Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece.
Review: The main character of this book is the definition of an antihero and seems to not care about anything. But thats what makes him so likeable and the book such a gem!I cant really explain this book without spoiling it but if you want a terrific and engrossing read then look no further. This book is the thing you seek.
Rating: 
Summary: Disturbing -- hence a useful introduction to existentialism
Review: This book could be considered a bronze standard existentialist novel. You're unlikely to look at life quite the same way after reading it.
Rating: 
Summary: Read it with an open mind.
Review: Read it with an open mind and do not be judgemental of the main character.
Rating:
Summary: Stranger Days
Review: The Stranger is about a man who is very different from everybody else, but doesn't know it. He has nothing to say to anybody, and nobody to tells him anything. Then he finds himself in a difficult situation he can't get out of. The world is against him, and he's on his own. I enjoyed this book, The Stranger because I believe that everybody deserves to get a second chance. And in this book, the author tells how harsh the world can be. I liked how the author put the story so well, and how he set the scene. I also liked how the author set-up the characters, for example Meursault: he has his life the way he wants it to live, and how society can destroy it. Also how the author set up the whole plot from start to finish. I really believe that The Stranger is a really good book indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Camus is the king of realistic fiction
Review: RyneMading "Mother died today; maybe yesterday, I can't be sure" ( Camus 1). These are the opening words of The Stranger, which I found to be one of the most interesting and psychologically challenging books I have read thus far.
The book begins with the stranger attending his mother's funeral and displaying a puzzling lack of emotion toward his mother's death.
I loved reading this book. There were times when I could not put it down if I tried and other times when it was difficult to get into. The main reason why I enjoyed reading this book is because of Albert Camus' unique style of writing. He adds such meticulous character descriptions and detail to every aspect of the book it never really gets boring, even during less interesting sections. The storyline is somewhat difficult to follow. For those who have seen Seinfeld, I would relate this book to a Seinfeld episode: lots of jumping around from scene to scene and many complicated situations. This sense of chaos adds to the intensity and nature of the book itself.
I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy an intellectual challenge and also to people who enjoy learning about different cultures. This book will open up even the most closed off mind.
Rating:
Summary: WHO IS THE STRANGER.......REALLY?
Review: THIS HAS BEEN ONE OF MY FAVORITE EXISTENTIALIST BOOKS SINCE PHYCHOLOGY CLASS IN HIGH SCHOOL 15 YEARS AGO! I READ IT AGAIN THE OTHER DAY, AND IT STILL HAS THE SAME IMPACT, AND THE SAME MESSAGE (FOR ME): WE ARE ALL LITTLE MORE THAN SPECKS OF DUST IN AN ENDLESS UNIVERSE, FOREVER AT THE MERCY OF A GREATER BEING, A HIGHER INTELLIGENCE THAT HAS A PLAN FOR US.....OR IS EVERYTHING RANDOM? THAT IS THE REAL QUESTION. BUT IS "THE STRANGER" COMPLETELY PESSEMISTIC? I DON'T THINK SO. OBVIOUSLY THE STORY IS OPEN TO MULTIPLE INTERPRETATIONS AND IS VERY AMBIGUOUS IN THE END. EVERYBODY SHOULD READ THIS BOOK, PREFERABLY BY THE TIME THEY TURN 16 YEARS OF AGE.
Rating:
Summary: A powerfully disturbing and bleak novel
Review: Although Albert Camus had achieved some fame as a journalist in his native Algiers in the thirties and as a writer for the French resistance during WW II, he first achieved an international critical reputation with the publication of this classic novel in 1946. The portrait of the detached, unfeeling, uncommitted, amoral, perpetually abstracted Meursault is one of the most haunting in 20th century literature. For many, it is the supreme 20th century literary depiction of nihilism. Unquestionably it is one of the premier literary efforts of the century, though Camus managed several other books just as powerful and superb in their own way, in particular THE PLAGUE, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS, and THE FALL. Meursault reminds me so much of figures from the paintings of Manet. In painting after painting, Manet depicted individuals alone in crowds, failing or refusing to interact or even acknowledge the others in the frame. In one famous painting, a lower middle class girl sits alone in her own little orb, sitting beside an upper class gentleman, neither acknowledging the existence of the other, both self-contained, seemingly detached from the busy world surrounding them. Behind them, a barmaid drinks a beer, equally oblivious to everyone and everything around her. They might all be on separate desert islands. Manet repeats this in painting after painting. Meursault seems almost as if he had stepped out of one of those paintings. He can at least communicate with others, socialize with them, but he cannot express strong moral sentiments or develop affectionate (as opposed to sexual) attachments. This is not a happy book. The story deals with Meursault's almost accidental killing of an Arab whose sister had been harmed by one of his acquaintances, but the novel trivializes everything--the killing, his subsequent arrest, his imprisonment, his trial and conviction, and his sentencing. The closest the novel comes to a happy sentiment is near the end when Meursault imagines how much nicer it would be to witness an execution rather than be executed, to have to puke in revulsion than to literally lose one's head to the guillotine. Camus would never write such a despairing book again. THE PLAGUE the next year would come close, but not close, while THE FALL would seem almost optimistic and upbeat in comparison. But for those who want to find perhaps the quintessential expression of what we like to think of as existentialism, this could stand as the premier literary instance.
Rating:
Summary: 5+
Review: The Stranger is a surprisingly deep novel where nihilism, existentialism, death, life, accepted values, personal values, irrationality of nature, and common tendency to search for purpose in life are all interlaced. Through Meursault [indifferent, not hedonistic or emotionless, but responsive to physical pleasures], Camus shows how intolerant society is to alien points of view, and how it tries to intergrate the unknown into its rational system of values. By showing that life is purposeless and everyone will die at some point, Camus suggests that the "evilness" or "goodness" of an action are all the same. The ultimate triumph is the realization : "So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her."; in two words- Amor Fati. [Love of Fate] Many will unhesitatingly place this novel in the top ten books in human writing history- it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare.
Rating:
Summary: Indifference and the Absurd
Review: I usually don't write many reviews, but I felt an exigency to write one in light of some of the reviews on The Stranger. Even those who have praised it seem to have missed out on Camus' message, the message which revolves around all of his work. Mearsault is not meant to symbolize some sort of alienated, misfit, product of society like many have said. Camus is not Kafka and Meursault is not Gregor Samsa. The "indifference of the world" is not something which is holding Meursault down, but rather showing him the true naked beauty of the world- one with lack of explanations and reason. The absurd is what arises when man's search for meaning in life is met by the truth that there is no meaning. This is not bad and it is not good, it simply is. Perhaps, a read of the Myth of Sisyphus might help make these ideas clearer and make The Stranger truly appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: Subjectivity Distorts The Facts
Review: .
In the story of the Stranger, one finds the lead character, Meursault lacking creativity and of passions within oneself, of the depth of conflict that burns in one's center that moves with chaos and value-positing; none of this can be found in Meursault. He is matter of fact in everything. True, his acceptance and passionless being allows him to under go his ordeal in subdued emotion and unenthusiastic plight, yet this groundlessness and existential being does not excite in living, but simply goes along in existing. Even in Meursault's act of killing, there lacks any real passionate fervor. His pulling of the trigger was just that; an easy act of the finger and no real understanding, that is, no depth in comprehension of the act itself, but merely a nonchalant action that seems to have been the best alternative of action at the time of occurrence. And yet, the lack of alternative actions is the problem. In each and every situation in Meursault's life, from the death of his mother to his sexual relationship to his befriending his neighbors, all is performed as a cog in a machine. As each piano key is hit, only to be in succession of what is already programmed on the sheet roll of music. The "last man" mentality of the Lockean view of self-preservation dominates Meursault's life as the bourgeois in existential nothingness and mediocre existence. Should Meursault suffer as he did for his actions? Were they really so evil? Were his actions simply the result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or in this case, befriending the wrong person who caused these thugs to appear for Meursault to confront? If life can be reduced to existence over conflict then certainly Meursault could be pardoned. But the one must ask if Meursault's action, the act of murder, not of self defense, can ever be excused, simply for the fact that the man who committed such did so from a lack of inner conflict and passion, from an act that simply called to be for the moment it presided in. The answer to Camus' Meursault comes from our view of subjectivity or objectivity. The Stranger places us in the former as we are personally involved as we read the story from the inside view and thus we side with Meursault. Yet when we are able to detach ourselves and look objectively, we gain a higher perspective and thus a different viewpoint. Robert Shattuck, from his book Forbidden Knowledge, remarks on The Stranger with the following point, that knowledge can be double bound; subjective or objective;: "The closer one approaches to an event or to a person, the less securely one seems to know it. The trees obscure the forest. The more one knows, the less one knows. Perception itself requires a certain distance. Empathy hides more than it reveals." p. 162 Our closeness brings empathy, which distorts our power of observation and obscures the facts. That appears to be the case in Camus' The Stranger.
| 
