The Stranger

Rating:
Summary: Masterful Work
Review: If some of the other reviews metion this work as "Masterful" and as "a character study", that is true. The first thing you could think of after completing this book is: "What a character!" Meursault is quiet a creation. He begins and remains a man unaffected by life and the genius of Camus lies in presenting this authentically. Even as he is enjoying a holiday at a beach nothing, beyond the fulfillment of the moment, can give Meursault any satisfaction, nothing seems to affect him. Reading this I am reminded of Dostoevsky's Underground man and Kafka's K., from his "the trial". With this story Camus takes a step further from Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka. Unlike K., Meursault is prosecuted for a crime that is clear, but the feeling of a man against the system remains. You do feel that he has been given a raw deal but even so somehow his fate seems for the better. Meursault himself shows some affectedness towards the end, but quickly reconciles himself. Here we have a glimpse of the process of his character formation, someone who looks at death as an inevitable consequence and hence reconciles to his fate without complaining. This is novel at its best as an art form, it is interesting and it is food for thought. You are interested in his fate as the judge hands out his sentence to Meursault and then later, much
later, you wonder about the person, his philosophy and its effect.

Rating:
Summary: I'm still reading this book, doesn't make any sense though.
Review: Only read a quarter of it, and it seems as something important should have been said already.

-Calvin Newman