Recommended by Daniel Whiley
Brighton Rock,
published in 1938, is a murder thriller novel based in the
1930s around the life of a young gang leader, Pinkie, in Brighton. In the
novel, Greene portrays parts of the story through a variety of different viewpoints
causing the third-person narrative to take on a wide diversity of various
biases from each major character.
The book follows the short life of Pinkie after the previous
gang leader, Kite, who had been like a father to Pinkie, has his throat slit in
St Pancras. Throughout the book, Pinkie is filled with hatred, anger and
disgust. His perverted views of love, religion and sin clash with the naivety,
gentleness and trust of the waitress, Rose, who unwittingly has the ability to
destroy Pinkie’s alibi for the murder of Fred Hale who caused Kite to be killed.
This leads to the abnormal marriage of Pinkie and Rose, both who have different
motivations for the marriage. During the course of the book, Ida Arnold, an
easy-going, life loving woman is driven to pursue the murder of Hale by her own
conscience, later leading her to try to save Rose from Pinkie.
During the book, Greene looks at the gangs of Brighton as
well as Roman Catholic views on sin and morality, picking up on sex, murder and
suicide. As Greene himself was a Catholic, he can relate to both the characters
of Rose and Pinkie who are Catholics too.
Overall, this book gives us an understanding of the views
from the time, both religiously and politically. The book itself is definitely
not an easy read, taking little time to get to the action and covering a wide
range of difficult topics; however, it is definitely worth it.
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