1958; 212 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genres: British Humor; Historical Thriller;
Intrigue. Overall Rating : 6*/10.
Jim Wormold could use some extra pesos. He’s a single parent, trying to make ends
meet while raising a sixteen-year-old daughter, Milly, who hasn’t quite grasped
the concept that money doesn’t grow on trees.
She’s just bought a horse, of all things! Well, she’s made the first payment, with no
idea where to get the rest of the money, let alone how to also pay rent for a stable to
house the horse in and hay to feed it.
No problem though, Daddy will surely find a way.
But Daddy is a British
national who lives in Havana, Cuba eking out a living in a small shop out of which he sells vacuum
cleaners. It’s the 1950’s
and political tensions in Cuba are running high. There are
rebels in the hills (led by some young
whippersnapper named Castro), and a bunch of very nervous policemen
in the streets, including Captain Segura, aka “the Red Vulture”, who seems to
have caught Milly’s eye, and vice versa.
Wormold could use a monetary miracle right now.
Happily, the miracle comes in the
form of the British Secret Service, who are looking for an on-the-scene agent in
Havana to send them intelligence reports on the volatile local situation. They’re willing to pay Jim a modest monthly
stipend, plus cover any expenses he incurs while gathering information on their
behalf. That includes money he might
spend recruiting local Cubans for their help in promoting British interests.
It’s manna from heaven, and
Milly gets to keep her horse! Jim just
sends in expense reports for agents who exist only in his head, along with
“intelligence reports” covering whatever he can dream up. In exchange, London sends him
back money because, after all, what can they do to check up on him? Spend lots more money to send someone over to Cuba to audit him?
Funny thing about that, Jim.
What’s To Like...
Our Man in Havana
is set mostly in Cuba during the closing days of the Batista dictatorship. When Graham Greene was writing it, the final
outcome was still very much in doubt, and I was impressed with the “feel”
for 1950’s Havana that the book conveys.
Revolution may be in the air, but you can still find good booze in bars and fine food in restaurants, get drenched by ocean mist when walking by the shore, and ride
horses.
The book delights in poking puckish fun at the British Secret Service. Graham Greene was an English author, so the
book is written in the Queen's English, not American.
There are cheques and pyjamas, things are learnt and smelt,
and you manoeuvre your tyres around kerbs. I even "learnt" a new French phrase, “coup de foudre”, which is translated below.
The writing is witty, and Wormold’s spying scam quickly degenerates into absurd lies-upon-lies.
He tries in vain to keep the deception going for as long as possible,
knowing that it will inevitably come crashing down at some point. Nested in among all the tomfoolery are some
keen insights from Greene about nationalism, international relations, the dark
business of espionage, and, of course, coups de foudre.
There aren’t a lot of
characters to keep track of, and some of them exist only in Wormold’s imagination. Our Man in
Havana is an easy, fast read, with 22 chapters/interludes covering 212
pages. I learned how to beat someone
who’s a better checker-player than you (I suck
at checkers), chuckled at Milly’s “invisible duenna”, and never did
figure out if the lyrics quoted twice in the book (“they
say the earth is round/my madness offends”)
are real or just something Graham Greene made up. I suspect the latter.
The ending is a mixed bag. On one hand, it's decently clever,
and logical. OTOH, it's not action-packed, twisty, or filled with over-the-top
laughs. More on this in a bit. Our Man in Havana is a standalone
novel. I don’t believe Graham Greene
ever used the setting and characters in any of his many other novels, but to be
honest, this was my first Graham Greene book.
Kewlest New Word ...
Coup de foudre (phrase, French)
: a sudden unforeseen event, in particular an instance of love at first sight.
Others: Morocco (n.); Pissoirs (n., pl.), Doss (v.); Verger (n.),
Solecism (n.); Huff (v.).
Ratings…
Amazon:
4.1/5
based on 944 ratings.
Goodreads: 3.94/5 based on 27,791
ratings and 1,952 reviews
Things that sound dirty, but aren’t…
What enormous bladders Cubans have,
and how clean Hawthorne’s hands must be getting by this time.
Excerpts...
“Why did you set fire to Earl?”
“I was tempted by the devil,” she said.
“Milly, please be sensible.”
“Saints have been tempted by the devil.”
“You are not a saint.”
“Exactly.
That’s why I fell.” (loc. 175)
“One reason why the West hates the great Communist
states is that they don’t recognize class-distinctions. Sometimes they torture the wrong people. So too of course did Hitler and shocked the
world. Nobody cares what goes on in our
prisons, or in the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler was too
promiscuous. It was rather as though in
your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.”
“We are not shocked by that any longer.”
“It is a great danger for everyone when
what is shocking changes.” (loc.
2350)
Kindle Details…
Our
Man in Havana goes for $10.99 right now at Amazon, although
I picked it up when it was temporarily discounted. Amazon has a couple dozen other Graham Greene
e-books available, ranging in price anywhere from $2.99 to $12.99.
“Would the world be
in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?” (loc. 3001 )
There’s just a smattering of
cussing (9 instances in the first 50%), a couple racial epithets (that were common
in the 1950’s), and one brief reference to drug-smuggling (cocaine,
opium, marijuana). That’s
about it for R-rated stuff. If this were
a mystery, I’d say it qualifies as a “cozy”.
My main disappointment with Our Man in Havana was the storytelling. I was hoping for something exciting, twisty,
and absurdly over-the-top. The storyline
was none of these.
This is not to say the book
wasn’t enjoyable. The humor may be
light-hearted, but it’s there in abundance.
It was a pleasure to read book set in Cuba where the island’s people are
portrayed as being as warm as its climate and as savvy as any foreign agent in their country. Indeed, my favorite character, besides the protagonist, was the "heavy", Captain Segura.
Oh yeah, one last thing to quibble about. the
dog dies.
6 Stars. A few months after publication, the book was made into a movie and filmed on location in Cuba in early 1959, just a couple months after Fidel Castro took power. Castro visited the filming and Wikipedia notes that he “complained that the novel did not accurately portray the brutality of the Batista regime”. Sometimes you just can’t please everyone.
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