kurtwombat's review against another edition
4.0
I love Joseph Conrad. Everything is so vivid. His words are like painting before photography. Detailed as if under a spotlight with an array of colors and shades that make each image extraordinary. I think back to different scenes from his books as if they were paintings I once saw. The first time this happened was at the beginning of HEART OF DARKNESS when the narrator describes the descent of dusk over London and the Thames—that vanishing light is forever fixed in my mind. I think reading Conrad as a youngster formed just how I read—I tend to read slowly—inspiring a love for cerebral cinematography that can absorb time versus quick TV images that don’t last. Each story is a journey through someone’s personal struggles representing great big themes: colonization, alienation, isolation. Set against giant landscapes, the sea or mysterious lands or both, that dwarf our struggles. His characters are clear and sharp and strongly driven by a tangled crosshatch of motivations. English not his native language, Conrad takes to it like a religious convert. I hold an extra appreciation for that. His sentences can sometimes be very long but they submerge you into the story and I never feel there is anything that should be cut. What I don’t like is that he can come off as racist. The great Chinua Echebe famously took Joseph Conrad to task for this. With Conrad’s mind formed in the 19th century, difficult to escape the limitations of his era. His view of non-white cultures is often dismissive and diminishing—at the same time he doesn’t speak very well of anybody. There are great forces that pit us against each other. We are all flailing helplessly beneath a limitless sky—fighting over the stones at our feet.
That long-windedness aside—I enjoyed reading Conrad’s first book Allmayer’s Folly as a template for the rest of his writing. It stands on its own—creating a vivid backwater world of corrupt traders and broken dreams. Vivid in my memory—the story takes place entirely on a river until near the end when some seek escape by following the river to the sea and stand upon a triangle slip of coast facing the unknown. Solid Conrad.
That long-windedness aside—I enjoyed reading Conrad’s first book Allmayer’s Folly as a template for the rest of his writing. It stands on its own—creating a vivid backwater world of corrupt traders and broken dreams. Vivid in my memory—the story takes place entirely on a river until near the end when some seek escape by following the river to the sea and stand upon a triangle slip of coast facing the unknown. Solid Conrad.
nucleareaction's review against another edition
4.0
Oh, white people. When will you learn to leave other cultures alone?
paul_cornelius's review against another edition
4.0
The thing is that neither Almayer, his daughter, Nina, or his wife fit in. Neither does his would-be partner, Dain. Everyone lacks connection in this short novel. But none more than Almayer himself. He is a misfit in the most literal sense of the word. Uncomfortable with the natives, his family, or his sponsor, he lives his life adrift. As the novel puts it when describing the building of his new house on the first page, the decay has set in even as it is being built. And Almayer all but rushes to that eventual fate, while those around him disintegrate and disappear from the text and our consciousness.
galuf84's review against another edition
4.0
Lord Jim still is my favorite but this book (though his first) was far better than Heart of Darkness or Victory.
dalewahl's review against another edition
3.0
This is a sad book, an insightful book, a strange book, and ultimately a good book. The prose is descriptive and beautiful; it does a magnificent job of painting this far off place, just as it does a great job of showing the political, cultural, and social struggles of the time.
I say it is strange because the characters are almost too set in their ways. There is no room for change or development. But they do not feel like caricatures. And maybe that tells us something. About the time certainly, but also about people or at least some of them. There-in lies both the insight and the sadness.
I say it is strange because the characters are almost too set in their ways. There is no room for change or development. But they do not feel like caricatures. And maybe that tells us something. About the time certainly, but also about people or at least some of them. There-in lies both the insight and the sadness.
fearandtrembling's review against another edition
1.0
The language that describes landscapes is dense and rich; the themes of alienation in the externally and inwardly destructive colonial psyche are ripe for further analysis. Perhaps, if I cared enough, I would be interested to note Conrad's Polish heritage and the obsession with Englishness that Almayer has in this book. Conrad is cynical about Almayer (who is Dutch) and the English, but he cannot imagine his Malay characters as anything but savages. Every so often when it feels like he might be able to get past that, he appears to run into a wall--like a conceptual block--and the narrative pulls back to describe how a Malay character was behaving in a way that was typical to his or her race; that is, in a "savage", remote and inscrutable manner. For all the beauty of the language in certain parts of this slim novel, and the complexity of the ideas submerged in the straightforward narrative, the book is ultimately tedious, small-minded, and mean-spirited. This is because of Conrad's orientalism, which despite his talent and skill in crafting a sentence, renders him without imagination. A novel cannot succeed on repetitions of stereotypes.
reflexandresolve's review against another edition
50-page rule. Life's too short to read uninteresting books.
darwin8u's review against another edition
3.0
Not my favorite Conrad, not even second tier, but it is still amazing to read. This was Conrad's debut novel and you can see flashes of his big themes (not yet mature) swirling in the deep water of his words.
'Almayer's Folly' reminded me of a gloomy, obsessive Melville novella or an alienated E. M. Forester story. It is one of those novels that if you love Conrad, you will want to read eventually (I'd read Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, Lord Jim, and Typhoon first). If your only exposure to Conrad is 'Heart of Darkness' and you aren't quite sure you liked that ... I'd skip this one.
'Almayer's Folly' reminded me of a gloomy, obsessive Melville novella or an alienated E. M. Forester story. It is one of those novels that if you love Conrad, you will want to read eventually (I'd read Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, Lord Jim, and Typhoon first). If your only exposure to Conrad is 'Heart of Darkness' and you aren't quite sure you liked that ... I'd skip this one.
janhicks's review against another edition
4.0
Conrad's prose is beautiful. His understanding of human nature is complete. Almayer's Folly is a tragic tale of hopes thwarted by the hardship of life and the weak spirit of one man. Almayer's Folly is the name given to the house built by the titular hero to house his family and demonstrate his wealth and success. It is also the theme of his life - from presuming he would inherit the fortune of his boss by marrying his adopted daughter, to thinking he could throw that daughter off when he no longer needed her, and his belief that his position as the only white man on the east coast of Malaysia would secure his fortunes. He is a weak man, who can't rid himself of the angry woman who has been forced to marry, can't prevent his father in law from taking his own daughter from him, and ultimately can't make reparation with his only child. In the middle is a love story, told simply and perfectly. It's only a short book, but it properly filled my brain.
More...