The Power and The Glory

Yay, I've got followers. Which means amongst many things that this blog moves from being a published internal monologue to an-in theory-  external dialogue. So if we began with the classics of Ancient Rome, let us move forward to the work of someone from the century we were born in. The Power and The Glory by Graeme Greene is frankly sublime. Speaking generally as somebody to whom religion and faith are of little concern, this allegory of the life of Christ went far deeper than was expected.
Many have recently come to Greene because of a certain film and frankly were disillusioned- because of course reading a book for a film is a brilliant idea which has no pitfalls etc.-, well that's more their loss. His style is very easy to read and is more conversational than anything else. Yet there is an underlying guilt to his writing. His heroes are never pure white, the villains never black. They are engaging, or at least I found them engaging. The flaws in the protagonist are mirrored not only in his antagonist and the other characters but in the reader. The indecision of the priest whether to stay or go, how to best protect his flock are mirroring the reader's own internal battles. Greene's slight of hand leaves the Christian allegory tactile. The vultures, the drink, the peasantry, the prisoners, the priest and the police are not only literary devices but ways of drawing the reader in making them not only emphasise with the story. Yet the characters are too close to our own selves to be ignored as literary creations, we see their story acted out in front of us and it makes us question the -oh so cliched- human condition and it is this which is what Greene's book is so very good at doing.