun, Keep the head low
Review: You'll love it! Wait... maybe you won't. I really don't know you well enough to recommend books to you over the intranent and at this stage of our relationship.
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Summary: Proof that not all intellectuals are atheists
Review: Most Christian novelists aren't out to convert, not to the same extent that random lunatics on streetcorners are, but it's figures like Greene and Flannery O'Connor who have made the best argument, to me, for the validity of the religious life. It's best expressed in a work of art because it's so fragile and abstract. Which is not to say that 'The Power and the Glory' is some kind of one-track propoganda pamphlet; just the opposite. It depicts a complex reality in which the idea of God keeps re-emerging, as the only answer to the bizzare problems the characters are faced with; Greene's strength, and the strength of most great authors, is that they don't have to manipulate reality to get their characters to say what they want them to say. The vision of sickness and longing, ruin and folly; everything somehow points in one direction. I read that Greene claimed this novel to be 'written to a thesis,' and even though it's so much more complex than morality plays like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, I see that.
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Summary: Fleeing from God himself
Review: In what has to be one of the best-written novels of all times, Greene tells us the story of a nameless priest, running away from himself, from God and from fascist authorities in 1930's Mexico. A little background: in the 20's and 30's, Mexico suffered a civil war concerning the repression or outright prohibition of religious cults. The war was mainly concentrated in central-western Mexico, but curiously enough the place where the repression against Catholics was harshest was Tabasco. Tabasco is a southern state, only recently developed as a result of its huge reserves of oil and gas. It is all jungle and swamps. Back in the 30's it was really a dreadful place to live. A governor called Tomas Garrido completely banned not only the public practice of Catholic rites, but the very existence of the religious cult in the state. To this end, he formed armed bands called "the Red Shirts", which searched for priests in order to force them to get married or be shot.Greene's novel concerns this state of affairs, and his nameless "hero" is THE last priest in the state. The cops are looking for him; he is running away. That in itself makes for a good tale, but of course, Greene being a truly great novelist, "The Power and the Glory" goes to a higer level by depicting a man consumed by doubt and guilt, a lone soul who is running away from cruel atheists but also from his own conscience. He feels guilt for having been called a "whiskey priest" and for having fathered a daughter whom he loves desperately, in spite of the child's despise for him. The priest wanders around, hiding from the authorities and trying to reach the border with Chiapas, where the persecution was much lighter. It is really a travel through an outer and an inner hell. Greene displays all his mastery here, to dig in the soul of this troubled and tormented man, to depict the savage scenery with no Romanticism whatsoever about it. A barely inhabited jungle-swamp is one of the most hostile environments you can think of. Not a single word is gratuitous, the prose is one of the most controlled and unsentimental I've ever read. Of course, the tale is full of Christian allegories and metaphors, from the Judas-like peasant trying to sell the priest, to teh dead child and others. It is no sermon, though. The author is never intrusive: he's just a voice telling a desperate, tragic and illuminating story, well beyond politics or religion. Most recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Deceptively Simple, Brilliant Story
Review: I was directed toward Graham Greene by my dad, who had read him in his 20's and 30's. This was the first one I read, and I loved it. He's incredibly easy to read, almost to the point where you might mis the subtext of what he's getting at with each line. Powerful story!
Rating:
Summary: A Catholic Gem!
Review: This is Greene's masterpiece. He based the book on his travels in Mexico during the persecution of the Church. This book is based on events in the state of Chiapas during the 1920s. Greene hated the treatment of Catholics by the Communists who blamed the Church for poverty and injustice. Greene noted that it was worse under Communism. This book reads more like an extremely painful adventure. The main character is typical Greene, referred to as the *whiskey priest;* repentant due to having been *steeped* in sin previously. Racked with guilt and fear, he stumbles onto one unfortunate situation after another. While the priest's unhappy existence is powerful, his ending is glorious.
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