The book was recommended to me by a friend who said it dealt with the moral conflict between being part of an organization within which you know you can be helpful, and knowing that the goals of the organization are ethically wrong. I was intrigued, but 80 pages in, I realized I was just flipping pages.

I love Camus’s general philosophy (of the absurd), and this book is basically a dramatization of it. Reading an essay on the topic is probably more productive than reading this book, however… because this particular book sort of sucks. Each character seems to represent a take on the absurd, which is sort of fun, but also sort of lame. There are long winding passages of text that are completely abstract, and then he tries to tell me that he’s removed all embellishments from the narration. I found myself frequently flipping forward a couple pages saying “blah blah blah”.

Very good. Understated, but vivid. Strong images & characters. Camus’ experience in journalism shows in his language: never flowery, but always strong.

The first little section threw me for a bit the first time I picked this up, but once past the description of the town, the book engaged me quickly.

Seemed to sputter and lose its stickiness a bit about 20 pages from the end, but that could have just been the kittens & child competing for my attention.

Still, marvelous.

This is in a tie with The Brothers Karamazov for my all-time favorite book. The prose is straight-forward and economical, yet incredibly dense with meaning. It subtly covers many facets of the human struggle, from a primarily Existentialist point of view, but it’s not a philosophical polemic or anything. You can read it on any of about four levels… plot-based, psychological, historical, allegorical, and so on. It blows Camus’ more famous book, The Stranger, out of the water, to my mind. Basically it starts with the nihilism of that book, and tries to find a way back to life. I think it succeeds admirably in doing so, all in all.