The Secret Sharer
4 stars
Content warning A hard read but ...
I was so relieved it had a happy ending.
76 pages
English language
Published Nov. 19, 2000 by Prestwick House.
Heart of darkness
3 stars
(11 reviews)
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness was first published in 1899 in serial form in London's Blackwood's Magazine. Loosely based on Conrad's firsthand experience in rescuing a company agent from a remote station in the heart of the Congo, the novel is considered a literary bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With its modern literary approach to questions such as the ambiguous nature of good and evil, the novel foreshadows many of the themes and techniques that define modern literature. This edition includes a glossary and notes to help the modern reader contend with Conrad's complex approach to the human condition.
Review of 'Heart of Darkness' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
Conflicting feelings about this book.
There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.
I liked the darkness of it.
I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.
But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.
This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.
I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't …
Conflicting feelings about this book.
There's a lot that I did like about it. I liked the story and the meandering structure of it.
I liked the darkness of it.
I liked how dammit it was of colonialism.
But I did not enjoy the writing style very much. I felt overwhelmingly like I didn't know who was saying what, who they were saying it to, what they were referring to.
This feeling grew more and more as the book went on and I suppose that's more or less the point isn't it - that we're feeling the descent into the madness of the narrator. But it was just a challenging read for me, and without enough reward to pay off the effort.
I really wanted to like this book. It's a classic isn't it? You're supposed to like it. Everyone talks about how great it is. But I just couldn't quite gel with it; honestly if it weren't so short I probably wouldn't have even finished it.
Subjects
- Suffering
- Trading posts
- Degeneration
- Fiction
- Imperialism
- Europeans
Places
- Africa