The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles: Our foray into Africa continues, and gets really strange.

Over a month has passed since our last post. All things considered it was a very strange month, so I suppose this is an appropriate book to jump back in with.

The Sheltering Sky begins as a kind of travelogue surrounding a married couple, Port and Kit, and their friend Turner's travels through post-war Northern Africa. Port and Kit have taken this trip as a last-ditch attempt at trying to save their failing marriage, and Turner is along for the ride for his own questionable purposes. They wander through Northern Africa engaging in various morally questionable actions and encountering a variety of characters, including the ever-present obnoxious Americans, until a series of events leads the book into some seriously existential and disturbing territory. (read it and you'll see what I mean)

Readability: This novel is very readable. The writing is sharp and the plot not only pulls you along with wondering what will happen next, but also with wondering what is going on in the character's heads.

Enjoyability: I'll admit, this book took me a bit to get into. At first I just kept thinking--ooh great, another book about Europeans traveling through Africa and spending a lot of time not enjoying themselves. Seriously people, why go to Africa if all you can do is complain about how 'uncivilized' it is? Somehow, though, it got under my skin. It certainly is a book I can keep thinking about and its dreamlike quality, combined with its non judgemental attitude, makes me keep questioning why the characters acted the way they did. A warning--the last 50 pages are a shocker.
Favorite quote(s):
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
"Humanity?" Cried Port. "What's that? Who is humanity? I'll tell you. Humanity is everyone but ones self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?"
"In this way he missed the night's grand finale: the shifting colors that played on the sky from behind the earth before the rising of the sun."

"Its strange," he said with a deprecatory smile, "how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I've felt only half alive. But it's a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are."

"Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth'-she hesitated.Port laughed abruptly. 'and now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end ant that's when you're conscious of the bitter taste."

"The new moon had slipped behind the earth's sharp edge"

Favorite character: Kit...I think. I had conflicting feelings about most of the characters in this book. They make poor decisions, complain, treat each other poorly but with all of this they feel real. What happens to Kit at the end of the novel is unsettling but could I say I wouldn't do the same? Probably not. Somehow, this end feels appropriate despite its distressing nature. In the end it's all about the desert anyway so, maybe that's my favorite character.

Least favorite character: The creeptastic caravan owners who 'help' Kit towards the end of the novel.

Social impact: Paul Bowles spent much of his life as a ex-pat in Northern Africa and clearly questions of identity for expats, as well as their detrimental affects on local culture, were an important theme for him and likely brought attention to the phenomenon. I couldn't help thinking though...man, I wish one of these novels was written by an African for a change...

Greatest impact: Identity and mortality are main themes of The Sheltering Sky and this novel does a great job examining these ideas. It also accurately portrays the feeling you get when you're in a strange country and the relationship of people who were once close but don't know how to get back to what they once had. What really got me ultimately was the desert itself and its power to change people.

Recommended for: People who enjoy novels about expats. If you like the work W. Somerset Maugham. If you like books that question the nature of identity/mortality. OR simply if it's a long, cold winter and you just need a book to make you feel warm again.

Overall:

"It was the end of the line"