This was a very well written, short book that packs much in its pages in spite of its length.

Additionally, this is actually my first book I've read by Greene as well, which seems to be taking things backwards.

It has been a while since a work of fiction has kept me so intrigued that I truly could not wait until I was back into it. I truly felt that in under 200 pages we were really able to get a feel for the time in history as well as its place in history(Vietnam). Additionally, we are not simply given the story of a complicated love triangle or of figuring out how another character died, but are able to follow both simultaneously without having to lose the other. By starting with the end, we are left trying to understand what happened between these two friends that one would end up dead while the other got their lover.

By no means is any of this story a cheap thrill or a stereotype, but an enjoyable journey of understanding the lives of these two people that met up in an unusual way. ( )

A gorgeously written novel that can be nearly any type you choose to read it as: an espionage thriller, a satire of two countries naively attempting to impose their wills on a country they both choose not to understand (Fowler as Britain cynically attempts to remain objective while Pyle, the apparently ineffectual American tries to save Phuong and Vietnam from herself), a war novel infinitely more personal and thoughtful than any by Hemingway, or a text that directly addresses language and how it shapes and colors the meaning we attempt to express through it. It can be anything except what it first appears to be: a love story. Phuong is as much an object as she is a mystery to both men, and this is integral to reading the novel. ( )

Written about the War in Indo-China (Vietnam) before the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The story revolves around two characters: Fowler, an experienced and jaded British journalist and Pyle, a young idealist sent out by Washington on a mysterious mission to Saigon. Pyle's naive political blunders (a metaphor for the rising US influence in the region) devolve into needless bloodshed that ultimately moves the cynical Fowler to action.

I found it to be an interesting read about the second to the last chapter of Western colonialism in Southeast Asia. ( )

I was expecting more from this. It is often taught in Australian high schools, and students I know often have a lot to say about it. However, I was disappointed. This was one of those books in which the high point comes and goes in a page and you have to read it a couple of times to make sure there isn't something more to it. So an innocent young American comes to Vietnam during the war, gets caught up in misguided efforts to bring a better world, realises the war and the problem is bigger than he can fix, that he has become a puppet, and that unscrupulous people will use him for their own ends. I found myself asking 'So what?'. ( )

The 2nd Greene book I've read, and both times I started to like the story only in the last quarter of the book. This one's heavy on the moral ambiguity, and it's a good allegory for relations between the US, UK and Vietnam in the 50's. It's hard to believe he wrote this way back then. ( )