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ruyanda's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.5
sirlancelot2021's review
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
arbieroo's review
3.0
My early encounters with Conrad left me ambivalent: I didn't get what all the fuss about The Heart of Darkness was for and I found The Secret Sharer moderately good but not thrilling.
I got this collection many years later as a way of trying to decide whether to bother with Conrad in a serious way and I found that the quality trended upward as the volume progresses - and since the stories are in chronological order of writing I suppose Conrad improved with practice. Over-all, I concluded I was sufficiently interested to try one of the novels.
The stories here almost all adopt Conrad's trademark framed narrative style, which seems to sometimes benefit the story and other times subtract from the immediacy of the telling without adding anything worthwhile. Again, mastery of this approach improved with time.
Genre is all over the place in this book (which is fun): we have Stephenson-esque Pacific tales, a Hardy-like pastoral romance, a reminiscent of Tolstoy story of Polish history and the sort of political-criminal-conspiracy thriller adopted by a zillion thriller writers. Never-the-less, they are all also eminently Conradian - and The Secret Sharer, upon re-reading, I find is actually really tense as well as an interesting moral poser.
I got this collection many years later as a way of trying to decide whether to bother with Conrad in a serious way and I found that the quality trended upward as the volume progresses - and since the stories are in chronological order of writing I suppose Conrad improved with practice. Over-all, I concluded I was sufficiently interested to try one of the novels.
The stories here almost all adopt Conrad's trademark framed narrative style, which seems to sometimes benefit the story and other times subtract from the immediacy of the telling without adding anything worthwhile. Again, mastery of this approach improved with time.
Genre is all over the place in this book (which is fun): we have Stephenson-esque Pacific tales, a Hardy-like pastoral romance, a reminiscent of Tolstoy story of Polish history and the sort of political-criminal-conspiracy thriller adopted by a zillion thriller writers. Never-the-less, they are all also eminently Conradian - and The Secret Sharer, upon re-reading, I find is actually really tense as well as an interesting moral poser.
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