So I just finished this during lunch today. I have to say that I must agree with those who found the development of the characters rather limited. This made it hard for me to really get involved in the novel as the principal characters were rather wooden and uninteresting. It was difficult for me to be moved much when Camus also wrote of stages of mass behavior either. Camus does early on explain why it is written this way, as Lynx-lynx has noted, and reiterates this at the end of the book. Still in comparison to the strong well developed characterization of Meursalt in The Stranger I found my reaction to this book was pretty much meh.

To those who have mentioned that they are considering just abandoning the effort I will say that for me at least things really picked up from about half way through Part IV until the end, It is at this point that I found the book went from a rather dry chronology of events to an interesting discussion on what is a moral response to the situation.

One thing I'll mention that struck me, and it is usually something that I would not much note, was the lack of any character development for the females mentioned in this book. At best they appear as objects for the principal male characters to long for.