Title: The Comedians

Author: Graham Greene

Type: Fiction

Page Count: 294

Rating: 3.25/5

This isn’t Greene’s best book, but I think he himself would have acknowledged that and it doesn’t mean that there’s anything necessarily wrong with it. He wrote it a little later in his career when he’d run out of money and basically had to come up with something to survive, and while it is a pretty interesting little snapshot in time, I’m not convinced that it aged as well as some of his other novels.

Still, it was cool to get a little glimpse of Haitian life and culture, even if some of the voodoo scenes almost felt a little cliché as a modern reader. There was also a lot of dark comedy here, along with a bunch of pithy little one-liners. The problem is that the story itself was only just strong enough to carry the ideas that it contained.

For me, that means that I probably wouldn’t recommend it to a regular reader, just because I think it serves such a specialist niche interest. I myself only picked it up because I want to slowly read everything that Graham Greene has ever written and I’ve had this one sitting on my to-be-read pile for a while now. I’m glad that I put it off as long as I did, and I’m also glad that I finally read it.

All in all then, it was just okay, and definitely not on the same level as some of his other books. I’d recommend Our Man in Havana or The Quiet American if you’re looking for something entertaining, which is what Greene is best at. But really, all of his books are decent – even this one.

Click here to buy The Comedians.