Every year, my reading group aims to do at least one classic – usually something from the nineteenth century – but this year someone suggested Graham Greene. Yes, we all responded, why not? But which one? For reasons I don’t recollect, Travels with my aunt was suggested and given none of us had a burning desire to do another, it was scheduled. This suited me as I hadn’t read it before.
It surprised me a little. I was expecting something lighter because I’d understood that it was a comedy, a bit of a romp, and it is – but I found layers too. Wikipedia says of Greene’s work, overall, that “he explored the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world, often through a Catholic perspective”. Travels with my aunt might be a fun book but this description is relevant to it too – though I’m not an expert on “the Catholic perspective” bit.
Anyhow, let’s start with the plot. It concerns middle-aged retired banker Henry Pulling’s travels in Europe and South America with his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta whom he only gets to properly know after his mother’s funeral. Henry is a bachelor whose hobby is growing dahlias. It’s a quiet, English sort of life. His aunt, though, is a completely different kettle of fish. She appears at her sister’s funeral, whisks Henry off to her flat where she lives with her valet-cum-lover, the black Wordsworth. She tells him that his mother was not his mother, but had married his father and faked pregnancy in order to take on his care when he was born to… Well, of course, we can guess who the birth mother is can’t we? From this point on, she engages Henry in her various travels which, it has to be said, become increasingly morally suspect. When she says that “sometimes I have the awful feeling that I am the only one left anywhere who finds any fun in life”, she’s not joking, but her fun can have a more than questionable edge.
The story is told first person by Henry. I’d call him a naive, rather than an unreliable, narrator – I think there is a subtle difference. This is one of the jokes of the book. We know or suspect things that Henry, in his inexperienced not to mention conservative British way, doesn’t immediately cotton on to. Part of the story’s enjoyment is the tension Greene creates between Henry and his free-wheeling Aunt. This tension provides one of the layers I referred to.
Another layer I’ll tentatively suggest was inspired by discovering that Greene’s full name was Henry Graham Greene. This made me wonder whether there is a little of the autobiographical in the book. There’s certainly not in the literal sense, because Greene, who left his wife and the associated traditional, domestic, settled life, led a peripatetic and adventurous life, one closer to Aunt Augusta’s. But the ending, which I won’t give away, poses some interesting questions when looked at from this perspective.
Other layers relate to various issues Greene refers to or hints at along the way, such as American imperialism, particularly in South America; World War 2 and the actions of collaborators; the impact of the pill (resulting in pregnancy now being the girl’s fault); Catholicism and its role (or not) in personal value systems; and, I think, some critique of “Englishness”.
However, I don’t want to make it sound too serious. The book is a romp. There’s no doubt about that, as we follow Henry and his aunt to Brighton, France, Istanbul via the Orient Express and, eventually, to Paraguay. The activities his aunt engages in, not to mention the stories she tells Henry about her past shenanigans, are funny, outrageous, sometimes farcical, and not always legal. You do have to keep up with a rather large cast of colourful characters, including the young Tooley and her is-he-a-CIA-operative father O’Toole, the Nazi war criminal and love of Augusta’s life Mr Visconti, various policemen and military personnel, and the put-upon Wordsworth who calls Augusta his “bebi gel”.
Greene’s writing is frequently funny. Here is a description of an American tourist having a cuppa in Europe:
One of them was raising a little bag, like a drowned animal, from his cup at the end of a cord. At that distressing sight I felt very far away from England, and it was with a pang that I realized how much I was likely to miss Southwood and dahlias in the company of Aunt Augusta.
Then there’s Aunt Augusta on her plans to fund their trip to Istanbul:
“I hope you don’t plan anything illegal” [says retired banker Henry!]
“I have never planned anything illegal in my life,” Aunt Augusta said. “How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?”
And there’s this on the is-he-CIA O’Toole:
“Are you in the CIA like Tooley told me?”
“Well … kind of … not exactly,” he said, clinging to his torn rag of deception like a blown-out umbrella in a high wind.
There are also many delightful set-pieces, such as the description of a Christmas lunch for the lonely, and some ridiculous confrontations with various policemen.
This book is too well-known for me to write something more comprehensive, so I’m going to leave it here, and let you tell me what you think.
Meanwhile, I’ll conclude on a quote from early in the book. It’s Henry reflecting on his mother’s life:
Imprisoned by ambitions which she had never realised, my mother had never known freedom. Freedom, I thought, comes only to the successful and in his trade my father was a success. If a client didn’t like my father’s manner or his estimates, he could go elsewhere. My father wouldn’t have cared. Perhaps it is freedom, of speech and conduct, which is really envied by the unsuccessful, not money or even power.
Without going into what he meant by “successful”, I think this notion of freedom – particularly “of conduct”, which is an interesting take – is what’s at the bottom of this book, the freedom to choose how you will live your life. In the end, Henry realises he is free to choose. Whether he makes the “right” or “best” choice is up for discussion, but it’s the freedom that’s the point.
Graham Greene
Travels with my aunt
London: Vintage Books, 1999 (Orig. pub. 1969)
261pp.
ISBN: 9780099282587
Whispering Gums 
I see from Google that this was made into a film… I wonder if it was any good at unpacking the layers you mention?
Yes, I wondered that too Lisa – maybe you could get it on QuickFlix?
I’ll have a look…
Only if you’re interested of course…
This is a book I have never got around to reading perhaps simply because of that rather staid title! It certainly does sound like it is worth reading although it clearly has not the intensity of Power And the Glory or Brighton Rock.
I certainly think it has more going for it than it sounds Ian. I gather he said he wanted to write a fun book but I can’t help thinking that his questioning side would out! Then again, maybe I am seeing what’s not there.
I like everything written by Graham Greene that I have read so far but never ran across this book. Thanks for the inspiring review. Is Wordsworth a Black or simply melancholy? The last quote reminds me tangentially of #1 in Isak Dinesen’s three perfect pleasures list, “to feel within yourself an excess of strength.” And Milton Freedman’s hierarchy of freedoms.
Sorry twhite48, I should have made that clear, he’s African. If you like Greene, look out for this one and see what you think. Enjoyed your reflections on the last quote. Good ones, thanks.
i confess i didn’t try to unravel this book at all; just charged through it in a whirlwind of guffaws… later i saw the movie which i thought was pretty good, also, although a bit more single-issued…
Thanks mudpuddle. There were some in our bookgroup who read it more like you did. One came to the same questions I did, including re the meaning of the ending, and others had other thoughts. All of this made for a good discussion which you don’t always get when everyone likes a book.
I’m not surprised by what you say about the film.
I love Graham Greene, but while I’ve seen the film, I haven’t read this one. Will add it to the TBR on the strength of your review, Sue.
Oh, great Angela. Hope you are not disappointed! If or when you do get around to it I’d love to know what you think.
I have had Greene on the shelves for years and not read him. The talk of so much Catholocism always put me off. Now my Penguins are sold I don’t have them anymore but would like to read this and also his book The Affair. Your review made this book sound really interesting.
No, I haven’t read much Greene Pam. I read a couple in my teens/early twenties, but would like to read more because he’s an interesting and well-regarded English 20th century writer. The Catholicism is certainly not heavy here.
I’m rather chuffed that my review has encouraged you and a couple of others to read it!
Reviews do that all the time. I want to read everything and the new titles just keep coming. Am reading Patricia Highsmith right now.
Yes, I know – they do, don’t they? Why do we read them?!
Oh my stars and garters I read this so long ago – Probably when it came out – (how can that be a classic???) At first I thought it was a sequel to Auntie Mame – lol. But I enjoyed it quite a lot – It might be interesting to do a reread. Thanks for the memories.
Yes, Bekah, I guess the definition of classic for it is a bit loose but I think it’s valid (enough). Aunty Mame came up at our reading group. Someone thought it was this book, so at least you didn’t do that!
I loved Graham Greene when I read him more than 40 years ago. You’ve made me want to revisit the books of my youth to understand why I liked him so much way back when. However, I must not have read Travels with my Aunt because I remember his books as rather brooding and melancholy.
I think you must not have then Carolyn as this has its moral tricksiness but is not melancholy and moody. I know what you mean about him though. Maybe you could get your reading group to do a Greene?
I’ve always liked this book. So funny throughout, and then so terribly sad. For me he doesn’t so much choose between freedoms as choose between traps, abandoning as he does so a chance at genuine love. I think it’s a rather tragic novel. Melancholy, to pick up on Carolyn’s word not due to the main bulk but due to the ending and what he gives up on the way. Certainly not brooding though.
Oh yes, I like this response Max … choosing between two traps sounds like a good description to me, though isn’t the chance at genuine love part of one of those traps? Lots to think about. Love books like that.
It is, yes, I agree. It’s a book without easy answers like so much of Greene.
Yet, I think many readers have thought it was simple and fun, because thats what he said he wrote.
Oh this sounds like fun! I’ve not read Greene before. another author on my list of hope to get to somedays.
I haven’t read as much of him as I’d have liked Stefanie, but he’s worth getting to one day.
Pingback: Russian Roulette, the Life and Times of Graham Greene, by Richard Greene | ANZ LitLovers LitBlog
Yes, I think you are right. So many reviews miss the point. Taken in by Greene’s own mask of its a ‘fun book’. I think there is more to this book than often noted. The key point for me was when Henry write about how we are formed by the books we read rather than people and Wordsworth’s ode to immortality when quotes the ‘prison house’ and wonders why his father had marked it in the Palgrave. And then in the next paragraph he cries out to Wordsworth as he meets him again. I laughed out loud and suddenly I understood the book. Although a comedy the murder of Wordsworth is the tragedy.
On another point some rail bout the stereotype of Wordsworth as dated and racist. But all the characters in it are stereotypes. Greene has a subtlety as you race along, he is easy to read and entertaining, but there features emerge of morsl weight and rumination. It’s interesting that he wrote his autobiography soon after. The distance he gives to his father and mother and the power of books in that implies Travels with my Aunt has that dimension.
So sorry Leech that I missed this comment. It ended up in the WordPress spam folder which I hardly ever check because once it really only contained spam, and mountains of it. Now it seems to contain no spam but a few good comments. Anyhow it’s quite a while since I read the book and wrote that post so I don’t remember it in detail, but I’m very glad that you agree with my approach to the book. Thanks so much for commenting.