Books, Arts & Manners: Killing Time

The Life of Graham Greene, by Norman Sherry (Viking, 783 pp., $29.95)

One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century,” says the publisher’s blurb, “Graham Greene has been until now a most elusive personality, guarding his privacy and remaining aloof, mysterious and unpredictable. . . . the story of his life is one of the greatest challenges that a biographer could face.” This is true. The next statement— “Norman Sherry has taken up this challenge and made it a triumph of literary detection and narrative”—is not. As a biography this disappoints. As a novel about Professor Sherry’s relationship with his evasive subject, it is continuously amusing. Greene, like Kolly Kibber in Brighton Rock, leaves clues inviting Sherry to give chase, but the biographer is always baffled as he watches his quarry disappear, smiling, round the next corner.

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Martin Stannard

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The Life of Graham Greene, by Norman Sherry (Viking, 783 pp., $29.95)

One of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century,” says the publisher’s blurb, “Graham Greene has been until now a most elusive personality, guarding his privacy and remaining aloof, mysterious and unpredictable. . . . the story of his life is one of the greatest challenges that a biographer could face.” This is true. The next statement— “Norman Sherry has taken up this challenge and made it a triumph of literary detection and narrative”—is not. As a biography this disappoints. As a novel about Professor Sherry’s relationship with his evasive subject, it is continuously amusing. Greene, like Kolly Kibber in Brighton Rock, leaves clues inviting Sherry to give chase, but the biographer is always baffled as he watches his quarry disappear, smiling, round the next corner.