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Summary: Highly intelligent humor
Review: Very funny, smart and good writing style. A masterpiece of saying more with fewer words. Wish I could write even a quarter as good.
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Summary: Great Setting, Great Writing, Great Book!
Review: Well writtn and funny. One of Greene's Best
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Summary: A counter balance to the banality of Ludlum, Clancy et al
Review: What a great book. I hadn't read it in ten years, and had forgotten most of the details; the plot itself is revealed in the first few pages, so no matter that I could remember it.It involves, of course, a vacuum salesman -- who becomes a spy, sort of. He is recruited by British Intelligence, and makes money by "recruiting" imaginary agents and sending them on expensive fictional missions. Brillliant, farcical and more illuminating and entertaining than a hundred Ludlum-type "thrillers." The amazing thing about Greene is his ability, in the context of his stories, to capture the essential humanity of his characters and place it in writing, and to convey deeper meanings and truths which underly their movements and plot. Greene's tale might seem preposterous -- but it isn't. Before Pearl Harbor, the Japanese employed an agent who clearly fabricated reports, and proposed means of sending secret signals from a boat he didn't own, and a house he leased to naval officers. In truth, intelligence agencies have suffered legions of failures and even the best of them made egregious mistakes with similarly disastrous consequences. Greene's book is not merely an amusing tale of a few people, it is an allegory and expose of the fallacies of secret organizations, and a biting commentary about the extremes to which they can go to protect their own -- rather than the public's -- interest. Greene, to be sure, must have witnessed some of the bungling, and underlying his farce is a warning and a commentary.
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Summary: Horse for Milly, Money for Me, Death for Dr. Hasselbacher!
Review: Wormold is a middle-aged expatriot British vacuum cleaner store owner/salesman living in Havana with his only daughter, Milly, 16 or 17 year old archtyical good but bad Catholic school girl cum leathal "Lolita" cum Cher from the movie "Clueless"--her favorite passtime is spending her father's money, sometimes on credit to Wormold's dismay. Feeling a general ennui about life after Milly's mother (his wife) leaves him to run off with another man, Wormold's whole life is indulging Milly, drinking with an ex-Nazi (possibly) drinking buddy Dr. Hasselbacher, and collecting miniature bourbon and whisky bottles (he has 100s). When Milly wants a horse, Wormold decides to accept a manna from heaven in the form of a lucrative "part-time" job setting up the Havana station for the British secret service. Or was it a contract with the devil? As the heedless Wormold invents sub-agents and technical "drawings" for the "enemy's" (though which enemy we don't even know) secret installations in Havana, and generally fakes out the fools at Headquarters in London, real people start dying. What is going on? Can inventions--people and state secrets--of the imagination, "as if writing a novel" really come to life? Tightly written with Greene's usual cast of colorful characters both local and expatriot, like the would be suitor of Milly, a policeman reknowned in Havana for carrying a human-skin cigarette case, Captain Seguras, this book is short, dense, compact, and worthwhile reading. It's a comical/satirical look at the human condition as well one of Graham's favorite topics, international intrigue and the world of the "spy."
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Summary: A very funny story
Review: Wormold is only a normal trader in Havanna and he sells vacuum cleaners. Suddenly, he becomes a British agent. But I think, Wormold is not a real agent at the beginning and often it is very funny, when he writes false reports to London, like the drawings from one of his the vacuum cleaners. The text ridicules the British secret service. The book isn't like a "James Bond movie", Wormold is not the real agent, he only take the money he is offered by the secret service, but he does not help much. Still he has to defend himself at the end of the story when his life is at stake. It's a good comedy, and it is very interesting to read this book. I can recommend it to people who like to read amusing stories
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Summary: Our Man in Havana - a thrilling spy story
Review: „Our Man in Havana" - is a book full of history. It concludes a lot of criticisms against the politics during the cold war time. The comical and the satirical aspects accent the absurdity of this historical period. Unfortunately, the end wasn't as good as we had expected before (the happy ending of the love story is rather boring). But the fact that the book has an open ending (Greene doesn't answer all the mysteries) makes good this shapelessness. But on the whole "Our Man in Havana" is a thrilling spy story and a book to be recommended by us.
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