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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780143039297
ISBN: 0143039296
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2005-08-30
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics

Victor Baxter is a young boy when a secretive stranger known simply as “the Captain” brings him from his boarding school to London. Victor becomes the surrogate son and companion of a woman named Liza, who renames him “Jim” and depends on him for any news about the world outside their door. Raised in these odd yet touching circumstances, Jim is never quite sure of Liza’s relationship to the Captain, who is often away on mysterious errands. It is not until Jim reaches manhood that he confronts the Captain and learns the shocking truth about the man, his allegiances, and the nature of love.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Alone in the world
Review: This is a minor novel by Greene, although his major themes are here. It was his last and the feeling that prevails is the loneliness of life, the feeling of being a permanent outsider. Victor is the son of a cruel man and a deceased mother, miserably living in boarding school. On his twelfth birthday, instead of his father a complete stranger shows up to pick him up and take him to lunch and maybe a movie. But instead of returning the boy, the stranger, known only as "The Captain", tells him he has won him at backgammon, and proposes him to go and live in London. Hating boarding school, Victor decides to go to London, where he is placed in a young woman's apartment, to live there as a kind of stepson. The woman is the occasional mistress of the Captain and former lover of Victor's father. Victor adopts the new name of Jim. The Captain, who is obviously a criminal, appears at increasingly longer intervals. In the meantime, Jim and the woman, Liza, develop a kind of mother-and-son relationship. Eventually Jim grows up and becomes a journalist. When the woman dies, Jim looks for the Captain and finds out he is living in Panama, where he travels to meet him. There he discovers the Captain is involved in drug-dealing.

Although this is not at the level of Greene's masterpieces, it is an interesting one to read, because Greene's obsessions are present in a haunting way: moral dilemmas, solitude, the strange relationships we develop with the people our fate brings us close to. Worth a try.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A wonderful surprise
Review: Publishers reprinting an author's entire opus are always claiming obscure works have been unfairly overlooked. In the case of "The Captain and the Enemy," that is surely true. Any reader will find all sorts of intrigues in this little-known work. But even for a Greene fan, like me, this was something of a revelation--one also made possible through the brilliant introduction by John Auchard. You'll gain more insight into a complex author from this short novel and new introduction than from three volumnes of most biographies. DGibson from Brooklyn.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Greene's Last Novel
Review: I had read a few negative online reviews of this novel, had looked at the the cover (with King Kong standing there), and I had few hopes. I find the book a remarkable book---and just those qualities that some readers disliked were qualities which impressed me. The fact that some characters, most characters here, are not "fleshed out" is just right, for these people exist in a kind of spare landscape of slim hope and love, and they are no more attached to worldly things or even common social interaction, say, Ahab. As much as anything else here (and perhaps because the world depicted is somewhat vaguely suggested), we get the feel of Graham Greene's deep and mature consciousness, for in fact we are roaming around the inside of his mind more than around any landscape populated with Dickensian people (despite what one of the back-cover reviews says). Greene wrote this novel only three years before he died, and I found it a privilege to be in the company of his maturity, his encroaching despair, his sense of bleakness and crassness, all touched by hints of the power of love. It's a book that deserve more attention, and perhaps you need to be a bit older than younger to appreciate it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Not Greene's best
Review: This is not one of Greene's best books, but it is worth a read if you are a fan of his works. About a third of the way through this book I was ready to chalk it up as a major disappointment. The payoff comes late, and when it does it makes the read well worth the time. The last third of the book is a marvelous sketch of relationships and love. Greene really knows how to put the subtleties of life into words.

This isn't a "buyer beware," it's just a "buyer be patient!" The Greene touch is here, you just have to get to it.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Intriguing novel of love and its mysterious ways
Review: One of the last novels by Graham Greene, "The Captain and the Enemy" was written in 1988, just three years before the death of the master. Although his prose is as always enjoyable, a little detached and sentimental at the same time, in the novel there seems to be an indication that Greene was aware of the shortcomings of the old age. The books is written in a form of a careless memoir with too many holes in it, no doubt intended ones, considering the contents, but now and then Greene ventures into the reflexive mode of general narration, and I couldn't help but have an impression that I listened to an old man's voice of admission. For a writer, it must not have been easy, but then Greene kept writing all his life, and virtually all of his literary heritage has been revered to this day; a wonder the man had never won the Nobel Prize for literature - another proof that one should not hold too much value in such awards.

In a way, "The Captain and the Enemy" is full of contradictions, whether intended or not, but on the other hand, this small book incorporates all lifelong passions of Graham Greene, where yet again he touches the multidimensional subjects of interest from yet another viewpoint. The book starts in a humorous way, to quickly transform into a good-natured and intriguing story of a small boy whose life is one great patchwork, him not having a fixed place in the world, with all family connections never materializing themselves. The mother - dead as long as he remembers; the father, or 'The Devil' as everyone is fond of saying - loses the boy in chess, or was it backgammon? The boy never seems to unveil that mystery which no one bothers to tell him. Then there is the Captain, the winner of the game, whatever it was, and his woman, Lisa. As you shall see when you read the book, there is no other way to call her, but the woman. Never in the center of the storyline, although incredibly essential for one's understanding of the novel, Lisa enters the story as abruptly as she does exit, leaving us virtually scratching our heads. Such is the whole novel, in fact, full of mysteries, secrets, blanks spaces, only some of which shall be filled in eventually.

One of the greatest strengths of the novel is the portrait of the pair, Lisa and the Captain. Although Greene takes infinite care to never really show us them both, or none of them separately for that matter, it seems to me that the key to understanding "The Captain and the Enemy" lies in letting go of the reader's routine, and the yearning for the full explanation, resolution of all threads, explanation one is used to be spoon-fed with. If you accept the fact that the story leaves much to you, all of those blanks to fill in, patchwork to sew together - you are already well-prepared. However, as much as the details are important, the key is to adopt the narrator's viewpoint, or better, the Captain's, if you dare. Why did they live apart from each other all their life, and why it seemed they loved each other dearly, although there's never any real sign of it? Greene was capable of writing a great love story without having his characters ever mention the subject, nor mouth the four-letter word themselves, for that matter. So far away, and so close.

"I brought up the forbidden word. 'Does he love you?'

'Oh, love. They are always saying God loves us. If that's love, I'd rather have a bit of kindness'" [p. 84]

I finished this four-part novel in one day. At first I enjoyed it immensely, but as I read on, I had more and more trouble understanding its real meaning. As the book progresses, we change the scenery and land in Panama of the late 70s, where another part of the Captain's life is revealed, and the book adopts the flavor of an espionage thriller. As I closed the book, I had mixed emotions, and needed to air my head a bit to at least attempt to grasp the full meaning of this novel. Good literature makes you think, and that we can't deny Greene. His novels slowly grow on you, and leave a long-lasting impression and a desire to come back, one day. Which I shall do, and I wish you the same, dear reader.

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