2003-11-16 Very disappointing

One of the overriding problems is the unnecessarily convoluted structure, which results in much of the dialogue being encased in 3 layers of inverted commas, eg where Marlow is relating to an unnamed companion dialogue which was related to him by a third party. At times this makes it difficult to remember who is speaking to whom.

The other problem with this structure is that although Marlow is supposed to have pieced the story together from a combination of personal experience and conversations with acquaintances, it is immediately apparent that there are at least parts of the story which he could not possibly have known about (eg the interaction between Flora's Governess and her nephew which occurred in a closed room with no one else present - or listening at the door!).

Perhaps Conrad was getting a bit concerned about this himself towards the end of the book, where we have Marlow saying "...The cab had been left round the corner - round several corners for all I know" (P 263). Quite!

I would have been prepared to put up with all this, and allow the author a bit of artistic license, if it had been a strong story with believable characters. But it isn't. The story is flimsy and overextended, and in places reads more like a mid-Victorian melodrama than a book published in the early years of the twentieth century. The heroine, in particular, is treated pretty contemptuously. For example, after a tiff with her governess, Marlow expresses the view that "It was only because of the girl being still so much of a child that she escaped mental destruction" (P 91); and we are then told "The effect on her constitution was so profound...that she who as a child had a rather pretty delicate colouring, showed a white bloodless face for a couple of years afterwards, and remained always liable at the slightest emotion to an extraordinary ghost-like whiteness" (P 95). Pure Wilkie Collins!

Also, Conrad's relatively infrequent use of word contractions common in spoken English (eg hadn't for had not, didn't for did not) soon gets to be irritating in a book which - with the exception of the odd paragraph - is in dialogue form from start to finish.

If this book had been written by an author of less renown than Conrad, there is no way it would still be in print today. It's a stinker!

(page numbers refer to 2002 edition)