Our Man in Havana

I had to read this for my book club and with great trepidation I started it on Friday and finished it today. Not too bad, over quickly! Infact I have never been a Graham Greene fan. Fusty, boring and old fashioned in my opinion. I have never been able to get past page 10 in previous novels I have tried to read. All this spy/thriller shite with cobwebbed men slinking about drinking whisky leaves me cold. Well I DID read all of this and I have to say..not bad. 6/10 but not something I can rave about. 

It's meant to be funny...I didn't get half of the jokes. It's meant to be a spoof spy and I got that. It's meant to be thrilling, well in my opinion it wasn't that thrilling. Infact Greene is supposed to be one of the best writers of the 20 th century. Well, for me he reads more like an Enid Blyton for adults. Simple, spare, modern writing seems more like a script for a play to me with people talking to each other like robots. I then get confused about which character is actually speaking as there are no references. It's just a style of writing that I'm not used to and don't like.

The spoof part I did enjoy. The British Secret service comes across as so ridiculous that they employ an English vacuum sales man (an expat living in Cuba, for over twenty years ) to spy for them. He obviously knows no spies and no massive plots to overthrow the Americans but he wants the money for his Kim Kardashianesque, Pony loving, Virtuous Catholic yet also an implied tart, 16 year old daughter. He makes up stories about spies and draws copies of his vacuum parts and makes them out to be secret weapons being built by the communists in the mountains. All mad and funny but then people really do start to die and Mr. vacumn seller gets involved in more than he can chew. ( this part of the story I loved as it made me think of our government's response to Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Were these just drawings of enlarged hoover parts too?!   I think so! )This book was written in 1958 though, well before and also a year before Castro came to power.

This book revolves around a sad,squirrel like, dried up old expat racist trying to earn a few extra bucks whilst spending most of his time in his mans club drinking whisky and daiquiri with his German chum and  deceiving MI6.

I know I probably didn't 'get it' and I'm not intelligent for the 'humour' but I didn't like any of the characters, apart from the fascist policeman with his human skin cigar case. But hey, he was a great James Bond villain. The love story was rubbish ( like a teenage boy writing a love story for homework.) The sexism and racism I could accept, because that's how these important novelists wrote but the whole story was rather sordid and unpleasant. It was redeemed by one scene through... Draughts played with tiny bottles of whisky and bourbon instead of pieces. So when you take a piece you have to neck the miniature bottle. I liked this idea because it meant the better player would get drunk quicker and then lose his powers of concentration. The players were weasel Wormold ( vacuum seller man) and my favourite character, the James Bond villain. I loved him trying to win, stay in control and then finally get totally plastered!