Between Form and Faith:
Graham Greene and the Catholic Novel
by Martyn Sampson
Fordham University Press,
£26.99, 304 pages
Graham Greene remains synonymous with the phrase “Catholic novel” even as his books are less frequently read than they were in his lifetime and as they lose the central place they once held among the set texts for the study of English Literature in schools and universities.
Martyn Sampson’s book is a brave attempt to triangulate Greene’s best-known novels, academic literary theory in the broad tradition of “deconstruction” and various forms of theological argument. But reader, beware: the text reads more like a doctoral dissertation than an accessible manifesto for the continuing vitality of Greene as a resource for thinking Catholics in the
21st century.
