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The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 3 posts · 36 views
By Lynn · 3 posts · 36 views
last updated Jun 25, 2025 08:25PM
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The Schedule for January through June 2023
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By Lynn · 1 post · 95 views
last updated Nov 21, 2022 08:46AM
What Members Thought
DNF. Just could not bring myself to care about either the characters or the story. I suppose it's better written than most quirky-aunt / stodgy-Englishman-breaks-out-of-his-routine / comedy-of-manners nonsense, but that's a pretty low bar to clear. So many better things I'd rather be spending my time with.
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Delightful, although it was easy to see where the travels were most likely headed. Nice tale about choosing to live and not be boring.
Travels With My Aunt - Graham Greene
Henry Pulling was surprised to meet his aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral. For fifty or more years there been no contact. Now living a quiet life as a retired bank manager, and content with reading the works of Sir Walter Scott and tending the dahlias in his garden, he has no idea of how disruptive his life was about to become. Augusta invites him to come and visit, which he does after picking up the urn with his mother’s ashes. There he meets Augusta’s Af ...more
Henry Pulling was surprised to meet his aunt Augusta at his mother’s funeral. For fifty or more years there been no contact. Now living a quiet life as a retired bank manager, and content with reading the works of Sir Walter Scott and tending the dahlias in his garden, he has no idea of how disruptive his life was about to become. Augusta invites him to come and visit, which he does after picking up the urn with his mother’s ashes. There he meets Augusta’s Af ...more
2.5, raised to three stars for the capacity to make me laugh out loud and for the general quality of the writing.
However, this story of a dull man's descent from a colorless retirement of dahlia-raising to an eventual acceptance of all manner of moral evils, including murder, all for the sake of a little excitement, was not witty enough to compensate for its central character's vacant moral core.
Multiple aspects of the book have not aged well, which is not completely the author's fault. Perhaps ...more
However, this story of a dull man's descent from a colorless retirement of dahlia-raising to an eventual acceptance of all manner of moral evils, including murder, all for the sake of a little excitement, was not witty enough to compensate for its central character's vacant moral core.
Multiple aspects of the book have not aged well, which is not completely the author's fault. Perhaps ...more
Jun 24, 2009
Kathy
rated it
really liked it
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review of another edition
Shelves:
read-non-mystery-fiction,
x-feb-09-thru-jan-10
What I most like about the Graham Greenes (the ones I like, that is) is the stark realism, the hope on the edge of despair, the searching, unfulfilled quality so many of his characters embody, the twist at the end that should have been expected. This book has some of that (and I did expect that concluding twist), but it was also delightfully amusing, with a bit of melancholy to temper the aunt's devil-may-care antics.
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I had heard and read this was a great read but the first chapter begins in such a mundane manner (much like Henry's, the main character's life) that I kept putting off reading it. It was well the effort. Funny, sad, poignant. I will search out more Greene to read. Thoroughly enjoyed this.
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Mar 29, 2008
Pamela
marked it as to-read
Apr 18, 2008
Donna
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Jan 11, 2011
Gaijinmama
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Jul 18, 2011
Jennie
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Sep 18, 2012
Celeste
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Feb 22, 2013
Laura
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Oct 13, 2013
Jennifer
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Apr 28, 2014
Nanci Svensson
marked it as to-read
Jul 31, 2020
Lisa Thomas
marked it as to-read
