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Brighton Rock

by Graham Greene

Summary

In Graham Greene's brilliant and harrowing psychological portrait of a sadistic young gangster, published in 1938, Pinkie, the teenaged head of a Brighton mob, becomes implicated in a murder early in the story. The only possible witness to the crime is Rose, a naive young waitress in a teashop who mistakes Pinkie's nervous inquiries for a sign of affection and falls in love with him. When Pinkie learns that a wife cannot be forced to testify against her husband in criminal cases, he marries Rose despite his feelings of distaste for her. All the while, however, Pinkie is being pursued by Ida, a prostitute who is obsessed with bringing him to justice. As Greene commented in his autobiography, "The Pinkies are the real Peter Pans-doomed to be juvenile for a lifetime. They have something of a fallen angel about them, a morality which once belonged to another place." This view suggests that Greene's preoccupation with religious themes, which became explicit in his later novels, began with this relatively early work. This was also the book that made Greene's reputation as a major literary figure.

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Media Reviews

"This is no book for those who would turn delicate noses away from the gutters and sewers of life; but there is nothing that could give the faintest gratification to snickerers. If it is as downright as surgery, it is, also, as clean as a clinic. There is not an entirely admirable character in it; but there is not one that can, by any chance, be forgotten nor one that could be set aside as untrue to life....The prose is terse and vigorous; apt to break out unexpectedly into imagery that is both original and illuminating. Counsel for the prosecution has seldom presented a more overwhelmingly convincing case."

   -- New York Times

"Mr. Graham Greene has worked a good deal of subtly flavored excitement into this story of gangsterism in Brighton....The story has an undeniably dramatic quality, which survives the recital of trivialities and occasional coarsenesses. The more squalid scenes appear to have truth on their side, though one would have preferred the ordinary virtues of humanity to pub-crawling good nature or theological complexities by way of contrast."

   -- Times Literary Supplement

"This is by all means a book to read for sheer breathless excitement; but much more, it is a book to read for its resolution, in the words of the old priest, about 'the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.'"    -- Basil Davenport

   -- Saturday Review

"It is all slightly preposterous, but it moves along swiftly and makes easy reading. There are touches in the story of the boy and the girl that are of the stuff of life in literature. The rest is suited to the convention of the season, the sort of tale one reads for relaxation."    -- F. Marsh

   -- Books

"Dark, spare, pessimistic, shocking, a novel that says everything about adolescent violence and angst, and about the limits of faith and love-still an overwhelming reading experience."    -- Michael Korda

   -- Salon

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Penguin USA
Published date: 1995
Size: 5.25 x 8 inches
Weight: 0.4 pounds

Other Editions

• Hardcover Large Print - Ulverscroft Large Print Books (1983) - from $14.50
• Paperback Reprint - Penguin USA (2004) - from $5.00

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