Title:Travels With My Aunt
Author: Graham Greene
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 262
Rating: 9/10
Graham Greene – Travels With My Aunt
Travels With My Aunt is one of my favourites of all of Graham Greene’s entertainments, the story of a retired bank manager who goes travelling with his Aunt Augusta, after meeting her at his mother’s funeral. And while she might be in her seventies, she sure knows how to have fun, dragging him from Brighton and Paris to Istanbul and Paraguay and mingling with everyone from hippies to secret agents and war criminals.
There’s a lot going on throughout the novel to keep you entertained, but really this is a triumph of characterisation rather than of plot, and much of the dialogue is simply sublime. The novel itself has an overall feeling of light-heartedness, making it a joy to read compared to some of Greene’s darker, more serious work – in fact, I think it stands up well to many of the modern mass-produced paperbacks that seem to be crowding the market, these days. I certainly know which one I’d prefer to read!
Whether you’ve read Greene’s work before or whether you’re new to him, I’d highly recommend giving this book some of your time – it might not quite change your life, but at the very least it’ll cheer you up and leave a smile on your face, and at the end of the day, a book that does that is fine by me. So what are you waiting for? Get reading it, and let me know what you think!
Graham Greene
