Customer Reviews

The Colour of Blood

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The Colour of Blood is a tight, page-turning Catholic thriller in the Graham Greene tradition. The opening sequence hits the ground running: Cardinal Bem, head of the Church in an unnamed Soviet bloc country, is being chauffered back to his residence when "he saw, peripherally, a black car racing very close to his. He turned to look. The driver, a woman, wore a green silk scarf tied around her head. Beside her in the passenger seat, a bearded man, holding a revolver in both hands, raised it, aiming at him."

That's just the first page. The rest of the book follows the Cardinal as he flees from unknown captors and attempts to discover what organization was behind the assassination attempt--the Secret Police, who are antagonistic to the Church, or could it have been a fringe organization within the Church, who feel that Cardinal Bem has compromised too often with the Communist government?

Brian Moore's writing has textbook clarity: limpid, economical, and unfussy. "The Colour of Blood" was short-listed for the prestigious Booker Prize in the U.K, and was awarded the Sunday Express' Book of the Year. Though it drags in a few spots, and the ending (as another reviewer noted) is somewhat anticlimactic, on the whole the novel is well-crafted, suspenseful, and deeply orthodox. As an exemplar of smart genre writing, "The Colour of Blood" could take pride of place next to a Graham Greene thriller.

RE: AUDIO CASSETTE VERSION. In this Cold War curiosity, the Catholic cardinal of a Russian puppet state must balance the forces of the secret police on the one hand and the "patriotic clergy" on the other, while struggling to maintain his own link with God. The character study of the hero is strong enough that the reader may be carried well into the tale before realizing that nothing much actually happens. The baddies are not ruthless enough and the promised action is never delivered so that ultimately the story is as gray and drab as everyday life may have been in such a place.

"The Colour of Blood" is set in an unnamed, fictitious Eastern European country during the 1980s. (References in the text date the action to late August and early September of 1986). At least, the country is ostensibly fictitious, but there can be little doubt that Brian Moore had Poland in mind; the country is predominantly Catholic, has a strong, independent trade union movement on the lines of Solidarity and power lies, not with the civilian Communist Party leaders but with a military dictator reminiscent of General Jaruzelski. To make it even more obvious which country he is referring to, Moore gives his hero the surname Bem (after the Polish national hero Jozef Bem) and his military strongman the surname Urban; Jaruzelski's propaganda minister was named Jerzy Urban.

After Cardinal Stephen Bem, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in this country, narrowly survives an assassination attempt, he is taken into what is described as "protective custody" by men claiming to belong to the Security Services. He discovers, however, that his captors are not what they seem, but are in reality members of a fanatical anti-Communist movement within the Church, who despise Bem because they seem him as a traitor and a collaborator with the regime. Their aim is to prevent him from attending a forthcoming religious celebration in which a more radical Archbishop intends to call for protests and demonstrations against the Government. Escaping from his captors, Bem has to make his way to the celebrations to ensure that his own call for peaceful co-existence can be heard.

Moore is sometimes bracketed together with Graham Greene as a "Catholic novelist", but there was an important difference between them. Greene was brought up as an Anglican but converted to Catholicism as a young man. Moore was a "cradle Catholic" who lost his faith but who nevertheless continued to deal with Catholic themes. "The Colour of Blood" reminded me in some respects of Green's writings. Like some of Greene's novels it is in form a political thriller, but a thriller which attempts to deal with religious and philosophical issues. There are similarities with Greene's "The Power and the Glory", another novel about a Catholic clergyman confronted with a dictatorial, anti-religious regime.

Nevertheless, I felt that "The Colour of Blood" did not work either as a thriller or as an exploration of politics and religion. On a purely technical level, I found it dull and pedestrian, a thriller which fails to thrill. On a more serious level I found it dispiriting and politically objectionable. I do not mean by this that Moore is an apologist for Communism; no Marxist novelist wishing to make propaganda for his particular creed would be likely to set one of his novels in a thinly-fictionalised version of Jaruzelski's Poland, a regime which abandoned the last vestiges of the pretence that Communism was a dictatorship of the proletariat rather than a dictatorship pure and simple. Although Jaruzelski was ostensibly a Communist, his real ideology was a jackbooted, parade-ground authoritarianism, virtually indistinguishable from that of his ostensibly capitalist contemporaries such as Pinochet and Galtieri.

Moore's political creed, as expressed through his main character Bem, amounts to a sort of passive fatalism, a belief that God is on the side of the big battalions and that the little man, if he knows what is good for him, will not challenge their divine right to rule. What makes it so depressing is that Bem opposes not only violent resistance to the regime- Christian pacifism has a long and honourable history- but also any form of non-violent protest. Just two years after this book was written in 1987 the falsity of that creed was exposed when all over Eastern Europe- not just in Poland but also in Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Rumania- the little men stood up against their oppressors. The Berlin Wall fell and Communism found itself in that dustbin of history it had long predicted would be the resting-place of all opposing ideologies. This book should join it there.

Though he is a cardinal, Bem has successfully managed to avoid the sin of pride, and is attempting to do the will of his god, within his church. Surrounded by gentle and religious people, immersed in the day-to-day details of his regime, he is totally unprepared for the sudden intrusion of personal violence in his life. An attempt is made on his life, followed by his kidnapping and incarceration. Suddenly, he finds himself struggling against hidden enemies, and struggling to find and feel the will of his god.

This is perhaps the most taut and action-packed of any Brian Moore novels. Right down to the last word, this book will keep you riveted and straining. And in Cardinal Bem, Moore has perhaps created one of his most simply admirable and likeable protagonists ever. But he lacks none of the inner honesty and complexity that mark Moore's protagonists. In addition to being an incredibly suspenseful thriller, the book is as emotive and thought-provoking as anyone could ask. It is a beauty.

This book is indeed a page-turner. It is enthralling and difficult to put down. It is well-written, and the characters are believeable and engrossing. I found myself caring for the characters and rooting for one over the other. The book does draw you in. However, the plot leads us on and on into what is finally a dismal abyss. My problem is not that the final twists of the plot are implausible. My problem is that the entire ending of the book is simply miserable. Also, my problem is hard to find the study on this book, such as the study on the characters, their conflict, the plot, etc. And really, I should have known. The hallmark of Oprah's books is that they are bleak yet hopeful -- until the end, that is, when her book choices are still bleak but all hope has been unrefuteably obliterated. So, this was a good book. But take heed: there is no happy ending here. Nothing to feel good about. No hope at all. None. So finally, I was left unsatisfied even though it was a good read.