The Heart of the Matter

I was too young for Graham Greene when I tried him at 19; now I think I'm too old. This novel has all the Greene hallmarks - Catholics, morally dubious situations, strange landscapes and characters - and of course, exceptional writing. It's about a British policeman in a West African colony during WW2, who commits adultry, comes under the power of a bad man, and ends up by getting his servant killed. His main angst is that he takes communion when he hasn't been absolved. In the end he can't handle all the pain he is causing everyone else in his life, so he kills himself. In a typically Greene ending, the parish priest assures everyone that God is merciful and will forgive him; but in that case, the reader wonders, why was taking communion such a death sentence in the first place.