I shall start out by saying I have never been a fan of the classics of American literature for a myriad of reasons, so perhaps out of self preservation I have steered clear of Herman Melville till Billy Budd and Other Stories landed on my doormat a few weeks ago. Nothing loathe, I set off on my voyage of unexplored literary delights armed with a trusty mug of tea and an open mind.

Alas, I rapidly ran aground on the shallows of Melville's impenetrable prose.

Never one to back down from a challenge, I pushed off and set sail once more, determined to make my way through at least one of the stories. And on the whole I am glad that I persevered.

The first story in the collection is "Bartleby" and is gloriously mind-bending, forcing you to constantly reassess what is going on and question your preconceptions about the plot. I genuinely could not guess where the story was going and even now when I re-read the story to check a few facts as I write this review, I am bringing different ideas to the reading. There are so many themes woven into each story that a 2000 character review can not do them justice.

However, my final appreciation of this, and some of the other stories when I had finally waded through them, is not enough to make me recommend it to others. I felt a sense of accomplishment when I finished the book but accomplishment is not the same as enjoyment. One implies a chore finished, the other - well, enjoyment. My problem was not content, rather it was style. Mid nineteenth century writing is a very different animal to todays modern prose, with radically different sentence structures and language choices. I can appreciate that Melville was a great author and that these stories probably deserve to be 'Classics', but I don't think I'm going to be rushing out to buy Moby Dick or anything else of his any time soon.

Remember that by posting a comment you are agreeing to the website Terms of Use.
If you consider any content on this site to be inappropriate, please report it to Penguin Books by emailing BlogaPenguinClassicFeedback@penguin.co.uk

Feed

There are 0 comments on this review