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Title: Gripping and personal, if a little "schematic"
Review: Camus scholars see "The Fall" as one of the author's most personal works, because the main character is exploring his own dedication to orderly morality and questioning whether hypocrisy is preventable. One scholar (Conor Cruise O'Brien) thinks it's really about Camus coming to terms with Algeria. (Camus once said, in a famous response to Sartre, "When asked to choose between justice and my mother, I choose my mother." His mother lived in French Algeria.) Interestingly, "The Fall" is the only Camus novel set outside Africa-- in foggy Amsterdam, land of carnal lust and moral ambiguity!Very well-crafted mood of unease, very intelligent broodings. It does, however, seem contrived to specifically fit Camus' purpose of moral exploraion, and the characters seem awfully schematic. This might make it a little too didactic for some readers.
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