“Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party” by Graham Greene

I thought I would use this book as my first book in Melissa's Book Challenge because it has “Geneva” in the title. In truth I do not think that it really capture the intended spirit of the challenge, but just in case, here it is.
This rather thin book describes one small part of the life of a toothpaste millionaire who lives in Geneva and who is a pretty cold and weird character. His wife died after he ruined the life of the man she was seeing secretly so she could listen to music, and during the book his daughter dies but he does not go to her funeral because she reminds him too much of his wife. Most of all this man “entertains” himself by having parties to which he invites a small group of faithful acquaintances - he refuses to call them friends. And these parties are designed as experiments to see how far the greed of rich people will take them.
I like Graham Greene. Here is a small extract of “Doctor Fischer of Geneva….”

“..But how does one describe happiness? Unhappiness we can so easily describe – I was unhappy, we say, because…. We remember this and that, giving good reasons, but happiness is like one of those islands far out in the Pacific which has been reported by sailors when it emerges from the haze where no cartographer has ever marked it. The island disappears again for a generation, but no navigator can be quite certain that it only existed in the imagination of some long-dead lookout.”

Isn’t he right? It is so hard to describe happiness, and so easy to describe unhappiness.