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Summary: Makes you question your own motives, faith, and love
Review: After I read this book, I kept thinking about Scobie and his struggles with his faith or lack of it. When I was reading the novel, I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now. The complexities of his relationship with his wife, his job, and his faith have kept me thinking of different scenarios, things he could have done. Perhaps what I like best about Graham Greene's writing is that he doesn't dictate your feelings. You are free to make your own judgments of the characters. In fact, it is very easy to make arguments one way or another about what the characters believe because he doesn't spell it out for you as if you were a child. By not overwriting the characters, there is some mystery, as in real life. Can you ever truly know another person wholly? Also recommended: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, which is even more complex and mysterious.
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Summary: A Very Absorbing Read!
Review: This novel is a brilliant masterpiece which speaks directly to the reader's heart.The writing is of such finesse and the plot so powerful that you won't be able to put down the book until you find out how Major Scobie "resolves his problems" in the end (his problems centre on how to ensure his wife's, his mistress's AND [even] God's happiness even if it means he has to pay the ultimate price for it). The novel will evoke every kinds of feelings in the reader. I know I felt love, tenderness, sadness, sometimes impatience but always PITY for Major Scobie, a deeply religious man who is merciful, responsible and kind towards everyone else but whom nobody really cares about, what more pities. Even though "everyone" claims to love Scobie or to value his friendship, they are actually selfish, ordinary people who have their own hidden agenda (even if they don't realize it) and want something or other from Scobie. All these "demands" weigh the poor man down so badly that in the end, he is driven to commit the final act of damnation so that (or so he thinks) the ones he loves will be free of him and they will no longer be unhappy. It's truly wonderful and fulfilling to read a novel which offers such a great insight into the mind's psychology and the human heart. I've been a fan of Greene's works since I read "The End of the Affair" which I loved dearly. I believe that one doesn't have to be a Catholic to appreciate and understand the novel, despite its heavy references to the religion (eg. about sins, confession, communion, repentence, etc). I can't praise this novel highly enough! Just pick it up! It may even transform some of your views on life (for the better). If not, at the very least it'll transform you instantly into a Graham Greene fan (that is, if you aren't one already)!
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Summary: Hell and God in a novel by a master storyteller
Review: Just like in Graham Greene's 'The End of the Affair' --and in many of his books-- God plays a crucial role in his 'The Heart of the Matter'. It is because of Him that the novel's protagonist Scobie ends up taking drastic --and tragic-- decisions. 'Heart' is set in a West African state, where a British man called Scobie lives with his wife and some other foreigner, while the War is consuming the world. He is a police officer who is very honest, competent and has no ambitions in his career --to his wife's disappointment. Louise Scobie, the wife, gets shocked when she learns that he was passed over for promotion. She feels that the most important people in local society --i.e. the English ones-- don't like them, and she spends most of time trying to be their close friend. When she's tired of that place she decides to move to South African, leaving her husband alone. But for her travel, he is forced to borrow money from a Syrian criminal, who likes Scobie because he is incorruptible. Or so he thought. Not long after his wife leaves, Scobie meets the young, beautiful and widower Helen. He falls in love with her, and that's when his downward spiral begins. He is tangled in a web of lies and has to deceive and betray his wife, friends and department. But, what makes matter worse is that he is a very religious man, and to God's eyes he is committing a huge sin, and this is what most consumes Scobie. At a certain point, discussing with friends the idea of hell, Scobie states that he doesn't believe that hell is a place full of flames, but the sense of loss. And this shows how Scobie is sent to hell --in life! -- when starts losing everything --even his dignity. The devotion to God -- or so believes Scobie-- has a main role in this point of his life, and he is a torn man, fighting against what he wants, because he thinks it is wrong. Greene is a master storyteller, and is able to create very believable characters and situations. He once stated that he believed Scobie to be a little far fetched, but even if it is true, the character serves well to a specific purpose. The language is very elaborated without being difficult or boring, it only enhances the reading of such a great novel.
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Summary: Grim Story; Strong Sense of the Human
Review: "The Heart of the Matter" is the sad story of a man tormented by an inability to live up to the dictates of his religion. Deputy Police Commissioner Scobie begins the book as a rare subject, an English colonial policeman in Africa not on the take. He is cursed, however, with a wife who constantly, if not always overtly, reminds him that the life he has provided for them is beneath her. Louise Scobie is one of those Catholics of the mid-twentieth century that believes things like missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin, but unfortunately can't bring herself to "avoid superbia" as the nuns used to admonish schoolchildren in the fifties and sixties. In other words, Louise is a snob. When it's announced that her husband won't be promoted when the commissioner retires she simply can't deal with the shame of it. Most of Scobie's capacity for love died several years earlier at a boarding school in England when their nine-year-old daughter was taken by a sudden illness--the difficulty of communication and the fact of World War II prevented him from even attending the funeral--and the third person narrator notes how he retreated into his job, but "[t]he less he needed Louise the more he felt responsible for her happiness." Louise does see Scobie's struggles, even gently accusing him of wishing she were dead. He responds, as he always does, that her happiness is his priority, and promises to find a way to pay for her passage to South Africa, where she'll be able to be with friends and without the ignominy of not being the new commissioner's wife. The only way to find the money is to borrow it from a well known but smooth Syrian crime boss who likes Scobie because he can trust him to be incorruptible. Crossing the proprietary line of borrowing the money flows into crossing the mortal sin line as Scobie takes up with a much younger woman. While he grows to love Helen, whom he meets in a hospital while she recovers from nearly dying in a shipwreck, he cannot love what he sees himself becoming. Scobie's struggles with despair are moving and genuine, even as the reader perhaps wishes Scobie were just a little bit smarter than he is. If he were of course, he wouldn't be Scobie, never able to attain his desired simple life where he can do his job and feel loved and loving, redeemed and free. Greene's narrator is sympathetic and not particularly judgmental. The style is clean and direct and the book is well organized. I won't necessarily rush out and read another book by Greene, as it's time I avoided reminding myself of the Church-inflicted and self-inflicted moral tortures that Catholics put themselves through. He's a fine writer, though, and "The Heart of the Matter" is a fine book.
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Summary: variations on the themes of love, faith and despair
Review: The Heart of the Matter, as do many of Greene's novels, considers the questions of faith, good and evil from a Catholic point of view. Greene, a convert to Catholisism himself, imbues the character of Major Scobie with a fierce sense of justice, duty and responsibility. He is alone as an honest man in the less than honest world of the Ivory Coast during the early days of the Second World War. As the assistant comissioner of police, he sifts evidence and weighs the scales of justice carfully, but as with all of Greene's protagonist he suffers from a fatal flaw, his relationships with women. His duty towards a wife he no longer loves forces him into a compromising position with a well know Syrian moneylender in order to fulfill her wish to be sent away from the colony. Falling in love with a newly-widowed woman thirty years his junior and the affair that follows plunges him into further turmoil, worsened by the return of his wife. Throughout, Scobie fails to resolve his love and duty towards the two women. In seeking to place their happiness above his own, and please them both, he damns himself before his maker, and falls ever deeper into the tangle of lies in which he finds himself. Greene's protagonist arouses pathos in the reader, as we watch an essentially good man ground down by conflicting emotions and responsibilities. Simple solutions seem outside Scobie's ken, and no amount of wishing can prevent the end towards which he rushes headlong. If you have never read any of Graham Greene's fantastic novels, may I suggest that you make "The Heart of the Matter" your first, it won't be your last.
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Summary: The Missing Link Between Joeseph Conrad and Robert Stone
Review: Orwell reviewed the "Heart of the Matter" and somewhat trashed it making fun of Greene's perception of Catholic damnation. Orwell taunted Greene saying that his view of Hell was not some horrific Boschian Inferno but more of a Night Club of the damned. However, religous perception's aside, Graham Greene could weave a tale and bring characters to life on the page through dialogue and crystalline detail of the physical world in a way that Orwell never could. THOTM stands out as a great literary achievment for the way it studies the relationship of a Man to his Faith and to Love, not divine love but human love, or in Scobie's case: all too human love. Only Graham Greene can fuse the plot lines of a thriller replete with murder, diamond smuggling, adultry, bureacratic careering in the African sub Sahara with a novel whose central question is conflicted GRACE & FAITH. This novel is truly a study of the human soul of Scobie the police officer whose world is ruptured when his integrity becomes impugned by acts of Love that cause him to lie and commit crimes. Greene pits good against evil and then blurs the boundaries until the world of his fictional landscape is inverted and nothing is as it seems. A masterpiece by a writer who easily courts immortality.
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Summary: Greene's best work.
Review: This is my favorite Greene work, and his masterly skill of creating realistic characters is truly on display. This is the story of Scobie, a quite man with few aspirations, and his inner battle with religion and love. Scobie's struggle is real and powerful, and Mr. Greene captures every moment with clarity and style. I highly recommend this marvelous book to any reader.
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Summary: The heart of a man tortured by his own conscience
Review: This novel is set someplace in Western Africa in the early 1940s. Scobie is an English policeman and has been in the country for 15 years. He's married to Louise and their marriage is fading, their only child having died a few years before. The weather is hot and clammy, there is always a rat scampering around their house, they have to sleep under mosquito netting, and he has occasional bouts of malaria. As the story opens, he has just been overlooked for a promotion. But he really doesn't care. He still loves the place. World War 2 is going on and one of his jobs is to check the incoming and outgoing ships for contraband. And there are always hard choices to make regarding right and wrong. There's his wife's desire to leave the country, an unscrupulous merchant and a young attractive widow. And, when he makes several foolish choices and his life spins out of control, he's troubled on a deep religious level. He's a Catholic and seriously believes in the teachings of the church. This book transported me to a time and place that has always fascinated me. Once there, it brought me into the heart of the man. He is tortured by his own conscience. And I was able to understand it all. There's very little action in the book; it's all about his inner turmoil. I couldn't stop reading though, right down to the inevitable sad conclusion. The book is a bit of a masterpiece. I highly recommend it.
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Summary: Just like the song
Review: I read this book because I heard someone say on the radio
that Don Henley's (former Eagles band member) song by the same title (Heart of the matter) was written after Don read this
book. I don't know if that's true, but if you've ever heard the song, it has the same exact theme of the book. It's a book about the various sides of people and how they handle those feelings married with the expetations of others. It's not a light-hearted read, but it's a great book.
Rating: 
Summary: Frustrating, but very good literature
Review: This book was very sad and frustrating. This man named Scobie, so honest and always well-meaning, always craving peace from his self-created hell. Always he feels pity for the women he once loved, and out of the pity grows a sense of responsibility, an intense desire for them to be happy. In the end this is too much for him.
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