The Sheltering Sky

Rating:
Summary: If I Could Give 10 Stars, I would
Review: I first read this book about five years ago, then read it again last year. Re-reading it reminded me how many scenes had become part of my unconscious thinking (conversations between the main characters; descriptions of the desert; the odd mannerisms of some characters, especially the mother-son American expatriots; and especially the last section of the book which simultaneously departs from reality yet intensifies the reality that was established throughout the novel). The sense of how two people can be deeply in love, with a profound and needy connection, and yet be unable to form words for their closeness until one of them is lost, are painfully poignant in this novel. Adding to this poignancy is the idea of how war can drive people to a place like the Sahara--a place far away from the society where those wars were begun and fought--and yet take away your voice for expressing the horror that drove you there, even with your partner, who travelled to this far-off place with you for the same reasons. In this sense, the desert becomes a metaphor for a place we can all end up in, where we feel passionately, but where our "tongue turns to stone," as W.B. Yeats once wrote. In this book, the desert is a landscape where there are both infinite possibilities, yet a great inability to move with energy in any direction. Conrad's phrase, "We live, as we dream, alone," comes to mind repeatedly as you read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommend
Review: I picked up "The Sheltering Sky" after years of knowing that it was the inspiration for the song, "Tea in the Sahara" by The Police. I'm very glad I did. At a little over 300 pages, I was prepared to spend a while on the book but I quickly read it within a week due to Bowles excellent way of not wasting time on unnecessary details. The book moves quickly and is very intriguing in the sense that you can easily relate to the struggles that the three Americans-- trying to cope in a foreign land-- are going through.

Rating:
Summary: Great Introductory Book
Review: I fell in love with Paul Bowles' writing through this book. Can't get enough of him now. I thought I was throughly emersed with the Beat writers, Ginsburg & Kerouc. Now I've found a fellow, less known Beat. Wow.

Rating:
Summary: A Discerning reader from Boston
Review: This is one of the best books I have ever read. The charcters are completly flushed out Bowles doesn't miss a single emotion that the charcters are experiencing. With a backdrop of a stifiling hot dessert we are taken on a dizzying journey of emotional deconstruction.

Rating:
Summary: Dreams on a road to ruin
Review: For Kerouac and the Beats, frenetic, directionless travel was proof of life - could even be held to "create" life. Bowles, in this slyly subversive book, reverses that. The three Americans who start out on this largely pointless journey into the North African desert, hope the mere fact of movement will resolve their deep spiritual lethargy - or at least delay their having to face it. They imagine themselves sophisticated, wearing their cynicism as a talisman in a cultural landscape of troubling strangeness. But they are simply unaware. Faced with an elemental vastness that cares nothing for their conceits, they dis-integrate. Only one survives and she is so utterly changed - physically and in spirit - that she can no longer recognise herself, nor see a future for herself in the world she formally inhabited. Although the prime characters are fundamentally unpleasant - at least for most of the book - the lasting impression is of an eerie, spectral beauty. It is a quiet masterpiece; I know of few books that are more subtly teasing - that more wisely poke at our arrogance in imagining that we know anything.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Novel about the Sahara
Review: To my mind, the main character of this outstanding novel is the North African postwar desert. Three American "travellers" (not "tourists") roam the desert whose starkness makes the psychological travail all the more dramatic. You can taste the sand. Great book.

Rating:
Summary: Grueling Adventure
Review: The title of this book gives one a sense of security. I fought my way through this book. Along the way several times I thought that it was a waste. The grit it left behind after reading it subdued any appreciation. Not until I was done did it seem a very good book. It ties up your emotions. The characters have such a hard time communicating with one another it makes you want to scream. I thought of their lack of communication versus mine. The frustration of the characters was the frustration we all feel

Rating:
Summary: Not quite it
Review: Nowhere close to Camus and a book with a slightly overrated image. Check out Sartre or Canetti for some real insights into the heart of this century.

Rating:
Summary: A Book to be Traveled through
Review: With the death of Paul Bowles the world has lost one of its great authors. This book allows us to hold on to some of that greatness. As a rumination on the existential impact of place and space, the book opens up horizons of thought one may have never considered. When Port tells Kit his thoughts on the 'sheltering sky' one is asked to consider the implications of realizing - always and ceaselessly knowing - that the "sky" is a fiction that protects us from our very insignificance. In one short passage, Bowles has ripped the lid off our world as surely as he casts Kit into the desert, another grain of sand among countless others. This book is about more than an encounter with the Sahara, it is about - and is itself - an encounter with human existence.

Rating:
Summary: a sheltered life
Review: The ubiquitous oppressiveness of the heat, the dryness, the wind and the burning sand seep into one's hands, arms, chest and mind as one absorbs the depth of this work. To anyone who's ever had a personal crisis, this book will speak to you. It depicts, to me anyway, what happens when you try to escape your troubles, and yourself. The further you run, the more lost you become. It is one of the few books I've read which left me searching out others who have read it to disect it to its purest, most profound message. (I want to invite the author to tea!)