STARK TRAGEDY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23139, 10 September 1938, Page 4 (Supplement)

STARK TRAGEDY

HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES A 17-year-old lad, who is the guiding spirit in n group of race racketeers at an English seaside resort, who does not hesitate to commit murder, and who marries a girl for whom he fools contempt merely, because she is a possible witness against him, sounds an improbable character for a novel. In "Brighton Hock," however, Graham Greene introduces such a boy and does it so well that the reader's imagination is stirred to a vivid realisation of events which go on in the tvorld of which the average person does not touch even the fringe. The boy, Pinkie, neither drinks nor smokes and dislikes women with a sort of inbred horror. He murders, however, with scarcely a qualm, and it is not until a cheery, vulgar woman, who "likes her stout and port and believes in right and wrong," takes a hand in the game that the boy is set "on the run."

With liis magnificent command of dialogue and his obvious sensitiveness to human nature, Greene invests his characters with a vivid, though tragic, life, and the novel, while not pleasant, serves a purpose in revealing how dreadful an effect slum environment does have on certain of its products. "Brighton Rock," by Graham Greene. (Heinemann.)