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823.912 |
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Greene's "sharply, often incisively etched" novel of the interlocked fates of unwary strangers on a train from Belgium to Constantinople (The New York Times). The Orient Express has embarked from Ostend for a three-day journey to Cologne, Vienna, and Constantinople. The passenger list includes a Jewish trader from London with business interests in Turkey--and a score to sett≤ a vulnerable chorus girl on her last legs; a boozy and spiteful journalist who's found an unrequited love in her paid companion, and her latest scoop in second class--a Serbian dissident in disguise on his way to lead a revolution; and a murderer on the run looking for a getaway. As the train hurtles across Europe, the fates of everyone on board will collide long before the Orient Express rushes headlong to its final destination. Originally published in the UK as Stamboul Train in 1932, Graham Greene's "novel has movement, variety, interest; taken on the surface, it is an interesting and entertaining story of adventure, penetrated through and through with the consciousness of the on-rushing train, with that curious sense of the temporary suspension of one's ordinary existence which comes to many on ship or train" (The New York Times). … (more)
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Greene quickly and skillfully introduces us to the main characters in his drama, sketching in their background so that they are ready and primed to play their parts. All the characters are dishonest in varying degrees, they are pinched and cold as they try to get ahead in the uncertain world of 1930's Europe. There is: Carol Muskar a chorus girl whose only chance of work is in a club in Constantinople almost an innocent abroad, Dr Czinner travelling under an alias and preparing to co-ordinate a revolution in Belgrade, Q C Savory a vapid best selling novelist and Joseph Grunlich a career criminal on the run for murder.
Greene's two most fleshed out characters are what we would consider today stereotypical and it is useful to remind ourselves that this was written in the 1930's: Carleton Myatt is a Jew and we are constantly reminded of his Jewish traits, he is obsessed with business and the price of goods, not to be trusted, fearing the Christians around him with whom he must do business, but laughing as he outsmarts them at every turn. Mabel Warner is a lesbian given a "butch" personality, an alcoholic press reporter who will do anything to keep her younger lover Janet Pardoe, who is also traveling on the train. Greene has been accused of anti-semitism and certainly the Jew Myatt along with the lesbian Warner are the arch manipulators, the most dishonest of his characters
The novel might seem a little pedestrian as a thriller by today's standards. There are few twists and turns, however there is some suspense and a well worked out story line and of course plenty of period detail. I read this for the excellent writing, the characterisation and the noir like atmosphere that pervades everything
"Stamboul Train", set on the Orient Express around 1930, is stuffed with period atmosphere and a sense of a world, especially in Central
Running throughout the novel is the story of the Serbian communist agitator Richard Czinner who fled into exile some 5 years previously and is now on his way back to support a planned communist coup, only to find that it has broken out too early and hence failed. Greene explores Czinner's political idealism and the extent to which that ultimately leads him to personal disaster.
However his most memorable character is Mabel Warren, an aging, alcoholic, predatory, spiteful, butch dyke of a journalist who's prepared not only to sacrifice a man's life to get her story but to ensure that he is sent to his death for no other reason than the fact that he was a man.
The characters are memorable, even though they are stereotypes, we have a Jew, a Chorus Girl, a Girl On the Go (who hasn't got there yet), a Lesbian (complete
An oddly satisfying read, the story is neatly wrapped up, and all the lives continue smoothly, heading into the infinite future, rather like all 30's fiction.
This is not Greene at his best - the novel is
Read dec 2005
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.
Nevertheless, this is a very well-written book, although it is more of a study of characters and a discussion of how politics intersects with individuals' lives, than about murder (although there is an element of murder). In 1933, the inclusion of both Jewish and lesbian characters was probably considered quite radical, although to a modern reader, their portrayal will raise some eyebrows.
It's a very interesting book in that it doesn't offer even the hope of anything pure or ideal... but when things turn out the way they do, the reader still feels distraught, even though one can't logically argue that things would have been any better all around if coincidences had gone differently...
For my own information: written in 1932, later published in America as Orient Express and made into a film of the same name. Greene classed this novel as an 'entertainment'.
"Iām tired of being decent, of doing the right thing."
Stamboul Train is the story of a number of individuals who are thrown together within the confines of a train journey - a microcosm, in a way - and Greene offers us a peek into the relationships that develop
It took a while to get into the story - just because every character has a story about how they came to embark on the journey on the Orient Express from Ostend to Istanbul.
At first, I thought this was going to be an easy read - because it is still an early one of Greene's entertainments - but it soon turned out that Stamboul Train seems to mark quite a turning point in Greene's writing:
Greene maintains his focus on the themes of individualism and social perception from a variety of angels which cannot be combined, and which - because of their incompatibility - now create a highly atmospheric state of disillusionment.
"Then the man spoke to her, and she was compelled to emerge from her hidden world and wear a pose of cheerfulness and courage."
More importantly to my reading enjoyment, though, Stamboul Train shows a consistent use of that refined prose which only shimmered through in The Man Within:
"He saw the express in which they had travelled breaking the dark sky like a rocket. They clung to it with every stratagem in their power, leaning this way and leaning that, altering the balance now in this direction, now in that. One had to be very alive, very flexible, very opportunist. The snow on the lips had all melted and its effect was passing. Before the spill had flickered to its end, his sight had dimmed, and the great shed with its cargo of sacks floated away from him into the darkness. He had no sense that he was within it; he thought that he was left behind, watching it disappear. His mind became confused, and soon he was falling through endless space, breathless, with a windy vacancy in head and chest, because he had been unable to retain his foothold on what was sometimes a ship and at other times a comet, the world itself, or only a fast train from Ostend to Istanbul."