That is, until a fellow countryman by the name of Hawthorne visits his shop with a unique proposal. Sure enough, that’s exactly what we get: a drinker, barely making ends meet, held hostage to the profligate spending habits of his teenage daughter, Milly. Now there’s nominative determinism for you! With an appellation of this sort, you don’t visualise an alpha male, firing on all cylinders rather a down-trodden, milk-livered nobody. And, though he is also a James, his surname, sadly, is Wormold. He is an expat Brit, based in Cuba, but in the lowly capacity of a vacuum cleaner salesman. Our protagonist is as far from his contemporary, James Bond, as you could possibly imagine. Greene’s Our Man in Havana (1958) is not a spy story in the traditional sense if anything, it openly satirises the Secret Intelligence Service. And what could be more appropriate, whilst stuck at home, than a vicarious trip to Cuba on a sun-drenched holiday? Graham Greene in 1939You always know you’re in safe hands with a Graham Greene novel, which can be reassuring when you’re in need of a new read and end up reaching for one of those familiar, orange-jacketed Penguins.
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