Reviews for Greenmantle

The average rating for Greenmantle based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-20 00:00:00 Marcus Hicks I first read this book when I was 10 or 11. It was a library copy, borrowed from the Kodaikanal Club in Kodaikanal, a hill station in south India. It used to be the local English club and the contents of the library still include a large number of old hardbound editions of authors who were popular in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Early on in this novel, Hannay remarks on the ability of the English for 'getting inside the skin' of distant races. He goes on to say: 'Perhaps the Scots are better than the English, but we're all a thousand per cent better than anybody else.' Someone had underlined this sentiment and jotted down in the margin: 'Oh, really?'. The rejoinder, in a different hand, was: 'Yes, really, my dear anonymous!' This was followed by a phrase, apparently in Dutch, that I cannot recall. As we contemplate the death of print, it strikes me that little exchanges like these are going the way of the dinosaur, and the loss isn't necessarily a great step forward for civilization. But reading these books tends to put me in that kind of frame of mind. They are so much a product of their age, all Empire and honour and robust manly values pitted against all sorts of 'nastiness'. Hannay faces immense dangers, but in a way he never ventures very far from home, with the whole of the world seeming to be a sort of backyard to Europe, where you may encounter an old boy from the old school around the next hill or valley. It was a world in which countries like mine figured as little more than pawns in the machinations of the Western empires and the phrase 'white man' could be meant as a compliment without necessarily entailing any specific degree of racism apart from the generic assumption that one's own type are superior which, truth be told, is probably as prevalent today, behind the eye-wash of politically correct phraseology. Meanwhile, what we have here is a remarkably exciting adventure, full of broad generalisations about national character, memorable characters and daring exploits. Buchan's old-fashioned beliefs don't hinder the novel - I'd say they help it along by giving the narrative a real sense of vitality because the writer believes in the stakes being fought for. Wildly improbable and thoroughly enjoyable, all in all.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-11 00:00:00 Gitte Peulecke The Ripping-est of Ripping Yarns I've got a special shelf, "Ripping Yarns," set up here at Goodreads devoted to this sort of tale. The salient feature of a ripping yarn is that once you're well into the book, despite whatever flaws there might be in plot, plausibility, or characterization, it's damn near impossible to put down. John Buchan's four tales featuring hero Richard Hannay fall squarely in the ripping yarn tradition, and they're particularly remarkable as examples of early spy novels. Here are the badder than bad villains and resourceful, patriotic, man's man of a hero that we encounter later in the novels of Ian Fleming, for example. Then there's the perennial theme that pits one worldview against another, with the fate of civilization hanging in the balance. The exotic settings (in Germany, Hungary, and Turkey) add another layer of intrigue. The plot is too convoluted -- and, to be honest, a little too hocus-pocus -- to recap, but it doesn't really matter. Once the reader has gotten by some of the initial artifice of the premise, it's a sleigh ride. One thing that I found slightly difficult was the dated parlance of the WWI-era soldier. Germans, for example, are almost always referred to by Hannay as "the Boche," while frequent references to the Boer War, the Turkish campaign, and other contemporary events make the book at times heavy going. I have a fairly good grounding in the history of this period, but still at times I found passages such as this opaque: "I watched the figures in khaki passing on the pavement, and thought what a nice safe prospect they had compared to mine. Yes, even if next week, they were in the Hohenzollern, or the Hairpin trench at the Quarries, or that ugly angle at the Hooge." Well, clearly those refer to places of heavy fighting during WWI, but I've no idea where they were. The point is, these sort of references pepper the narrative and the reader is advised to just sail on by and not too worry too much about it. Another thing that is more worrisome, though, are the frequent lucky chance encounters. Hannay is forever running across one or another of his fellow adventurers at opportune moments -- in an obscure town on the banks of the Danube, for example. It seems more than a little contrived to the modern reader. Finally, there's one more hurdle for contemporary audiences: the "stiff-upper-lip," "jolly-good-show" British warrior ethos that pervades the book. Here's a representative passage from near the end of the book, when Hannay and two of his companions are trapped and face almost certain death: "We're the lucky fellows," said Sandy; "we've all had our whack. When I remember the good times I've had I could sing a hymn of praise. We've lived long enough to know ourselves, and to shape ourselves into some kind of decency. But think of those boys who have given their lives freely when they scarcely knew what life meant. They were just at the beginning of the road, and they didn't know what dreary bits lay before them." I won't give away what happens next, but let's just say the phrase deus ex machina springs to mind. The remarkable thing is that in spite of all these shortcomings, I could scarcely put this book down. Buchan's prose, however laden with WWI jargon, sings. His heroes bound larger than life from the pages. And those villains... oh those villains! Rosa Klebb and Ernst Blofield have nothing on them. Heady stuff indeed.