David Swinstead reviewed Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
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.