Finished: The Stranger by Albert Camus

I listened to Albert Camus's The Stranger (L'Etranger) as part of my reading of books on the Essential Man's Library list.  Although I read Camus's The Plague in French in college, I had never read this book.  The translation was done by Matthew Ward.

Strangely, however, I have a very vivid recollection of one of the key scenes in the book -- Merseult kills a man as he is affected by a knife-sharp brightness of the sun and the heat.  I think I must have either heard a lecture about Camus or existentialism, or I had perhaps read an excerpt as part of a French readings class.

I think that I likely was impacted more by this novel now than I would have been as a college student merely due to age and additional experiences.  I also think that listening to the book dramatically demonstrated Mereseult's unique detachment.  The narrator of this performance, Jonathan Davies, provided a flat, matter-of-fact voice.

If I were to try to categorize this novel, I'd define it as a "tone novel":

• short staccato sentences reminiscent of Faulkner or Hemingway
• the preciseness of tangible details in the "now"
• Merseult's utter detachment, particularly to events occurring in the past
• Merseult's resignation of the consequences of his actions
• repeated references to the oppressive heat throughout the novel

It seems odd to me that I didn't find it a depressing work, merely an account sapped of its emotion, relationships, and a sense of underlying depth.