We saw the film version of this fairly recently and I was left with the thought: what on earth was that all about? So I ordered the book from the library.
Published in the 1940s, it's a typically early to mid-twentieth century sort of story in one sense: modernity meets tradition, decline and fall swiftly followed by gloom and doom ensue... If you enjoyed Forster's Passage to India or anything by Evelyn Waugh or D.H Lawrence, then this will probably appeal too.
Basically, an American couple with a failing marriage travel through north Africa (the country isn't specified, it's just "exotic-desert- land"). They're both unfaithful, he dies, she goes mad. And that's the plot. No happy ending or anything - no ending at all, really. Along the way, though, there's some fantastic descriptions of places and some really unappealing, though intriguing, characters (apart from the main ones, who are daft enough it has to be said). And a lot of questions left unanswered; what is really going on in her head? Why is their marriage failing? What in heaven's name were they doing there in the first place? It's these questions that kept me going.
Though I knew the ending already, this book was interesting enough to keep me reading (the film does stick fairly well to the text but as always, things are explained a bit more in the novel). It's a fairly thick paperback, but I managed to finish most of it during a long train journey, so it's not exactly heavy - in either sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment