Rating: 
Summary: A Voice from One's Death
Review: That a last work should dwell on one's childhood is ironic. That an unfinished last work pulled from one's death car can be gently edited and published is fantastic. Camus would have died a second time to keep this work from publication, but true Camus champions should find it an extraordinary insight into a proto-opus of one of the great author's of the 20th century. Others will find it unfathomable and confusing, especially if they are unable to differntiate finished work from work-in-progress.
Rating: 
Summary: a wonderful book about the hardships of a life without order
Review: This book brought to light so many things that happen when a father is not present and women must raise a child in the harshness of poverty. I think that because this book was not read over and over, and changed, it made it that much better. If it had been it might have lost the substance that makes it great. The reason i read this book was because in my world literature class we were told to read three books by one author. I chose Albert Camus because the titles of his book seemed to be interesting. But instead of reading 3 books i read almost all of them.The First Man is by far the best.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling story
Review: This book was written about a man named Jacques Cormery, someone who lived a life a lot like Camus'. My only regret is that Camus did not live long enough to revise it and polish it up, because if you read this book, some parts are a bit disconnected. There were paragraphs he wanted omitted, but were included anyway by the editor. There were also quite a few illegible words marked throughout the book. Anyhow, this book would be best read by people who thought they had rough childhoods. After reading this book, I no longer frown on the days I was disciplined because it just wasn't nearly as bad! You may also appreciate what you have, including certain family members, since both Camus and Cormery both lost their fathers at an early age. Overall, it's a great insight into someone's life, including a lot of personal details, which I enjoyed reading.
Rating:
Summary: A compelling story
Review: This book was written about a man named Jacques Cormery, someone who lived a life a lot like Camus'. My only regret is that Camus did not live long enough to revise it and polish it up, because if you read this book, some parts are a bit disconnected. There were paragraphs he wanted omitted, but were included anyway by the editor. There were also quite a few illegible words marked throughout the book. Anyhow, this book would be best read by people who thought they had rough childhoods. After reading this book, I no longer frown on the days I was disciplined because it just wasn't nearly as bad! You may also appreciate what you have, including certain family members, since both Camus and Cormery both lost their fathers at an early age. Overall, it's a great insight into someone's life, including a lot of personal details, which I enjoyed reading.
Rating: 
Summary: A Rough Gem
Review: This is the novel Camus was working on when he died. It is unfinished and intensely personal . That the work is autobiographical is evident from the inconsistent naming of characters; in one place a characters name is fictious, in another from Camus' life. For example, the mother is once called "Widow Camus." The work wasn't published following Camus' death but only much later. In some measure that was due to the fact that Camus was out of favor with the French intellectual left for his criticism of Stalin and his position on what should be done with Algeria, the land of his birth. The recollections of his childhood are wrapped within a visit to his father's grave then to his mother. The father was killed in the first world war. It was the father's first visit to France and he died there. The father plays little role, dying when Camus was quite young. There is the story of his father attending a public execution and the effect of that on him and the child. Extreme poverty permeats his youth. He did well in school and with the help of a teacher he dearly loved, he was able to continue with schooling. But read the story in his words. Rough as they are, they are better than mine.
Rating:
Summary: Camus' sadly unfinished life's story
Review: Unlike Camus' other novels, the most depressing thing about _The First Man_ is that he died before he could finish it. Indeed, the manuscript was in the very car he crashed, and was held up by his family for all these years. The wait, in this case, has been worth it, and the most frustrating thing about the novel is that he wasn't able to finish his tale. But Camus fans be forewarned: He was onto something very different here from _The Stranger_ or _The Plague_.
What _The First Man_ does is give you insight into the author. Unlike Celine's autobios, Camus chooses a wispy, dreamlike approach to his characters and life. Thus, you feel close to these characters, but still in the distance, seeing in as though through a cloud. Do yourself a favor, though. Take a peak at Camus' swan song, and feel the loss as we all must at his passing.
Rating:
Summary: Very Interesting
Review: _The First Man_ was published by the late author's daughter, Catherine Camus. Largely autobiographical, the manuscript was raw, uncorrected and unfinished at the time of Camus's death. In it Camus speaks of the father he never met, who was killed in combat in World War I. Camus, called "Jacques Cormery" in the novel, was raised by his strong-willed grandmother, a strict disciplinarian who would punish Jacques for wearing out his shoes playing soccer. From a poverty stricken family living in Algiers, Jacques's grandmother just did not have the money to purchase him new shoes. Jacques's war widow mother, a deaf mute, took a backseat to his grandmother in raising her son. Both women were illiterate. Jacques's Uncle Ernest, also deaf, provided a loving and strongly positive male role model for Jacques. Camus also describes the beneficent influence of a beloved male teacher who greatly encourages Jacques to succeed academically despite his family's indigence and ignorance. According to Camus's daughter, who wrote the preface to the book, had Camus lived, as a man with a reserved nature he would have edited out much of his personal feelings that he included in the manuscript. Left untouched the published manuscript had an honesty that it may not otherwise have had. The book's unedited, frequent run-on sentences lent the book a flowing quality and a sense of immediacy and urgency. Camus also beautifully described the suffocatingly hot, sere quality of the Algiers summers. For me, _The First Man_ is a scintillating tale of a boy who triumphed despite his extreme disadvantages, who was never without "a sure confidence...(that) guaranteed that he would achieve everything he desired..."
Rating:
Summary: Camus's unfinished "Horatio Alger" Story
Review: _The First Man_ was published by the late author's daughter, Catherine Camus. Largely autobiographical, the manuscript was raw, uncorrected and unfinished at the time of Camus's death. In it Camus speaks of the father he never met, who was killed in combat in World War I. Camus, called "Jacques Cormery" in the novel, was raised by his strong-willed grandmother, a strict disciplinarian who would punish Jacques for wearing out his shoes playing soccer. From a poverty stricken family living in Algiers, Jacques's grandmother just did not have the money to purchase him new shoes. Jacques's war widow mother, a deaf mute, took a backseat to his grandmother in raising her son. Both women were illiterate. Jacques's Uncle Ernest, also deaf, provided a loving and strongly positive male role model for Jacques. Camus also describes the beneficent influence of a beloved male teacher who greatly encourages Jacques to succeed academically despite his family's indigence and ignorance. According to Camus's daughter, who wrote the preface to the book, had Camus lived, as a man with a reserved nature he would have edited out much of his personal feelings that he included in the manuscript. Left untouched the published manuscript had an honesty that it may not otherwise have had. The book's unedited, frequent run-on sentences lent the book a flowing quality and a sense of immediacy and urgency. Camus also beautifully described the suffocatingly hot, sere quality of the Algiers summers. For me, _The First Man_ is a scintillating tale of a boy who triumphed despite his extreme disadvantages, who was never without "a sure confidence...(that) guaranteed that he would achieve everything he desired..."
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