Book 10 – “Travels with my Aunt” by Graham Greene

When picking the books for my 20 Books of Summer challenge I decided to find twenty fiction and twenty non-fiction. For some reason I cannot now fathom I assumed that Graham Greene’s book Travels with my Aunt was non-fiction – I think I must have thought that it was a travel book and the very old copy I got from a book table in a supermarket didn’t have the back cover any more so there was no description of the book. This is actually a novel and it is the fictional character Henry Pulling that travels with his aunt rather than the author.

Henry Pulling is a very recently retired bank manager. He lives a quiet life by the sea, is respected in his town and is devoted to his dahlias. When his mother dies he meets her sister at the funeral and suddenly Aunt Augusta starts to play a large part in his life.

This is a very amusing book and a lot of the humour comes from staid and rather innocent Henry being exposed to his aged aunt who has lived a racy life filled with love affairs, travelling and enjoyment. Henry and Aunt Augusta travel to Paris, by the Orient Express to Turkey, to Boulogne and eventually to Argentina. Along the way Aunt Augusta regales Henry with far-fetched stories of her youth, which turn out to be true, and reveals to him some family secrets. From early in the book when a dubious companion of his aunt places cannabis in the urn containing his mother’s ashes Henry is confused and bewildered. Nothing when travelling with his aunt is anything like the conventional life he has known and he is bewildered by the people he meets, his aunt’s lovers, interventions by the police, smuggling and various other shady characters including a CIA agent.

We are not asked to laugh at Henry but to share with him as his life opens up and he begins to live for real for the first time in his life. Eventually he will realise that this new life has risks and there is a price to pay for not being part of the establishment and he will need to make a choice about what he will do.

I loved this book. I thought it was witty and clever. I enjoyed seeing Henry, who appears to be liked by all the other characters, begin to live a more adventurous life. I thought that the ending was well done. I am glad that I picked up this copy.