Oh, have you heard the one about the vacuum cleaner salesman who accidently became a spy and sent drawings of his vacuum cleaner components to HQ pretending they were military installations?

The premise for Our Man in Havana does sound like a bad joke. However, absurd humour and making fun of authorities – in this case the British Secret Service – has never scared me off.

A while ago I planned to read some Cuba related literature before going on holiday to Cuba. As it has happened with numerous plans during the course of time, this one utterly failed to materialise. But now I am trying to make up for it. 

Earlier this week I wrote about Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea which primarily takes place on the sea and thus provides limited Cuba flavour. Our Man in Havana has a proper Cuba setting and I enjoyed being brought back to the streets of Havana. Incidentally it is written in the 1950s just as The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene actually met in Havana in 1959, but according to crimereads.com, there was no love lost between them.

Anyway, back to the vacuum cleaners. Mr. Wormold is not a terribly successful salesman. His teenage daughter Milly who is part time faithful Catholic and part time aspiring minx is fond of horses, clothes and make-up and has an uncanny ability to wrap her father around her little finger. In other words, Mr. Wormold needs money.

One day he is cornered in the men’s bathroom by the mysterious Mr. Hawthorne. From then on Mr. Wormold’s new life as an agent takes off. It transpires, he has a hidden talent for making up fictional agents and writing creative reports about their findings. 

 Sometimes he was scared about how these people grew in the dark without his knowledge. 

You can’t help sympathising with James Wormold. He is an antihero, the antithesis to James Bond. A vague, middle aged man with a limp, no clear purpose in life and limited initiative. The women in his life are altogether more ressourceful. When something is wrong with the car, Wormold can rely on his daughter Milly, whereas Beatrice, the secretary sent from London to help out, is the quick-witted one who takes resolute action.

Whilst Wormold, Milly, Beatrice and in particular all the fictional agents provide good entertainment, Wormold’s friend Dr. Hasselbacher is by far the most interesting character. He has depth and imagination and the most creative ideas Wormold implements in his short spy career come from Hasselbacher. 

“You should dream more. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.” 

Hasselbacher has a philosophical nature and a sense of humour which sometimes materialises in inspired one-liners, other times in absurd situations such as the discussion with the American relating to the metaphysics of (fictional) people.  

Behind his clever and witty remarks we sense a vulnerable person with some baggage which has hugely influenced his life. 

I mostly found Our Man in Havana entertaining and the paranoid climate in Cuba under the cold war was the perfect setting for a satirical spy story. The stupidity of MI6 almost seemed too exaggerated to be funny. But since the plot is inspired by Graham Greene’s own experience with the secret service, who knows… 

In the audiobook each chapter is accompanied by music indicating the location. Cuba and UK each have their own theme tune, which is a prime example of music saying more than a thousand words. The difference between the two theme tunes is just so telling.  

Readers of Graham Greene’s more serious literature, may be disappointed by Our Man in Havana, but to me it was fun way of remembering the days where I wandered around in Havana, enjoying the sunshine and taking in the various sights and sounds from the city of music, dancing, classic cars and Mojitos. 

Title: Our Man in Havana [1958]
Author: Graham Greene
Format: Audiobook, narrated by Jeremy Northam 
Genre: Spy Fiction

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