Rating: 
Summary: Make this the last book you read by Camus!
Review: I love this book... but.... honestly, I think that this is probably the least important work by Camus (sorry for those terms) and the least relevant-- to me it strikes interest having read twenty books on him-- to see where he was coming from-- but as a novel or philosophical piece, it is less interesting than any other-- and less well crafted as well.....This is a vaguely similar story to the Stranger (the first part anyway) and has a similar main character and similar polt lines. What differs is that it is by a younger author with less worldly experience and who has faced less worldly difficulties (i.e. the beginnings of WWII). As such, it comes off as not as good of a book.... If you haven't read 'The Rebel' or any of his other books, read them first. Then come back to this one. I promise you'll make it....
Rating:
Summary: A great piece of existentialism
Review: I read the Stranger in high school and loved it so when I saw this book on the shelf I had to read it. This book was written prior to the Stranger and still centers on the brooding Meursault. The difference here is that Meursault gets away with his crime and is allow to continue with life. The book is a beautiful record of a culture that no longer exists and provides, I think, a much better exposition of existentialism and how one can acheive some measure of happiness in a world, which most likely, has no meaning. This is one of my favorite books and is an excellent alter-text to the Stranger.
Rating:
Summary: A great piece of existentialism
Review: I read the Stranger in high school and loved it so when I saw this book on the shelf I had to read it. This book was written prior to the Stranger and still centers on the brooding Meursault. The difference here is that Meursault gets away with his crime and is allow to continue with life. The book is a beautiful record of a culture that no longer exists and provides, I think, a much better exposition of existentialism and how one can acheive some measure of happiness in a world, which most likely, has no meaning. This is one of my favorite books and is an excellent alter-text to the Stranger.
Rating: 
Summary: Less immediate and more flushed out than the stranger
Review: In "A Happy Death", Camus took a different approach to writing what later became "The Stranger". The latter work is famous (and sometimes despised) for it terse, efficient prose, its brutal frankness, and its avoidance of moral consideration. As a result, many readers do not know what to make of Merseault and often mistake him for a psychopath. In "A Happy Death", Camus writes in the third person and adds considerably more elements to the story. The ending also differs from "The Stranger". In "The Stranger", Merseault kills an Arab for no apparent reason other than caprice or irritability. Merseault is then put on trial and condemned more for his flagrant aversion to bourgeois hypocrisy than for the crime he committed. But in "A Happy Death", Merseault's crime had a clearer motive and a deeper symbolism. Merseault kills his crippled friend Zagreus in order to obtain his wealth and use it to transform his otherwise mundane life. In Greek mythology, Zagreus was torn apart by the Titans but Zeus was able to give his still beating heart to his daughter who later fathered Dinoysis, the god of wine. Zagreus literally means "torn apart" in Greek. The myth of Zagreaus is comparable to the role of Christ in the Christian tradition because Zagreus was mocked, tortured, and executed. But unlike Christ, Zagreaus escaped the final humiliation by having a substitute take his place. Camus re-appropriates this legend in "A Happy Death". The wheelchair bound Zagreaus essentially prompts Merseault to murder him so that he can escape the humiliation of his infirmity and pass his wealth on to Merseault. There are subtle indications that the two men are inextricably bound to each other. Both men experience the same lover at different times and both share the same cynical view that she is only an image of what they want to see in her. Each man also has what the other needs. Merseault has the physical capability to enjoy life, but he is hampered by routine and by his work. Zagreus has wealth but lacks the physical capability to enjoy it. The re-appropriation of the Zagreus myth asks the question "what does it mean to truly be alive"? Is it better that only one of the two men live as long as he lives his life to the fullest rather than both living unhappy, restricted lives? After killing Zagreaus, Merseault leads a life of travel, hedonism, and leisure. When he is subsequently stricken ill, he dies a happy dignified death. In this sense I would disagree with the reviewer who characterized "A Happy Death" as a primer for "The Stranger". Instead, it is a story with a completely different emphasis. Where the stranger depicts the fate society metes out to an honest individual, "A Happy Death" asks what it truly means to be alive.
Rating:
Summary: The Sun and the Stars
Review: In "A Happy Death," Meursault wants to have an "encounter"with the universe. His reasons here are no better than his reasons forsurrendering his life in "The Stranger." The later Meursault wasmuch too ordinary a man to die for something as abstract and fancy asthe idea of absurdity--and his earlier version gives no evidence ofthe stubbornness or greatness of soul that one would need to cough hislungs out in a place simply because its landscape isdramatic. Meursault is a Raskolnikov too, but without the passion. Hekills a legless man for his money, arguing, in a sort of pervertedMarxism, that "money is one of the surest and swiftest means ofacquiring one's dignity." He says that "it takes time tolive. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about." Thereis scant evidence in the book of this thinking: in fact, Meursaultspends more time sleeping than any fictional character since Rip VanWinkle. Like the hero of "The Stranger," he performs onlygratuitous acts. When he enjoys sleeping with a girl, he abandonsher. After acquiring the money necessary for his dignity, Meursaultinexplicably goes to Prague, where he is haunted by the smell ofcucumbers. In "A Happy Death,"cucumbers, the smell of cucumbers,terrify him "on every corner." It is a peculiarity of Camus'sprotagonist that he is never moved by ordinary influences. The authoreither had a curious view of human nature or such a powerful lack ofinterest in it that he could not be bothered to describe itconvincingly. Meursault murders, marries and dies, after achievingsome sort of beatitude, and we can't believe--let aloneunderstand--any of it, for we are not meant to. Camus describes theworld in a way that we are but mere strangers to it all.
Rating:
Summary: Less immediate and more flushed out than the stranger
Review: In "A Happy Death", Camus took a different approach to writing what later became "The Stranger". The latter work is famous (and sometimes despised) for it terse, efficient prose, its brutal frankness, and its avoidance of moral consideration. As a result, many readers do not know what to make of Merseault and often mistake him for a psychopath. In "A Happy Death", Camus writes in the third person and adds considerably more elements to the story. The ending also differs from "The Stranger". In "The Stranger", Merseault kills an Arab for no apparent reason other than caprice or irritability. Merseault is then put on trial and condemned more for his flagrant aversion to bourgeois hypocrisy than for the crime he committed. But in "A Happy Death", Merseault's crime had a clearer motive and a deeper symbolism. Merseault kills his crippled friend Zagreus in order to obtain his wealth and use it to transform his otherwise mundane life. In Greek mythology, Zagreus was torn apart by the Titans but Zeus was able to give his still beating heart to his daughter who later fathered Dinoysis, the god of wine. Zagreus literally means "torn apart" in Greek. The myth of Zagreaus is comparable to the role of Christ in the Christian tradition because Zagreus was mocked, tortured, and executed. But unlike Christ, Zagreaus escaped the final humiliation by having a substitute take his place. Camus re-appropriates this legend in "A Happy Death". The wheelchair bound Zagreaus essentially prompts Merseault to murder him so that he can escape the humiliation of his infirmity and pass his wealth on to Merseault. There are subtle indications that the two men are inextricably bound to each other. Both men experience the same lover at different times and both share the same cynical view that she is only an image of what they want to see in her. Each man also has what the other needs. Merseault has the physical capability to enjoy life, but he is hampered by routine and by his work. Zagreus has wealth but lacks the physical capability to enjoy it. The re-appropriation of the Zagreus myth asks the question "what does it mean to truly be alive"? Is it better that only one of the two men live as long as he lives his life to the fullest rather than both living unhappy, restricted lives? After killing Zagreaus, Merseault leads a life of travel, hedonism, and leisure. When he is subsequently stricken ill, he dies a happy dignified death. In this sense I would disagree with the reviewer who characterized "A Happy Death" as a primer for "The Stranger". Instead, it is a story with a completely different emphasis. Where the stranger depicts the fate society metes out to an honest individual, "A Happy Death" asks what it truly means to be alive.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful , flawed absurdity.
Review: It's been written about "A Happy Death" that Camus' unpublished first novel was brilliantly written, and terrible organized. It's hard to deny that the novel may have some structure problems, but it's hard to care when it's written so beautifully. Philosophically, it hints at topics Camus would explore later (exile, suicide, rebellion and of course, the absurd). Even young Camus had a way with words, and although like the existentialist of his time he had a way of telling dark and depressing tales, he manages to write with an emphasis on the simple pleasures of life. Whether he's describing the act of bathing in the sun or savoring food items he has a way of making the reader want to live and experience life, for better or worse, to the fullest. "A Happy Death", in a literary sense, doesn't even come close to the heights of The Stranger (with which it bares many similarities) or The Plague (my personal favorite) but one really can't complain about a novel capable of reaffirming how beautiful (yet absurd) life can be.
Rating:
Summary: Money can't make an happiness
Review: Novel : La Mort Heureuse by Camus, Albert.
The summary :
After Mersault kill and take Zagreus's money, Mersault try to find out his life with that money.
But everytime he make to realize his destination to get un happiness, he always stuck on his problem remaining his murder and he feel sorry about it.
At last he die with his problem.
Review :
After I read this novel, I find some god advice that we have to think abot it.
We won't be happy getting money inlegaly, like Mersault did.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: The stoic and indifferent nature of the main character (who reminded me of Edmond Dantes) toward almost every aspect of life was fascinating. To be so emotionally removed from everything that he experienced made him, and this work, more appealling than the albeit similar character in The Stranger. For many people, this is a more accurate portrayal of life than the love-filled poetry by people such as Marlowe and Frost.
Rating:
Summary: there's nothing else like it
Review: This book is concentrating on the subject of which is the right way to live your life so your death would be worth it. I think it is completely stunning, like every other book from Camus so read it now, it will change YOUR life for sure!
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