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The Fall (Penguin Modern Classics) | 
| Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.60
You Save: £5.39 (60%)
New (25) Used (4) from £1.50
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 13998
Media: Paperback
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0141187948
EAN: 9780141187945
Publication Date: July 6, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1 more reviews...
 Possibly my favourite Camus June 23, 2009
J. Green (London, UK)
My favourite and arguably Camus's most successfull portrayal of society's absurdities is such a short read - you can finish it in one sitting - but incredibly thought provoking. Following the initially charismatic, egocentric exploits of prominent lawyer Jean Baptiste Clemance and his subsequent fall into obscurity, alcoholism and isolation.
The Fall April 5, 2009
G. E. S. Ruffer
"This, alas is what I am...but at the same time I hold out to my contemporaries a mirror."
You meet a man in a bar in Amsterdam and he tells you his life philosophy on slavery, freedom, religion, morality and love. Only it isn't you, but himself that he's talking to. Over five days and 100 pages, he goes over his thoughts and contemplates the guilt of seeing a girl jump into the Seine and not jump in after her.
This book is full of memorable lines and reminded me somewhat of Kierkegaard's 'Johannes Climacus' in that it's mostly just philosophical meanderings told through the thoughts of a fictional character. I once heard a Rabbi on transworld sport say "the best example is a living example." In contrast with that statement this book really doesn't stand for anything. But that's not the point.
Camus is a personal favourite and while I don't hold this work in as high a regard as The Plague or The Outsider, The Fall is still a good read.
Ooooh, pithy, very pithy April 4, 2009
Francis Mitchell (Proper Cambridge (UK))
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this book by a widescreen television in a common area of a rented apartment in El Salvador. The heat of the afternoons was tempered by an unseasonal wind across the lake. Mostly I read lying in a hammock. My reading was interrupted by a day out riding with an ex-guerilla to an old FMLN camp complete with trenches, look-out and hide-out for the wounded dug into the side of a hill. Despite this I still found 'Le Chute' interesting and strangely moving, I would like to have had a drink both with Camus and Jean-Baptiste
 A jumble of unconnected thoughts makes this hard to follow February 23, 2009
Norberto Amaral (Aveiro, Portugal)
I'm just about finishing reading this novel and I'm getting a nagging sense of unfulfilment. Despite being written in a monologue and being full of fantastic insights about human nature, these thoughts are so unconnected and come at such a furious pace that after a while it is almost impossible to read this without wincing at the many twists and turns of the text. This despite the fact that the book is only about 150 pages long, which by any standard should be read and understood in a breeze.
The story itself is rather interesting and almost archetypal: it's about a man who was a lawyer and, through his own sense (complex) of superiority towards his always guilty clients, judges and his many lovers, and his notorious success, starts being the target of envy of half the world and the receiver of less than favourable comments from the other half. He then goes into a progressive spiral of self-destruction, with many examples of misogyny, ending, in fact starting the story, with him helping sailors and paupers alike in Amsterdam, very far from the heights of his previous professional life in Paris.
The fact that he's drunk throughout part of the books isn't explicitly apparent but will make it easier to understand why his speech is incoherent and even illogical at times, without a clear line of thought. However, it doesn't seem possible that he's drunk all of the time and in so many different circumstances or that even the person he's talking to would be willing to listen to him for so long and so often, so that is a very bad excuse for his terrible speech.
To me, this is an exemplary tale about despair, about the fear of lacking the respect of society, of lack of friendship, of lack of connectedness to the outside world, about the lack of a sense of 'spirituality' that so seemed to characterise life after WWII. Many other books go at the same subject through an entirely different way but no other offers so many interesting insights about human existence and condition. That means that this book isn't meant to be read in a sitting: give it enough time to ponder over each sentence.
Were it not for these insights and this book would receive a single star from me and still be overrated.
lovely little book November 11, 2008
Mr. Sp Shrestha
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
deserves 5 stars; since i havent read all his book i am hesistant to give 5 stars so just 4 stars for now. this is a monologue and shows the hollowness of ones existence. Solution--NO!!
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