Brighton Rock by Graham Greene / Copyright 1938 Second Printing April 1959
Copyright 1938 by Graham Greene
Second Printing April 1959
The Viking Press / New York
Collectible Description:
Minor shelf & handling to outer cover. Binding is good. Clear print, very good usable and/or collectible condition. Previous owner’s signature inside first page.
Softcover, 358 pages.
Originally published in 1938, Graham Greene’s chilling exposé of violence and gang warfare is a masterpiece of psychological realism and often considered Graham Greene’s best novel. It is a fascinating study of evil, sin, and the “appalling strangeness of the mercy of God,” a classic of its kind.
Set in Brighton, England, among the criminal rabble, the book depicts the tragic career of a 17-year-old boy named Pinkie whose primary ambition is to lead a gang to rival that of the wealthy and established Colleoni. Pinkie is devoid of compassion or human feeling, despising weakness of the spirit or of the flesh. Responsible for the razor slashes that killed Kite and also for the death of Hale, he is the embodiment of calculated evil. As a Catholic, however, he is convinced that his retribution does not lie in human hands.
He is therefore not prepared for Ida Arnold, Hale’s avenging angel. Ida, whose allegiance is with life, the here and now, has her own ideas about the circumstances surrounding Hale’s death. For the sheer joy of it she takes up the challenge of bringing the infernal Pinkie to an earthly kind of justice.
When finished, the listener is sure to ponder some lofty moral issues to which Greene, a Catholic writer, withholds easy judgments.
Reviews from back cover:
“A superlatively entertaining fictional presentation … Thre is no one character than can, by any chance, be forgotten nor one that could be side aside as untrue to life.”
-Jane Southron, New York Times
“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 about the ‘appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.’”
-Basil Davenport, Saturday Review
“It is a masterpiece of horror, and even your fingers will grow stiff with fright as you turn its thrilling pages.” –Buffalo News
“Extremely unusual and very well written… A poignant tale, definitely out of the ordinary.” –Providence Journal