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    Heart of the Matter: A Novel
    Heart of the Matter: A Novel
    Heart of the Matter: A Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    Heart of the Matter: A Novel

    Written by Emily Giffin

    Narrated by Cynthia Nixon

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    "Giffin excels at creating complex characters and stories that ask us to explore what we really want from our lives."--Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Tessa Russo is the mother of two young children and the wife of a renowned pediatric surgeon. Despite her own mother's warnings, Tessa has recently given up her career to focus on her family and the pursuit of domestic happiness. From the outside, she seems destined to live a charmed life.

    Valerie Anderson is an attorney and single mother to six-year-old Charlie--a boy who has never known his father. After too many disappointments, she has given up on romance--and even to some degree, friendships--believing that it is always safer not to expect too much.

    Although both women live in the same Boston suburb, the two have relatively little in common aside from a fierce love for their children. But one night, a tragic accident causes their lives to converge in ways no one could have imagined.

    In alternating, pitch-perfect points of view, Emily Giffin's Heart of the Matter creates a moving, luminous story of good people caught in untenable circumstances. Each being tested in ways they never thought possible. Each questioning everything they once believed. And each ultimately discovering what truly matters most.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Audio
    Release dateMay 11, 2010
    ISBN9781427209603
    Heart of the Matter: A Novel
    Author

    Emily Giffin

    Emily Giffin is the author of Something Borrowed, her smash-hit debut novel that was made into a major motion picture. She is also the author of Something Blue, Baby Proof, Love the One You’re With, and Heart of the Matter. Giffin is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the University of Virginia School of Law. After practicing litigation at a Manhattan firm for several years, she moved to London to write full time. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and children.

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    Reviews for Heart of the Matter

    4/5

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    • 3/5
      Betrayal at the hands of love in a rich colonial setting that only Greene can instill with his own unique grit. And of course a morality play that shows us tragedy rife with guilt.
    • 2/5
      Veelzijdig, maar bijna niet meer te genieten wegens achterhaalde problematiek (de menselijke verantwoordelijkheid en de goddelijke genade)
    • 2/5
      Bit flakey I thought. The characters were unlikable. A miss for me
    • 4/5
      A beautiful narrative that shows the way that life is not always simple or easy to understand. Wonderful in the manner in which the two women's perspectives are described in different narrative tones and the way in which they come together closer and closer as the book progresses. Excellent in the way that the plot exhibits the positive effects of family relationships that, although they had first seen in perfect, show how older generations and family members can teach the couple How to move forward.
    • 3/5
      Here are my thoughts as to what I liked about this book, and where it fell short. First, I liked the last four or five chapters which gave voice to the key issues or themes of the book, i.e. commitment, trust, and interpersonal responsibility between individuals, married couples, parent and child. These issues were in these closing chapters dealt with effectively and artfully through the dialogue/interactions between the characters, rather than through the narrators voice telling us what they were or should be thinking, wanting, hoping. Until the final chapters the key issues were masked and somewhat tritely at that, by the narrator's descriptions, and even in these final chapters, the voices of the children were ignored. My opinion is that the story, the characters, the complexities of both deserve a deeper more sophisticated treatment.
    • 4/5
      Scobie, a police officer serving in a war-time West African state, is distrusted, being scrupulously honest and immune to bribery. But then he falls in love, and in doing so is forced to betray everything he believes in, with tragic consequences. This is a terrifying depiction of a man's inner-struggle and is one of Graham Greene's most tragic novel. It is on the 1001 books list to read before you die. I look forward to reading another of Greene's novels in the near future and recommend this book to those who classics.
    • 4/5
      “If I could just arrange for her happiness first, he thought, and in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him—that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.”

      Published in 1948, this book is a psychological character study of Henry Scobie, a British police official living with his wife in Sierra Leone in 1942. He has recently been passed over for promotion. His wife is unhappy. He borrows money from a corrupt individual to send her to South Africa, setting off a spiral of poor choices. He meets a young widow who reminds him of his deceased daughter. “He was touched by uneasiness, as though he had accidentally set in motion a powerful machine he couldn’t control.”

      Greene excels at describing flawed individuals and their struggles. He puts the reader into Scobie’s mind. Scobie, a Catholic, is consumed by guilt for his choices, though he cannot seem to extract himself from his dilemma. He uses the excuse that he is acting out of love, but the reader will discern that love is not the source. This book portrays the futility of trying to predict what will happen as a result of our actions.
    • 5/5
      I found this to be one of Graham Greene’s better books; I am presently reading a couple of his other books that I don’t fully appreciate, and which I will not be giving five stars. The story takes place in West Africa during the Second World War. Major Henry Scobie is a police officer and deputy commissioner, married to Louise. There are various other characters, including Wilson, Harris, Yusef and Ali, Scobie’s “boy”. The white men have servants called “boys””, who have names, and also “small boys” who are just called that; we never learn their names. Scobie does not really love Louise but he has a neurotic need to please her and keep her happy, in fact keep everyone happy. Louise seems to believe she loves her husband and perhaps she does, perhaps she doesn’t. After all, to quote Prince Charles, “What is love?” (And when he said that, we knew he didn’t love Diana.) I found the beginning of the book rather boring. But then Louise, who doesn’t feel accepted by the other wives, feels the need to go on holiday and does so. I had difficulty in finding out where she goes to until later in the story it is revealed that it is South Africa. To send Louise on holiday, Scobie borrows money from Yusef, who later blackmails him. I found there to be various obscurities in the book; the author doesn’t always state matters directly, so one has to guess, which is not my forte. A number of persons arrive in an open boat; they have been travelling for forty days. Some die, including two children. I never found out where these people in the open boat came from; there may have been an incident involving a submarine. There is also a 19 year-old widow, Helen, who is carried in on a stretcher grasping a stamp album, with her eyes shut. Helen recovers and, with Louise out of the way, Scobie seemingly falls in love with Helen and immediately starts an affair with her. It is from this point that the book gets interesting. Scobie is in love with Helen, who is half his age, but feels he loves Louise too. Louise returns and is aware of her husband’s relationship with Helen. Wilson and Louise are both fond of poetry and communicate well with each other and Wilson falls in love with Louise. Scobie is a Catholic like many of the characters in Greene’s books and he has a crisis of conscience owing to his adultery. Not being a Catholic myself, there is much I don’t understand about Scobie’s moral/ethical/religious problems. He seems to feel that it is a sin for him to go to Mass or Communion, and I don’t really know the difference between these. It is as if Greene assumes that everyone understands all about Catholicism so he fails to explain adequately the reason for his problems and feelings of sinfulness, He feels damned. Scobie feels he loves both Louise and Helen, but it is doubtful whether he really does, and who knows? He knows his adultery is a sin but can’t give up Helen because that would hurt her, and he can’t abandon Louise for the same reason. The book turned out to be very readable, and Scobie’s character plausible and well-rounded.
    • 3/5
      It's been a few months since I read this, but my feeling is one of disappointment, unless this is meant to be an ironic story about a man who makes an ultimately pointless ultimate sacrifice. It's also very hot in Western Africa.The main character commits suicide in a way he hopes will appear otherwise (he saves up medicine and takes it all at once) in order to protect his wife and mistress. But his wife, unknown to him, knows about his affair and his mistress is ready to move on from their relationship. I found his dilemma interesting, but he chooses his own eternal damnation for the sake of others who don't really care.
    • 1/5
      Unlike Anna Karenina, I finished this drivel hoping there would be something worthwhile in the end. There wasn't. I wanted to smack everyone for being so appallingly stupid and I couldn't wait for Scobie to kill him self and get it over with. I kept muttering "Get on with it." to the book.
    • 4/5
      Rated: BWonderful literature / writing. Fascinating descriptions and dialogue. Depressing story of pure futility.
    • 3/5
      "Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil--or else an absolute ignorance."The action takes place in an unnamed British Colony coastal town of West Africa (almost certainly Sierra Leone where Greene served as an intelligence officer) during World War II and centres around Henry Scobie, a police Deputy Commissioner and a long-time resident in the colony. He is known for his scrupulous honesty and everyone expects him to be promoted to Commissioner when the present incumbant retires. When Scobie is passed over for the promotion his wife Louise, who has struggled to be accepted within the expatriate community, takes it as a personnel slight and begs him to help her leave and settle in South Africa alone instead of living with his failure. Unable to raise the necessary funds to facilitate Louise's move legitimately Scobie ignores his principles and borrows the money from a Syrian black marketeer, Yusef. Scobie is initially relieved to find himself on his own after Louise's departure, until one day he falls in love with the survivor of a shipwreck. When Louise returns to the colony and Yusuf excerpts pressure on to him to assist in his nefarious business dealing, Scobie is forced to take a good hard look at himself with shattering results.The novel is narrated in the third person limited style so that we see the action through Scobie's eyes. However occasionally the author switches the narrative to that of Wilson, a spy sent to the colony by Britain to try and stem the flow of diamonds smuggled out of the colony and suitor for Louise's affections. Right from the outset the reader is left with a sense of foreboding and we know that things will end badly for Scobie. Scobie’s only daughter died in Britain several years prior to the events whilst he was in Africa and he is obviously still grieving. Louise is controlling and self-centred apparently determined to make his existence even more miserable by making him feel guilty. There is little action in this novel instead there is an almost laser-like focus on the inner turmoil within the main character, in particular as he struggles with his religious beliefs. Scobie only wants to protect his wife from hurt but when he seeks peace and understanding in the arms of a young mistress he only finds moral confusion. This confusion is really the central theme as readers are asked to rethink our place in God’s eyes, and whether or not our words match our deeds. This is not an easy read and for me not a particularly enjoyable one. Perhaps because I'm not a Catholic I found it hard to sympathise with Scobie, rather than finding him honest and reliable I found him weak and easily swayed. He portends to love the two women but was I unconvinced (as was his wife) that he really loved anyone other than himself. Equally I found none of the other characters, with the exception of Yusuf, particularly believable or likeable although that isn't normally a pre-requisite. Overall I found this an OK read rather than a memorable one.
    • 3/5
      Mr Greene uses the experience he had from spending time in Sierra Leone to tell us about Deputy Police Commissioner Scobie and the trials of his life. His personal more than his professional life. And told through the lense of Greene's awkward relationship with his adopted catholicism. It's easy to see Mr Greene trying to work out how he feels about his religion in the internal discussion Scobie has with his conscience. An interesting read even for those not interested in catholic dogma. The story tells us something about British colonial west Africa and the class ridden society that ran it.
    • 4/5
      This book is great from the core and up. The structure is marvellous, the writing is, stylistically, by a master, and I didn't want to miss a paragraph. It's a horrid tale of rôles, love, hierarchies (including God), friendship and treachery. I loved it.
    • 5/5
      the most depressing book i have ever read
    • 4/5
      Scobie is a deputy police commissioner in Sierra Leone. His wife, Louise, is unhappy and as per usual the rumor mill is swirling. The new arrival, Wilson, seems to be interested in his wife and when she decides she wants to go to South Africa, Scobie is willing to do anything to make that happen and make her happy. But the decisions he makes to do that send his life into a tailspin.This is a very introspective story of a man and his choices. It's not a happy story by any means, but manages to investigate difficult subjects of suicide, religion, and happiness. Greene can turn a phrase, describing internal and external action brilliantly at times. The story was easy to read but also demands a lot of its readers.
    • 4/5
      The slow burn corruption of Major Scobie (both criminal and moral), wonderfully written.
    • 4/5
      I was somewhat surprised that I thought Graham Greene's novel "The Heart of the Matter" was a decent read. I've read some of Greene's nonfiction work and couldn't abide this attitude toward native people. Knowing this book was set in Africa, I had misgivings about it to start, but I found the story to be interesting and flowed well.The story focuses on Scobie, a police investigator who is mostly looking for smuggled diamonds. There are plenty of not-so-secret secrets floating around and a good helping of Catholic guilt to move the story along.The characters were interesting, even though they were mostly unlikeable people. I'm not sure this is really a must-read book, but it was pretty enjoyable.
    • 5/5
      Not a review, just some random thoughts upon completing this novel. Scobie is such a tragic figure! And I can't help wondering how autobiographic his struggles with love & religion were since both Scobie & Greene converted to Catholicism. The broken rosary Scobie kept meaning to have repaired is a symbol that sticks in my mind... Another thing that struck me was the encapsulated in the phrase:" - that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness."Despite the religious aspects running through this book, it seemed almost existentialist in tone.
    • 4/5
      I've never read anything by Graham Greene before but this book was chosen by the LT 1001 Books Group as the August 2017 read and it seemed like a good place to start. I found the subject matter difficult but Greene's writing is quite wonderful.Henry Scobie is a policeman in a British colony on the west coast of Africa. World War II is on and ships in the Atlantic are regularly sunk. Scobie has been in the colony for fifteen years so he is quite a veteran. He oversees a number of black policeman and takes on difficult cases himself. His wife, Louise, is dissatisfied with life in the colony and when Henry is passed over for the head police job she is very disappointed. She is seen by other ex-pats as rather aloof because she likes literature and poetry. A new man in the colony, Edward Wilson, likes poetry himself and he forms a passion for Louise. Although Wilson is nominally a clerk he actually is a spy for the British government trying to find collaborators with the Germans. He sets his sights on Scobie and soon has evidence of wrongdoing in that Scobie is having an affair with a woman who was shipwrecked and lost her husband. Louise, at this time, was sent to South Africa at her request and at considerable cost. Scobie, with virtually no savings, had to borrow the money from one of the Syrians in town which also brings him under suspicion. Scobie's Catholic faith means he should confess and stay away from his mistress but he cannot bring himself to do so. Then when his wife returns he takes Communion with her which is another sin. Scobie is on the horns of a dilemma and doesn't know how to extricate himself.Greene's description of life in an African colony are based upon his own experiences in Sierra Leone during the war. It sounds dreadful and so when Scobie says that he likes living there I found it hard to believe. I also found it hard to believe that he had such a commitment to his mistress because he seems like a textbook stiff-upper-lip sort of Brit the reader has a hard time believing he has any emotions. But as the saying goes "Still waters run deep" so there are many emotions roiling around under the surface. I felt very sorry for Scobie because he seemed like such a decent person. He really wanted to do what was best for both the women in his life and he wanted to be a good Catholic. There was just no way for him to reconcile his faith with his feelings for his women.
    • 4/5
      Greene piles angst on angst with the religiosity he's known for - it could be tedious - however, this author's eloquent style coupled with sharp observation of the human condition keeps the reader involved and whilst the story is somewhat dated by modern, contemporary tomes written on the same issues it still stands up as a good, thoughtful read.
    • 4/5
      This is a great psychological novel. Scobie is an honest officer in the British Colonial administration in West Africa. His honesty makes him suspect by many, both British and African, but his religious faith and sense of duty to others, including his wife and his sense of law and order, insulate him from ordinary temptations. But when Scobie falls in love, his sense of personal responsibility for others leads him farther and farther from the open, simple morality he has followed all his life and gradually he becomes enmeshed in the crime and corruption that permeates colonial culture.
    • 4/5
      Morose and melancholy, an outpost of the mind or perhaps soul in an outpost of the Empire. The clipped and weighted dialogue, like a Golden Age movie script, reeks of some unvoiced emotion - weary despair in this case. A brothel visit is inserted, for example, simply to evoke the "sadness of the after-taste," which moreover "fell upon his spirits beforehand". The heart and the matter of Scobie, the lead character, are implausible (as Orwell's early review noted), and getting real world motives to fit in with the doctrines of religion, as Greene seeks to do, is always a struggle.
    • 5/5
      A sad story if ever there was one, but one of the finest ever written about the white men in West Africa.
    • 3/5
      Wonderfully dark scenes of high temp & humidity & fevers in the African colonies, but simplistic plot & characterisation.Read Dec 2005
    • 5/5
      I shall say from the outset The Heart of the Matter does not make for comfortable reading. However, for anyone who wants to be challenged, not necessarily intellectually, but deeper down this is an excellent. Scobie, a man of honor in a climate which expects corruption, which seethed with jealousies, gossip and spying, is put under Greene's relentless microscope. His greatest quality, caring too much, is also his greatest failing. Watching the disintegration of an good man is not an easy thing to witness. As I read the latter fourth I kept thinking, "this doesn't have to end this way; there are so many ways this could be resolved. If I were Scobie, I would..." And that is the heart of the matter. I am not Scobie. I am not remotely like Scobie. I cannot ever fully understand Scobie. What I can do is hope for eternal mercy for all the Scobies of the world. For all the world. And that is where Greene leaves it.

      Like many of Greene's books, The Heart of the Matter is shadowed by the author's faith. Like his schoolmate and writing contemporary Evelyn Waugh Catholicism is a continuing theme; however, with Greene it goes beyond a theme; it is nearly a haunting. I can't believe the stringency of his faith and how he portrayed it won many converts for the church. At times reading the book seemed an act of masochism in the name of art; a spiritual tormenting like self flagellation and wearing a hair shirt. Now this may not seem much of a recommendation for a book, in an odd way it his. It will get under your skin and flail its way through the corridors of your brain and heart. At least it did mine.

      Throughout Greene masterfully manipulates scenes, details and characters producing subtle doubles, haunting metaphors, smalls clues, and well-conceived symbols (the broken rosary, the rusted handcuffs). But beyond the artistry, which is nothing if the book lacks a soul, is the lonely, responsibility-ridden Scobie, a man worthy of the reader's concern and love.

    • 2/5
      A boring life of a British diplomat on the West Coast of Africa during WWII. Pure tedium. As was the read. Yet, this was a popular book in England when it came out. I get British humor, but this irony eludes me.
    • 5/5
      Scobie is an Assistant Commissioner of police in a British colony in west Africa during WW2. He is in a loveless marriage with Helen. They had a child who died several years before at the age of 12 in boarding school in England. Both Scobie and his wife are devout Catholics and take the issue of sin very strongly. Helen is unhappy with the way she is treated by the colony society and wants to go away for a time to live in South Africa. Scobie takes from a shady Syrian merchant (and possible diamon smuggler) named Yosuf. That act is Scobie's first transgression, from his point of view, even though the money is a loan not a bribe but while Scobie doesn't try to keep it a secret he doesn't report it immediately either. Later he allows a Portugese ships captain to smuggle a letter to the captain's only daughter, even though the letter may have intelligence information in it. While Helen is away Scobie falls in love with a young woman, now a widow, who was one of the survivors of a liner that was attacked by the Germans.Scobie, whom his boss calls Scobie the just, has a personality that feels sorry for those who are unhappy or suffering (``losers'' as he calls them). He stays with his wife because he feels sorry for her. He permits the Portugese captain's letter through because he empathizes with his love for his daughter. He falls in love with the Louise partly because he feels sorrow for her becoming a widow weeks after her marriage, just months out of boarding school.It's Scobie's sense of justice conflicting and his willingness to do harm himself, even to commit illegal acts, to aid other people, to keep them from harm. This leads to consequences, both spiritual and physical, for Scobe and the people around him and inevitably final sacrifice of himself for others happiness.Greene is one of my favorite authors and this book is one of his best. As with most of Greene's books the plot is not as important as the inner struggle the hero goes through. In this book we get to see Scobie's thoughts in great detail. However, as in many of the author's books, the other characters are much less developed. We never understand the motivations of Scobie's wife Helen or his lover Louise or of Yosuf the smuggler he gets entangled with or the accountant/spy Wilson who is in live with Helen. But it is Greene's focus on Scobie's increasing frustration and spiritual torment as he tries to help others and fails until his final solution that makes the book so interesting.
    • 5/5
      Henry Scobie is a British policeman, working in an unnamed country in Africa. He is honest, straightforward and honorable. But life changes when Scobie finds that he no longer can follow his own moral code trying to carry out his responsibility to his wife as he falls in love with a young shipwrecked woman Helen, and he is still trying to give his obedience to his Catholic God. This was an excellent story of internal conflict and the emotions of someone who is committing a sin, but really feels there are no alternatives. Many of Graham Greene’s novels have a common theme of Catholicism in them. Although, this is something I am not personally familiar with, I love the way he describes the feeling of guilt and obligation when human desires come in direct conflict with the demands of the church. Another excellent story.
    • 4/5
      As good as The Power and the Glory? Nope. As good as The Quiet American? Yeah. I read some other peoples' reviews, and along with the usual 'oh, i didn't like any of the characters' (really? how many people do you like outside of books?) and 'it's just depressing' (yes. If only all books could fill my life with joy and ice-cream sprinkles, I would be so happy), I realized that any fiction written before, say, 1970, can't win. If it's set in the colonies, then it's being imperialistic and anti-feminist. If it's not sent in the colonies, it's ignoring the problems of the third/developing/dependent world. If the protagonist is white, it's racist. If he's a male, it's sexist. And so on. Even if the book in question - like this one, or Heart of Darkness and so on - is explicitly and rigidly anti-colonialist, it's never good enough. Graham Greene, so far as I can tell, is absolutely incapable of writing a book about a woman. So? It's a limitation, but that doesn't mean he's furthering the interests of the patriarchy. Aaaaaaaarghhhhhhhh...

      Anyway, you should read this if you have the slightest tinge of idealist in you. If you hate religion, just pretend that Scobie's real problem is that his adultery doesn't mesh with his Marxism, or his capitalism, or whatever ideology you want to throw in there. Point being, unlike a lot of books, you get a picture of someone who chooses his ideology over messy real life, and it's both depressing as hell and crazy inspiring. And for god's sake: fiction is no sociology, nor political theory.