Rating: 
Summary: Fascinating character study
Review: The Stranger is a short novel that is fascinating as a character study. The protagonist is a young man, Meursault, who has a strangely detached, and yet benevolent, way of looking at the world. Mostly, he lives moment to moment, resigned and seemingly unmoved by most of what happens around him (including his mother's death). After a series of unfortunate events, Meursault finds himself on trial for murder, and those responsible for his fate mistake his detachment for evil and callousness. This novel shows how society treats people who are different, and how people are all too quick to label people "evil" that they don't understand.
Rating: 
Summary: very bad
Review: The book The Stranger I thought was the worst book I have ever read. The whole book was pointless. The end was very dumb, after the whole book he ends up have feeling and being happy but thinks oh well its to late Im going to be killed. The end killed me it was very bad!
Rating:
Summary: Nicely Written
Review: I found this book to be interesting. The main charater, Meursault, seemed so apathetic about life, I had to continue reading to see what he would say. I found the direction of the book odd, for example, who knew reading the beginning of the book that Meursault would soon be in jail for murder? I suppose that some of the writing probably would have sounded different if it was in the original French. Overall, I think the story was well written and well developed.
Rating: 
Summary: Phenomenal!
Review: A book worth buying and reading one hundred times. The words draw you in and allow you to feel in the action. One of the greatest books written.
Rating:
Summary: It sounds reasonable
Review: Unlike most people who have probably read this slim gem of a book, I did not read this book as high schooler or an undergraduate and college. I came across it because I heard that the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami's writings were similar to Camus's, and yes I definately can see many parallels between Murakami's myraid Bokus and Watashis and Camus's Meursault in the way that they are indifferent to the world around them. Murakami's characters had a bit of spark, however, while in my humble opion Meursault is one of the coldest characters in literature that I have ever come across. I, however, also kind of envy Meursault, however, because through his taciturn ways I can view the essence of an individual who is unworried about the society around him, and his completely unattached to the material world. It is true that Meursault enjoyed sex and cigarettes, but these were nothing more to him than breathing air or drinking water. Meursault is very Zen like.
Rating:
Summary: They do not write them like this anymore!
Review: This is THE favorite book of mine! Read it, and re-read it many times! Some translations didn't make, the first few sentences for me. I like old version
"...Mother died today. Ot it was yesterday...". Not "...Mammon died etc..." Nevertheless, older translation pictured disfuctional young Meursault in more familiar light. There He is standing, eating (eggs, without bread) out of skillet over the sink. Lighting up the cigarette. Standing on the balcony, watching people walk by. Nothing else to do.
Simlar work as Dostoyevski's "Crimes..." but it doesn'r colapse on the end like "Crimes". They do not write books like this anymore.
Rating:
Summary: What Metaphor?
Review: Existentialism?
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I don't understand how this book can be considered existentialist. What is the existential crisis Meursault faces? What thought process leads him to do something contrary to conventional wisdom? His actions and his own testimony state that he has no reason for killing. He didn't kill out of mortal fear, he didn't kill to protect a friend - he killed because the sun was too hot. How can I, as a reader, treat him with any more profundity than I would treat a sociopath?Senseless religion bashing
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I find it hard to respect an author that does not bother coming up with a salient argument when disparaging something or someone. The Chaplain was presented as such, that a 10 year old could turn him into a fool. At least do it with dignity and intelligence instead of using the "you are a poo-poo head" argument. Learn from Dosteovsky. He's just a kid
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There are many instances where Meursault can't understand why people do things a certain way. Why do they have traditions? Why does a lawyer wear a stuffy suit? They are all valid questions for a child to ask but I can't accept his lack of understanding as a social revelation or critique. Living by your own rules
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Even if someone can prove to me that Meursault does indeed have intelligence and is living by his own enlightened rules he is a danger to others and most importantly himself. If a vegetarian doesn't believe in eating meat, he does not have the right to hogtie others and force them to eat lettuce. The moment he/she threatens another's freedom, boundaries must be enforced. The point of bringing up remorse and guilt was to ascertain whether the prisoner had a motive or would fly off the handle without notice. Not having a motive made him more dangerous than if he had one. As a society to ensure the safety of others we must remove such harmful individuals. Perhaps I am missing the point and that all these answers get lost in the translation.
Rating:
Summary: How not to write a novel
Review: This book and I go way back. When I was a junior in high school, "L'Etranger" was one
of the books we read together as a class. Next year,
my senior year, I was with different students and we
were assigned "L'Etranger" again! So I got two doses of Meursault in high school.
In spite of that -- and in spite of my own liking for
Albert Camus (especially as opposed to that Stalinist
windbag Sartre) -- my sense of the book remained
quite opaque. That is, I had no clear idea of what
it was about, or why Camus had written it. It was
"existential," of course, and "absurdist," but...? In college, things got even stranger. I was assigned
this same book in French 3, and then again (!) in
French 4. By that time, I almost had the book
memorized!! Is there ANY chance that this book may be assigned
as class reading a little bit too often?? :-0 In any case, I finally picked up an English
translation last week, and it confirmed in detail
what I remembered from reading the French thirty
years ago. First, it is VERY easy reading. There's hardly a
challenging sentence in the book, much less a
challenging word. This may have come about because
of Camus' desire to reach a proletarian audience. Aside from being easy, it is also SHORT. So this
novel is a short, easy book for over-worked French
teachers. That's why they will assign it at the drop
of a hat. But what's the book about? My English translation
has an afterword by Camus, where he explains his
book "paradoxically:" -- "Any man who doesn't cry at
his mother's funeral is likely to be condemned to
death." Oh, is that so? Bad news here, when a writer tucks in a note to
"explain" his book, and then "explains" that
Meursault's "real crime" was telling the truth,
in a world of hypocrites. When I read this, all the problems with this
book became obvious to me. First, it is a "philosophical novel," a novel
designed to show you the author's philosophy.
Bad idea. Didactic novels stink. (If you want
to explain your philosophy, go right ahead -- but
in a book of philosophy, duh.) Second, Camus had to come up with a character who
actually would not cry at his own mother's funeral.
The result was Meursault, an affectless monster
with no feelings at all. Third, to demonstrate an existentialist point --
"the absurd" -- Camus had to arrange for Meursualt
to kill another man, in cold blood, FOR NO REASON. No matter how deep your philosophy is, you will be
hard put to find another murder -- anytime, anywhere --
which was committed FOR NO REASON. Even Leopold
and Loeb had their own stupid reasons for killing. So: the problems so far: "L'Etranger" is a
philosophical or didactic novel whose main character
has no feelings at all and commits a murder for no
reason. What else could go wrong with this non-story? A lot! Camus tries to play it so that we will
feel outraged when a hypocritical society condemns
Meursault to death. But wait. What person deserves
the death penalty more than some affect-less jerk
who kills others without reason??? At the very
least, such a moral zero needs to be locked up to
protect innocent people!! This is a novel which fails in many ways, and on
many different levels. The fact that it continues
to be assigned to French students, over and over
again, when they could be reading (ahem!) Flaubert,
or Proust, or Balzac.... well, it's just a
mystery. Like "L'Etranger" itself, an enigma --
and a failure.
Rating:
Summary: not bad
Review: the story is interesting, but it sometimes boring.
it's about the absurdity of the life.
read it in french , it's better.
Rating:
Summary: Absurd does not Equal Existential
Review: To say that this is an existential work proves that you are an intellectual half-wit and know nothing of the life of Camus or his work. This is largely biographical, until the point of the arab murder, and follows Camus's own personal conflicts with class, familial relationships, ethnic relations, and illness. This should not be read with out first at least skimming THE REBEL. That will give some insight into one of the most under appreciated intellectuals heros of the 20th century.
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