Noah' s Compass, by Anne Tyler

"In the sixty-first year of his life, Liam Pennywell lost his job." is the first sentence of Noah's Compass. Anne Tyler has always had a knack for capturing me from the start, but I found this hook extraordinarily effective.

Pennywell experiences a second disaster almost right away, and with these events, Tyler introduces us to another of her very human--quirky, selfish, out-of-it--characters, and his family, which is also singular; yet, isn't there some platitude about all families being crazy when viewed up close?

Another terrific read from one of my very favorite authors.

The Heart of the Matter, by Graham Greene

An audio book.

Ah, Graham Greene again. What a pool of calm and good sense one enters into when reading one of his books.

This is the story of Major Scoby, a policeman in West Africa during World War II. The vicissitudes of war, the clash of cultures, the threats of disease and violence, are ever present, yet Scoby presents himself as a model of reason and rectitude.

Scoby is a Catholic, which is of course the heart of many of Greene's matters, but in the course of this novel he finds himself grimly at odds with his religion, and in danger of losing his soul. In the end, we are presented with an intensely sad and difficult paradox, which left me wondering how, exactly, Greene felt about his religion.

This is such a beautifully written piece of work that I hope to acquire it on paper and read it again.