Rating: 
Summary: Where is YOUR leproserie?
Review: Although set in a Catholic Mission, it would be a mistake to pigeon-hole this as a Catholic novel by a Catholic author. We struggle today with the same questions Querry did ~ vocation vs. job, identity, image, purpose and faith. Like Querry, it is only by a journey to the seemingly inaccessible darkness will we find the people and the challenges that allow access to redemption and transformation. This would be a rewarding choice for your book club's next selection as it invites the reader to take a hard look at their expectations of themselves, society and God.
Rating: 
Summary: Effective, in an understated way.
Review: An ecclesiastic architect and ladies man decides all is vanity, and his life's work, despite the accolades garnered, is trash. He is spiritually dead, a "burnt out case", and ends up, mostly by chance, at a leper colony in the heart of Africa, where they make use of his architectural skills. The book is quite readable, thanks to Greene's writing talent, notwithstanding that the plot is limited until near the end. While Graham has nothing startling to say, the book is effective in an understated way.
Rating:
Summary: A novel for adults
Review: Graham Greene's mastery of diction and description is evidenced in the first 180 pages of this book. The ending, however, is rife with histrionics; it's a cheap out to an otherwise engaging read. Though some may equate this with Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (and Greene properly chastises the reader for this mental comparison), Greene, however, manages to pull of something which is altogether more realistic and stripped of illusion
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Summary: Pendele
Review: Greene employs themes of faith and unbelief of all kinds in this novel. As with most of Greene's serious works, it's not easily read; if you want to be comfortable, try his "entertainments", and yet I wouldn't even guarantee that those novels wouldn't leave you feeling unease.Essentially, this is the story of a famous architect who runs away from civilization to a leper colony in Africa. He wants the world to forget him entirely, but the world will not leave him to anonymity. Even in the leper colony his deeds are misinterpreted to be perhaps greater--or at least other--than what they actually were. A doubting priest siezes on Querry's kindness to an injured man as proof of Querry's saintliness; a venal yellow journalist broadcasts Querry's run from the world as the selfless work of another Schweitzer. Just about everything Querry does, whether purposely or inadvertently, is misconstrued by those around him who somehow need to elevate him above themselves as proof that God or good exists. In the end, in true Greene fashion, this situation is ironically reversed; those who at first would believe only in Querry's sainthood come to believe an outright lie about him, much to their disappointment and outrage and Querry's own end. What did I take away from this? Good literature remains relevant throughout the years; what was true in 1961 is true in 2000 and was true a millenium ago. We build up our saints and heroes (and politicians) often with our own desires, whether they have done anything good or not and tear them down just as arbitrarily. More than that: truth exists, goodness exists, but we in our human weakness (and often unwittingly) find ways to distort that truth and goodness to our own purposes. Gloopygirls assessment? I liked the book. I'm not about to canonize Green--or gleefully tear him down. I'm not qualified either way--but I know what I like...
Rating:
Summary: Scared of lightning.
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, as I have so many of Greene's others... in fact, this one is my favorite so far. For me, a significant theme in the book is that it is very difficult to run away from one's true vocation. In A Burnt-Out Case, the main character Querry tries to do just that. He feels that he has lost the passion he once had for his gifting in architecture, and he tries to run and hide in obscurity... to go into an early retirement. Due to his immense fame, he needs to go far (geographically) to do this; hence, he finds himself at the end of an arduous tsetse-fly infested boat ride in the heart of an isolated leper colony in the Belgian Congo. Here, with the help of the many priests who run the colony, and a nosy journalist thrown into the mix, Querry will find out just how hard the ground is in which he attempts to bury his talents. For a better synopsis of the story, note the Merriam-Webster review above. And since that review gives away the ending anyway, I won't feel so bad about telling you what I considered to be the one (albeit minor) "possible" flaw in the story's denouement. (NOTE: To criticize Graham Greene seriously makes me fearful of the next lightning storm.) However, towards the end, Mme. Rycker has accused Querry of a terrible indiscretion, and this throws her husband into a somewhat understandable fit of rage. The priests also, believing Mme. Rycker's accusations, reject Querry, and he is humiliated and unjustly condemned. Querry knows how serious the situation has now become. But he does not take it seriously. In his defense, he simply claims to Rycker, "I haven't even kissed your wife. She doesn't attract me in that way." A key fact here is that he is actually telling the truth. Rycker's jealous rage is unjustified. Another key fact is that Mme. Rycker also knows that nothing happened between them, and talks about that fact freely with Querry just minutes after his tumultuous verbal exchange with her husband. I kept asking myself... why didn't Querry arrange this interview with Mme. Rycker at a time and place where Rycker himself could have secretly overheard their conversation? In this way, Rycker could have clearly overheard his wife contradicting the allegations that she had written in her diary! In this way Querry would have cleared his name. Read the book and see if you don't agree with me! The only reason Querry could have logically been as non-concerned about the issue as he was, is because he was so gentlemanly and honorable, he did not want Mme. Rycker to experience the wrath of her husband, and was willing to bear that burden himself. And bear it he did! At any rate, the thought of anyone other than Leo Tolstoy criticising Graham Greene's writing... well, it makes me shudder. And it's cloudy out tonight, so I must go hide. 4 and a half stars!
Rating:
Summary: Do I just have a sick sense of humor?
Review: I'm reviewing this book because I see it differently from all other reviews I've read. I've seen it described as bleak, disenchanted, dis-everything, but they never mention the humor. Yes, I think this book is funny. Scathingly, satirically, mercilessly funny. Now, I honestly don't know how I'd describe this book to a friend: "This guy gets sick of life in general and drops out to live in a leper colony in Africa...you'll laugh your head off!" Doesn't sound right, does it? I guess it's just schadenfreude, taking delight from another person's pain. Which isn't as awful as it sounds; most of the pain Querry goes through is high irritation caused by people insisting that they know his true nature...and as far as the guy is concerned, they couldn't be more wrong. It's a comedy of errors, like Candide or The Lavender Hill Gang:
"You're loving! You're saintly! You have strong faith in God. Hey, I hear you're going to build a church!"
"What in the hell are you talking about? I think religion is a crock, I seduce and dump women, and people in general make me retch. I'm a jerk!"
"And you're so humble, too."
"AAAGH!" These people see what they want to see in Querry; he keeps trying to set them straight and fails; he keeps giving up and walking away. Querry regards it as a pain in the posterior, but he doesn't lose any sleep over it. You can laugh at it the way you'd laugh at someone trying to hang wallpaper one-handed or supervise a roomful of screaming preschoolers. It's hopeless. When the reporter shows up to write a baloney-filled article about Querry's 'saintly' quest, Querry seems to find the guy a bit refreshing--because the reporter's a liar, but at least he *knows* he's a liar! (The reporter creates whatever his audience wants to hear; think Rita Skeeter. There, I've compared a Graham Greene novel to Harry Potter. The Internet will now explode.) I say, read this book with an eye to the ridiculous side of the plot. There's a lot here to like; gorgeous sarcasm, black humor, and a character with an attitude from Hell. It bites like a wolf right down to the last line on the last page, and I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: This Guy is Good
Review: I've been a fan of Greene's for a while now, and so far, I haven't read a bad book. This may be one of his better ones, and that's saying a lot. He is, perhaps, the best and most consistent novelist of the twentieth century.
This is the story of Querry, a famous architect, who realizes he has lost (or never) had the ability to love. He feels nothing but indifference. That is when he embarks into the African jungle looking for escape (or redemption). He lives at a leproserie run by priests, becomes friends with Dr. Colin, and becomes something of a burnt-out case.
Greene is just a superb writer. He has so many sentences and passages, that had he written just that one, someone would have remembered him. His characters are complex and honest depictions. Lastly, his themes of love, faith, redemption, pain, and truth are the great ones. A lot of authors are scared to tackle them or knowingly cannot tackle them. Greene can and does.
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Summary: Really Moving and Involving Book
Review: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD. The plot of this book will sound odd in summary. You have to read it to understand. "A Burnt Out Case" takes place in a Catholic-run leproserie in the Belgian Congo. A mysterious man, Querry, arrives by boat and will not say where he is from or why he has traveled so far. He has no medical training, nor any inclination to help the lepers. We eventually learn that Querry is something of a celebrity, already familiar to some of the doctors and priests who work at the leproserie, but we are still unsure about what he is doing there. A "burnt out case" is the term for a leper whose disease has run its course, but left him mutilated. The traces of the disease are still on him. Querry is also a burnt-out case. He has experienced pain in life and left it all, but has become hollow and unable to feel. He cannot sympathize with others and their suffering. But over time he begins to help around the leproserie and to establish a kind of friendship with the only doctor there, Doctor Colin. Some of the people around Querry try to make sense out of him, or to fit him into a model they can understand. Father Thomas, a hypocritical and self-righteous priest who would probably be the hero in a different sort of book, is sure that Querry acts out of service to God. So is Rycker, a factory owner who lives nearby with his young wife, whom he treats like something dirty. The young woman is unsure what to make of Querry but finds herself drawn to him. Eventually Parkinson, a self-aggrandizing British journalist, turns up and tries to write about Querry as a Schweitzer-like humanitarian. But none of these people's ideas about Querry are accurate. Much of the book concerns religion, and the presence of God in human beings. It's interesting that Graham Greene, a Catholic, directs our sympathies towards the two atheistic characters, Colin and Querry, while portraying the Catholics as clueless (even if he ultimately wants to use the two atheists to make some kind of religious or at least spiritual point). Querry and Colin understand more than the Catholics ever will. They know that suffering is not a narrative used to illustrate some point about God. An earlier reader remarked unfavorably about the sudden drama near the end. I agree to some extent; at least, the conclusion does not seem inevitable, as it does in some of Greene's other books. But I cannot really complain, as it is foreshadowed somewhat, and is extremely affecting. This book left me too sad to cry. By the end I felt like a burnt-out case.
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Summary: Greene's "Heart of Darkness"
Review: There are many similarities between this novel and Conrad's masterly novella. The protagonist, Querry, like Marlowe, is making a voyage of discovery into the deepest interior of the "Dark Continent." The voyage upriver is even described in much the same manner, as the missionary boat wends its way into an ever more torpid, oppresive atmosphere. Green contrasts the colonial attitudes as represented by the figure of the greedy, exploitative Ryker, with the benevolent,if scattershod, efforts of Father Thomas and the priests and nuns of the leper colony. Though Ryker is far less megalomaniacal than Kurtz, and a lot less intelligent, he too is guided ny notions of entitlement and superiority. This mindset extends to his notions of marriage as well. His young wife has about as much status, in his eyes, as have the natives employed in the Palm Oil production plant he supervises. Ryker also shares much in common with the hotel keeper, Schomberg, in Conrad's Victory. Both are of the "ugly European" variety, motivated by self interest and subject not to genuine passion, but to wounded vanity. Self pride and grandiose imaginings are all either man has. Querry, in A Burnt Out Case, and Heyst, in Victory, are precisely the opposite. These protagonists have essentially lost their identities. They travel to the ends of the earth in an attempt to discover what manner of men they actually are. Querry's end, like Heyst's is almost preordained, yet they do finally discover some semblance of truth about themselves. Greene was not at all happy with the manner in which this book was interpreted by critics and by the public. He blames it and Heart of the Matter, for his having been subsequently labeled a "Catholic" writer. In Ways of Escape, he writes that the book's publication resulted in an outflow of enthusiastic responses: " There must have been something corrupt there, for the book appealed too often to weak elements in its readers. Never had I received so many letters from strangers -- perhaps the majority of them from women and priests. At a stroke I found myself regarded as a Catholic author in England, Europe and America -- the last title to which I had ever aspired." The novel continues, as does much of Greene's oevre, to attract criticism keyed into spiritual and religious themes. That obviously wasn't his intent, and I believe that he deserves a less "catholic" (in its dictionary and religious sense) reading by modern audiences. Though I prefer some of Greene's other works (personal favorites, The Comedians, The Power and the Glory), I recommend this as a highly readable, diverting novel, with enough psychological underpinnings to lend it depth. BEK
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Summary: The unescapable stupids
Review: This is a very good novel, and it is very good because it touches eternal subjects and so will be able to be read and understood for many years to come. What are these subjects? Faith, God, goodness, sainthood, vocation, love and despair. Querry is a very famous architect who at some point in his life feels a depressive boredom about love and his profession. he feels he has never been able to really love a woman, although money and fame have brought many of them to his bed, and he feels a total disdain for religion. So, feeling a terrible void in his life, and being sick of all those people adulating him and writing things that come only from their imaginations, he decides to run away from it all. Choosing a destination by chance, he finds himself in a leprosary deep into "the heart of darkness", in Congo. There, he feels relieved of people's false and volatile attention, and dedicates his energies to help out the priests, building a new hospital for them. He feels coming back to life again, doing something useful for people with a terrible, but now curable, disease. He finds the good company of Dr. Colin (my type of hero) and some of the priests. "Far from the madding crowd", he starts rebuilding his connections to humankind, out of totally unselfish motivations. And then... the stupid fools appear on stage. There are three of them: Rycker, a most unlikable man who has a very young and unhappy wife, the kind of fool who professes to love humankind but is unable to love the specific humans around him. Rycker spreads the word about Querry's identity and spreads also ridiculous stories about his supposed sainthood.
Father Thomas, a nervous wreck of a man who also insists on Querry's sainthood. And finally, a despicable reporter, Parkinson, who starts publishing yellow and distorted articles about Querry. in the end, all this accumulates in the wrong way. Full of deep but unpretentious reflections on the said subjects, this is a truly a novel of ideas and of hard dilemmas. Well recommended.
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