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The Shadow-Line
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The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad
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I loved this book. I'm fairly new to Conrad, and I read this one because the author of We, The Drowned refers to it in his acknowledgements. (We, The Drowned is a brilliant book, by the way.) I thought the premise of this book was an interesting one, and the characters were all believable even in their extremes of behaviour. As an examination of leadership and self-confidence, it's also a thought-provoking read.I really like Conrad. I've read Heart of Darkness, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, Almayer's Folly, as well as The Shadow Line. I think what I like about his writing is his understanding of human nature. I haven't read anything by him yet that has made me think, "Oh, you're just saying that for effect." I find him a very honest and precise writer, and his attention to detail particularly nuanced. It helps that he was writing in a time that is a period of history I am interested in, sitting at the point where society was changing rapidly from a predominantly agrarian economy to an industrial one. I think Conrad captures that shock of the new in a lot of the books I've read.
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Jan, would you like to provide your rating?
1001shelf wrote: "Jan, would you like to provide your rating?"Of course! I gave it 5 stars.
I waded through Conrad's Heart of Darkness and in the end thought it was an exceptional book with deep flaws. In contrast, I found this book to be a quick read that was easy to digest and one that nevertheless carried an interesting theme right on the edge of mental breakdown and supernatural intervention. An inexperienced sea captain on his first commission in the tropics is making a run from Bangkok to Singapore though the sweltering heat of the Gulf of Siam (now Thailand). The book is told in the first person so that the reader comes to know our Main Character through his own thoughts and words and we realize early on how unformed he is in regards his emotional and mental maturity. The young captain takes over a sailing ship that was previously captained by an older man who had wished for his own death and subsequently was thought to have cursed the ship and its crew to die on the sea with him. The old captain had been buried at sea, without his crew, right in the direct line of where the young captain was sailing. The crew turns out to all have malaria except for 2 people, the cook and the captain himself. The book details the slow unraveling of both the workings of the ship as the men succumb to their fevers and chills, but also the minds of some of the characters. The young captain, who does not believe in the supernatural, nevertheless questions his own abilities in a way that runs parallel to the belief in the supernatural of other characters. The core theme therefore is one of questioning one's fate, how luck and skills balance out, how weather, tides and disease tangle with man's will to keep going at all cost. The shadow line of the title refers to the moment when a person realizes that they have left their youth behind and can not return to it.
Conrad's writing is crisp, and clear with a low key dramatic tension and well described characters that kept me engaged until he end.
This is my third Conrad book. The other two were a real test of my determination to get through. There is something about Conrad's writing style that is a turn-off for me as a reader. However, this story was quite easy to read. It might be because it is less than 150 pages. It also might be because it is written from first person. In the past, I have been bogged down by Conrad's attention to detail but this story moved quickly mainly through action. The premise of this story is the first trip of a new Captain who has taken over a ship from a Captain that died. The previous Captain was "an evil man" as the first mate reported. Problems arise in their maiden voyage that is blamed on supernatural effects. The new Captain does not see it that way but as the voyage continues he begins to question his luck and ability to lead.