Rating: 
Summary: A liberating experience... like Greek Mythology.....
Review: This book is about the re-examination of his life by a staid British middle-aged bank manager. At the beginning Harry accepts the conventional ideas of his day and is headed for a common retired life. His aunt (and something more...) arrives at the scene and promptly drags him to another world, a world where the assumptions Harry lived by are cast by the wayside. With time Harry grows, and is able to attain the pleasures life offers (the word attain has been used intentionally with thought). The book ends on a charming note with Harry marrying a younger woman with whom he reads poetry. Greene's message is universal and endures through time. Every age has its assumptions, and the perceptive reader will be able to filter out Greene's message even if the setting looks unfamiliar.JS
Rating: 
Summary: Read the Quiet American or the Power and the Glory instead
Review: This is a terribly mundane book. By using a boring middle-aged bank manager as the first person Graham greene successfully reduces travels across two continents to mere tedium. The obvious objective is to present extravagant and improbable adventures through the eyes of an innocent surburbanite and thus make them funny. It doesn't work - the bank manager is immediately accepting of his aunt's eccentricities, the humour is obvious and prohibitively antiquated (I admit it was written some time ago) and the description of the wonderful places they visit terribly superficial. The aunt may have been shocking 50 years ago - but no longer.
Rating: 
Summary: Great contrast between the two main characters
Review: This is a wonderful book, and its depth -- which is not apparent at first glance -- comes out when you examine the contrast in personalities between Harry and his aunt.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of time; don't bother reading this one
Review: This is the sort of rubbishy book you get from writers who are sufficiently well-established not to need to make the effort any more.
The book lacks any worthwhile plot. It just meanders from A to B to C to D until, presumably, the writer thinks he has written enough arbitrary random material in a clever-clever manner to call it a "book". Then, the end. Off it goes to the publisher.
The content is unnecessarily overcomplicated. Too many characters, in too many places, are brought in. Too many clever things are said for the sake of saying clever things. Not enough happens. Result: a mess, cobbled together, a boring old-fashioned pretentious book that wastes the reader's time.
2/5
Rating:
Summary: Not one to miss if you hated Brighton Rock
Review: This isn't the best novel Greene ever wrote, but it's a worthy one and it isn't Brighton Rock, thank goodness. Anyone who's read good (non-Brighton Rock) Graham Greene will probably be hungry for more. Travels With My Aunt is a worthy piece of the 'more' that's available out there, most of it struggling through the long upward battle toward being the 'best' of Graham Greene, never succeeding. This doesn't involve a priest in Spain named Quixote and therefore can't be the pentultimate. Read it anyway and be glad there's yet another Greene book in the literary universe that isn't Brighton Rock.
Rating:
Summary: Not one to miss if you hated Brighton Rock
Review: This isn't the best novel Greene ever wrote, but it's a worthy one and it isn't Brighton Rock, thank goodness. Anyone who's read good (non-Brighton Rock) Graham Greene will probably be hungry for more. Travels With My Aunt is a worthy piece of the 'more' that's available out there, most of it struggling through the long upward battle toward being the 'best' of Graham Greene, never succeeding. This doesn't involve a priest in Spain named Quixote and therefore can't be the pentultimate. Read it anyway and be glad there's yet another Greene book in the literary universe that isn't Brighton Rock.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining farce worth reading.
Review: Thoroughly enjoyable light fare. Middle-aged banker runs off with wild old aunt from Europe to South America.
Several aspects of this book make it worth while. First of all, it really is funny. Second, the accounts of interactions of the main characters with government and custom agents are really satirically true.
Negatives are that the plot and ending are shallow and contrived.
All in all, you could find lots worse books to read for amusement.
Rating:
Summary: Age is no measure of vitality
Review: Travels With My Aunt is a fairly short amusing farce, that chronicles the impact of long lost Aunt Augusta coming back into the Henry's life. Aunt Augusta is very old (we never learn quite how old)but vital and lively dragging our initially reluctant hero half way around the world into a dark world of smuggling, South American Dictatorships and the CIA. Middle Aged Henry in contrast in cautious, timid, bored and dull in the extreme. A Bank Manager forced to retire early after a merger, Henry has thrown himself into a life of Daliah growing and visiting rather than worshiping at the local church, as his entertainment. Initially shocked by his wild octaganerian Auntie, he develops a taste for new adventure and living life on the edge. Travels With My Aunt is clearly not what you would call typical Greene, however it works because of the stark contrast between the characters. Aunt Augusta is a wanton disgraceful character that captures your affection immediately, while Henry is a good but boring man that fails to penetrate the emotions beyond a kind of grudging pity. Beyond the humor of his farce Greene challenges us to live, not merely exist and in doing so enjoy what little time we have. He illustrates that if we achieve the goal of removing all risk in our lives to guarantee longevity, we have destroyed the essence of life and longevity is therefore undesirable. In addition to the novel I have seen Travels With My Aunt as a very clever and entertaining stage play, which I would also recommend. This is not the authors greatest work by any means, however it is hugely enjoyable, very funny and has a message that we all would do well to heed. All in all a great little package that is well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Age is no measure of vitality
Review: Travels With My Aunt is a fairly short amusing farce, that chronicles the impact of long lost Aunt Augusta coming back into the Henry's life. Aunt Augusta is very old (we never learn quite how old)but vital and lively dragging our initially reluctant hero half way around the world into a dark world of smuggling, South American Dictatorships and the CIA. Middle Aged Henry in contrast in cautious, timid, bored and dull in the extreme. A Bank Manager forced to retire early after a merger, Henry has thrown himself into a life of Daliah growing and visiting rather than worshiping at the local church, as his entertainment. Initially shocked by his wild octaganerian Auntie, he develops a taste for new adventure and living life on the edge. Travels With My Aunt is clearly not what you would call typical Greene, however it works because of the stark contrast between the characters. Aunt Augusta is a wanton disgraceful character that captures your affection immediately, while Henry is a good but boring man that fails to penetrate the emotions beyond a kind of grudging pity. Beyond the humor of his farce Greene challenges us to live, not merely exist and in doing so enjoy what little time we have. He illustrates that if we achieve the goal of removing all risk in our lives to guarantee longevity, we have destroyed the essence of life and longevity is therefore undesirable. In addition to the novel I have seen Travels With My Aunt as a very clever and entertaining stage play, which I would also recommend. This is not the authors greatest work by any means, however it is hugely enjoyable, very funny and has a message that we all would do well to heed. All in all a great little package that is well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: the dark side
Review: Underneath the facade of a frothy farce about a Caspar Milquetoast banker and his eccentric and adventurous aunt lies a dark tale of a totally selfish adventuress and the illegitimate son whom she corrupts. The so-called aunt is actually part of the demi monde , smuggler and prostitute, abettor of a Nazi collaborator and a con man, possibly an adjunct to a murder. The British Empire-type characters might have been fashioned by Agatha Christie in the 20's and 30's. The only hint that the book was written in the '60's is the young American hippie girl the banker meets on the Orient Express to Istanbul. The existential parts have to do with middle age and mortality. It was a quick and interesting read, not typical of earlier books by Graham Greene, such as The Power and the Glory.
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