Volume 28, Number 2 · February 19, 1981
Secret Sharer
By Denis Donoghue
Ways of Escape
by Graham Greene
Simon and Schuster, 320 pp., $12.95
'Here at last is the long-awaited sequel to the autobiography of Graham Greene,' according to the publisher. The offer is misleading. Ways of Escape is a sequel to A Sort of Life (1971), but neither of them is an autobiography. Greene has been rigidly unforthcoming about his private life. The only information he gives in Ways of Escape about the breakdown of his marriage is that apart from 'the separation of war and my own infidelities' he was on Benzedrine for most of the crucial weeks. There is a brief reference to 'my mistress.' Also to 'a difficult decision in my private life' which had something to do with Greene's decision to leave England and settle in France in 1966. We gather that his religious belief has waned. The Catholicism to which he converted in 1926 has lost his allegiance, for reasons not disclosed, unless his 'small belief in the doctrine of eternal punishment' is a reason. Readers who have been awaiting revelation on such matters are free to persist, but the odds are against it. Greene has been playing Garbo for so long that he would be wretchedly capitulating to give up the performance now.
Review, 3497 words
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