I’m back to working through Graham Greene’s works and the last offering was The Human Element. This is a 1978 take of espionage set in dreary old England with flashbacks to South Africa.
Greene famously divided his works into serious writing and “entertainments,” and while this falls into the latter category, it is still a page-turner and full of serious moments, but these are offset by frequent use of the usual British “compounding pile of absurdities” type of humor.
This is Evelyn Waugh’s technique and it can be very effective. I’ve sometimes seen it described as “drawing-room humor,” and it’s abundance in The Human Element is what locks it into the “entertainments” category.
It is not the most accessible book. Unless one understands the political situation in 1978 (references to Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, etc.), modern readers may be somewhat lost. It is also a time capsule insofar as England was overwhelmingly English, and black people were a rarity, so the main character’s interracial marriage plays a significant role in the book.
For this reason I cannot unconditionally recommend it, but it is a good read and unlike The End of the Affair, I had no problem maintaining momentum, accelerating my reading at the end.
As with all of Greene’s work, religion hold an important place in the book. This is because Greene understands that one cannot create a true character portrait without address this foundation of all other beliefs. It doesn’t have to dominate the story, but it absolutely helps to shape it.
Chateau Lloyd 
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