England Made Me

England Made Me is not Graham Greene’s best work.   I’m a big fan of Brighton Rock, The Third Man, and The End of the Affair and I think I’ve read all of his most famous books on The List.  That is, with the exception of The Quiet American which I refuse to read until I have all Brendan Fraser related movie nonsense well and truly out of my head (considering I saw the film around seven years ago, it may be some time before I actually get round to reading the thing). 

Anyway, England Made Me.  It’s good.  It’s not great. 

Greene’s novel tells the story of twins Kate and Anthony Farrant.  Kate, the elder by half an hour or so, fully has her shit together and is working in a good job for (an admittedly corrupt) Swedish financier.  Anthony on the other hand, is a train wreck.  Chronically unemployable, he charms his way through life with lies about Harrovian school days until Kate scores him a job bodyguarding her boss.  Anthony, being less intentionally terrible than Krogh, isn’t exactly okay with the corruption and so makes plans to leave Sweden, prevent Krogh from marrying Kate, and to reveal his old boss’s dirty dealings.  This does not go swimmingly for Anthony.

There’s quite a lot of implied incest throughout England Made Me.  Kate’s main reason for getting Anthony a job is that she wants to see her brother more.  She misses him.  Kate and Anthony are creepily close in a way that can’t be explained away by twinhood.  Until their actual relationship was explained about half-way through the first chapter, I assumed they were lovers.  As Anthony explains to his sister when he tells her he is leaving Sweden to live with his mistress, “I love you, Kate… More than anyone in the world.  But Loo.  I’m in love with her… Love and in love, Kate.  There’s the difference.”

I think part of the problem is that the thing is set partially in Sweden.  I don’t understand why Kate would want to live there in the 1930s.  It would have been cold and dark and she wouldn’t have had the right to vote.  Thanks to the credits of Suffragette, I now know that Sweden didn’t emancipate women until 1971, and the fact that this was so bafflingly late sort of implies that they weren’t that it to women’s liberation.  It can’t have been a fun place for an educated and pretty independent woman at the time, so as I said, I have no idea what would have originally drawn Kate there.  To be fair, a much larger problem is the incest.  But this rankled nonetheless.

And there it is, another not great book crossed off the list.  I’m hopeful that soon I’ll get back to the really great ones.  It’s a bit draining at the moment to be stuck with titles that I just know are taking the place of better works; either ones not originally written in English, or ones that are written by less iconic authors.  The List does have variety, but I’m starting to expect, not enough.

I’m now moving on to Frances Burney’s Evelina; having realised that I’ve glutted too much on 20^th Century fiction.