by Joseph Conrad, originally published in 1903, 2005, Blackstone Audio, read by Frederick Davidson

This is an incredibly good book given that it doesn’t have much of a plot and it was written by a Polish person whose English was a third language for him.  The beauty of this book is definitely in the use of the English language.  His sentences are terse, the words are sparing, but each additional word he uses is perfect in its cont

As I mentioned, the plot isn’t great.  It’s about a sailor, Marlow, who is hired by a company to go into the Congo and find out what’s going on with its agent, Kurtz.  Marlow accepts the job, goes in and gets Kurtz, listens to him tell his life story on the way out before he dies, and then returns home.  That’s basically it.

The beauty in the story is that Marlow is spinning his yarn to his fellow shipmates as the ship sits on the Thames.  The storytelling is absolutely spellbinding.  The reader in this production. Frederick Davidson, also does an outstanding job of portraying the storyteller.  I felt as if I were sitting there myself listening to Marlow telling his tale and that he was looking right at me while he was talking.

I attended a book lecture this winter in Naples by Elaine Newton where she compared Anne Pachette’s book, State of Wonder to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, implying that some of the same themes were employed in both books.  That may be true, but what she missed, I’m afraid, is that Heart of Darkness is a true work of art;  State of Wonder is only a pale imitation.