The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene

"After years of waiting

Nothing came
As your life flashed before your eyes
You realize

I'm a reasonable man
Get off, get off, get off my case"

     ("Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" by Radiohead, from Amnesiac )

I checked how many books I've read of Graham Greene - this is his 11th. For one author, that's quite a lot, but this is the first time I've used the medium of an audiobook to read him. But I keep returning to him. He usually has a needling question, which he presents within a fast moving narrative - with an exotic setting, more usually than not.

This book is set in, Sierra Leone during the time of world war II, and it concerns the small contingent of British citizens working on their crown colony. While the war time environment offers a necessary background, the main theme the limits of reasonableness and responsibility towards others.

 Greene troubles the reader with the concept of Catholicism, and its guilt. Greene  infers that a reasonable man cannot live  by his clear consciousness within Catholicism. Men err - and a man true to himself will not be deluded by the concept of confession and especially, penance. 

Introducing Henry Scobie ! Scobie, the Just !  The Just, highly principled Henry Scobie finds life unbearable in a tangle of official life, married life and a secret infatuation.  Greene suggests that a reasonable man, can be an unnamed saint, despite his sinful ways, for in his heart he wants to be reasonable towards all - usually an unachievable end -

 "the saint whose name nobody could remember"

Greene paints a variety of characters around our protagonist, Henry Scobie. Liz Scobie, Helen, Wilson, Yusuf are all presented with their full glory of selfish unfair ends. Yet they regret nothing till the end. If Scobie had, but an ounce of the hypocrisy and selfishness that most of these characters lived with, day in day out, Scobie would've had the best of all worlds.

Most consider this as Greene's masterpiece.  I don't recall an instance where the author addressed morality, integrity and guilt with such a philosophical bent as in this instance. While "The Human Factor" is the book that has made the most impression for me, along with "Our man in Havana", this sure can be racked alongside given the pertinent troubling questions that Green asks our collective minds.