Padfoot - Eighth Review - The Stranger

Howdy ya'll.

Padfoot here...bringing you a short review, which happens to be something I have not done in many a' moons. I recently stumbled upon my battered copy of Albert Camus's The Stranger, and after hearing many good things about it, I decided to give it a shot.

With big print, small format, and only 140-some-odd pages, this book flies by. The story is about a emotionally detached man, Meursault, who kills an Arab man on a beach in France; it starts out with this man recognizing the recent death of his mother:

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."

These opening lines are very haunting, and show the impassive nature of this newly introduced French man. The story is a short glimpse of his life before the murder, of his joys of frolicking on the beach with his lover, Marie, to the period of his trial and sentence, where he is still lacking emotion.

But, at the very end of the story, you get a short but satisfying conversation with a religious man who visits Meursault in jail. This tiny part of the story left me smiling when I closed the book. Here's a small quote from the end to quench your literary thirst:

"I, too, felt ready to start life all over again. It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I’d been happy, and that I was happy still. "

Told you it was a short review! I am a simple being who like to get to the point and move quickly, and Prongs is good at going in depth critically. That makes us fit together nicely, with a view from both sides :) All in all this is a wonderful must read and is 100% Good Book Approved. Get in touch with your absurd-existential side and check this out!

Moving on...
I am currently reading The Godfather by Mario Puzo, and boy howdy it is fantastic. Look forward to a (short) explanation of my feelings on it in a week or so when I have finished. Until then: homework...watch the movie!

ALSO.
Exciting news...we are further along in the process of tshirt making. We know many of you have expressed interest in our designs so if you can just hold you excitment for a few more weeks...(stop camping out on our lawns! they will be done when we say so!!) in a week or two we should have some finals actually made, and ready to be ordered. We will keep you updated.

As always.....