Life & death in fifteenth-century Florence Book

Hazzard writes: "Graham Greene has already had biographers, one of whom has served him mightily. Yet I hope there is room for one who knew him--not wisely, perhaps, but fairly well--on an island that was "not his kind of place," but where he came seasons after season, year after year..." and this as well: "It seemed time, too, that a woman should write of Graham Greene."

Hazzard is a writer of elegance and reserve. Her book is slender, the times with Greene are neither numerous nor lengthy, but one sees Greene through her lens and learns of life on Capri as well and others who knew him there. She is never gossipy, not one to exploit. The book starts out compellingly, then seems to focus on Greene less intensely as other characters and situations, tangentially related to Greene, take more of center stage. Worth reading for a glimpse into his later life, when still he put in his 350 words a day, and because it will drive you back to his work. If you're like me, you'll want to hear him in his own words, his best and truest self being his novels, and the way to feel closest to the man and his work is to read them.

I liked these passages early on in her book, and had hoped to find more of them:

"That longing for peace which Graham invoked throughout his life, in published and in private writings, seemed, on the other hand, a fantasy of transfiguration. Anyone who knew him--and he knew himself best of all--was aware that peace was the last thing he desired. It was literally the last thing, synonymous--as often in his fiction--with death. ...Graham's recurring suicidal impulse--that flirting with fatality in adolescence and in his terrible prewar journeys, and in later expeditions to battle zones around the world--was countered or complemented by a defiant entanglement with life; and by a nearly nineteenth century energy of intention that enabled him to come through, and to write." (14).

and:

"Malcolm Muggeridge wrote of Graham: 'Whatever his circumstances, he has this facility for seeming always to be in lodgings, and living from hand to mouth. Spiritually, and even physically, he is one of nature's displaced persons.' He was not attached, through habit or memory, or aesthetically, to the rooms and houses and neighborhoods of his life, and could throw them over at will. Familiarity bred restlessness or rejection. Even in a chosen setting, such as the Rosaio, he retained the quality of wanderer." (22).