Of Human Bondage

This novel is quite a journey. Probably too long - I felt like a lot of the episodes in it could have been shorter and accomplished the same thing. I felt like at least one of them was repetitive. In particular, the main character's constant feeling of inferiority and his prideful refusal to act reasonably and to ask for help from friends was very frustrating. He would seem to learn lessons only to repeat his errors. That's part of the point though. The interesting thing is that none of the episodes were overly slow - I was always interested in what was going to happen. You never felt like the same idea was being repeated within a paragraph, for example, like you might get with a poorly written Victorian novel. Sometimes the detail of scenes was a little excessive, but on the other hand the detail did make the book's story feel very true to life. But it still felt like a slog at times. And then at certain intervals you'd get this burst of insight and summing up of ideas that would really dazzle and impact you. And at the end, when he's really arriving at a definitive theory of how to live, more or less, I wondered if the amount of time spent with all that drama and suffering wasn't necessary to the impact that the ending has on you as a reader. Each episode's ups and downs formed the overall pattern which directly informs the ideas expressed in the end. It's a very mature ending - you don't get some romantic dream or tragedy. It's not comic. It's not even entirely resolved. But it's based around a mature acceptance of life's random chaos and being willing to 'surrender to happiness'.

In other words, this is one of the books I am very glad to have read but would probably groan a bit at having to read again any time soon. It is actually quite funny in parts, too, but it's just awfully long. I feel like shaving 75 or 100 pages off would have really made it quite perfect.

Very beautifully written. Genuinely enjoyed every page of it.

I liked The Razor’s Edge quite a bit, so I was excited to read this. But this turned out to be one of the most tedious, aggravating books I’ve experienced. I have neither sympathy for, nor interest in, the main character; it was grating to spend time with him. And none of the other characters is given any development beyond his tiresome viewpoints. Nor is there any real plot, or anything else to distract you. (To be clear: I’m fine with character-based books that don’t have much plot, but they have to have interesting characters.) The tolerable mediocrity of the final few chapters came as a great relief, but certainly not a redemption. If I weren’t responsible for facilitating a book-club discussion on this, there is no chance I ever would have bothered finishing it. Highly, highly do not recommend.