Orient Express: An Entertainment (Penguin Classics)

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Summary: Everyday existence found at the bottom of suitcase
Review: ORIENT EXPRESS differentiates from other Graham Greene's works, which are normally considered literary fiction of a serious writer, in its entertaining nature. It reads like an adventurous story whose every little detail exuded demands one's undivided attention in order to piece it all together. As the Orient Express hurtles across Europe on its three-day journey from Ostend to Constantinople, the driven lives of several of its passengers become bound together in a fateful interlock. The curious skein of characters include a beautiful chorus girl enroute to a performance, a rich Jewish businessman bound for a business deal, a mysterious, sinister-looking but kind doctor returning to his native Belgrade after being fugitive for five years, a cunning murderous burglar who had fled a crime, and a spiteful journalist who contrived to make the headline story.

Given the nature of these various characters and a backdrop that constitutes to a curious sense of suspension in a confined, onrushing train, ORIENT EXPRESS, though a less literary work, does not fail to combine the exotic and the romantic with the sordid and the banal. These passengers, who have little or nothing in common with one another that they will probably never overlap have they not been assigned in the same car, retain their own life drama, conditions and secrets under the changing skies. The meanness of everyday existence is found at the bottom of every suitcase, and has in fact been packed along with everything else.

It doesn't seem obvious at first that ORIENT EXPRESS bespeaks self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is the usual case when people are far from home and routine that they will stair to make an unwonted exertion of the spirit or the will. The book, though its contrariety of style to Greene's other works, turns out to be a useful if not fortunate failure in containing the themes of self-sacrifice and betrayal. It is almost unexpected that the train, the passengers, and the direction to which the train steered symbolize a time period and the revolution.



Rating:
Summary: A first-class journey through "Greeneland."
Review: Originally published in 1933 as the Nazi Party was preparing to take power, Penguin Classics recently reissued a new, centenial edition of Graham Greene's classic novel of romance and betrayal, ORIENT EXPRESS, on the 100th anniversary of his birth. While the Orient Express rolls across Europe, from Ostend to Constantinople, Greene's entertaining novel follows the action inside the train. The cast of characters include Coral Musker, a beautiful showgirl; Dr. Czinner, a Communist political exile traveling ingognito; Mabel Warren, an alcoholic journalist; Josef Grunlich, a murderous burglar; and the controversial character (or perhaps more accurately, caricature), Carleton Myatt, a rich, Jewish businessman. While ORIENT EXPRESS probably does not rise to the standards set by some of Greene's other novels (e.g., THE END OF THE AFFAIR; TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT; THE POWER AND THE GLORY), it is nevertheless an entertaining minor novel.

G. Merritt