[sun surfer]

It's been a pleasure reading the many excellent and informative posts preceding this one. I enjoyed the book to a degree and thought it was good but it didn't entrance me. I liked the setting and the descriptions of certain parts of the town for almost the opposite reason as Camus chose it. To me this barren Algerian coastal city seemed exotic, mysterious and interesting whereas to Camus it was an ugly, boring wasteland. His prejudice and negativity towards it irked me at times but I suppose it made sense on a more philosophical level.

I read this before discovering the secret of the allegory. It took me over half the book to begin to suspect something along those lines and that left me with plenty of time to notice that as its own story it sometimes seemed heavy-handed and forced (the portrayal of the health squads were especially egregious in that respect). I think once one understands what he is paralleling this story with this fault seems more forgivable and less noticeable but it begs the question of whether such an allegorical and philosophical novel should also be able to work without the allegory or if that's possible.

There is no explanatory introduction in the Buss translation, but there is an excellent afterward. I especially love it because it is an afterward, as most introductions (any that discuss book plot) should be.