Travels with My Aunt

Greene's fine sense of humor is displayed in this warm and far-reaching comic novel, Travels with My Aunt, a bestseller when it appeared originally. At his mother's funeral, Henry Pulling, a stuffy, retired bank manager with an interest in dahlias, meets his Aunt Augusta. The indomitable Aunt Augusta pulls Henry along on a whirlwind adventure traveling with an old lover, Wordsworth; Curran, the founder of a doggies; church; O'Toole, the C.I.A. man obsessed by statistics and his counterculture daughter; and old Mr. Visconti, who has been wanted by Interpol for twenty years. Henry describes his activities with shock and bewilderment, and, finally, with the tenderness of a fellow traveler going their way.