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I have to admit I found this book rather disappointing. It was pretty good Edwardian fiction, but I have read a lot better. I really enjoyed the first few chapters; in particular I loved the description of the porn shop that the main character, Mr Verloc, was running. There seemed to be a lot going on in the middle that I wasn’t understanding the significance of, as the police looked at the double dealings and intrigues of the anarchists/terrorists/spies. The last third however was much better. When the story focused back to the Verloc’s I found I was once again drawn in, and from that point to the end found it to be most enjoyable. It was a book largely about unsympathetic people that the author was trying to instil a sense of sympathy in his readers about. Despite being about spies it seemed to really be about the very human motivation behind their activities, which was a very interesting idea I thought. I wasn’t entirely convinced that Conrad really knew much about the motive of spies and anarchists, but giving them simple human motives, rather than political or idealistic ones, was a very humanising process for characters which are normally separated out as very different to normal people because of their strong convictions. Here there were no convictions at all.
For people running around with bombs and discoursing about the nature of humanity I much prefer “Revolt of the Angels” written by Anatole France around the same time as this book. It also made me want to read “Fathers and sons” which I think would be a very different take on the nature of revolutionaries. (If I’m remembering Bill’s description accurately). It wasn’t terrible; it did also have some rather shockingly accurate descriptions of relationships within a family where one of them was learning/developmentally disabled. At on point the disabled brother started to freak out and his sister used very similar tactics to calm him down as I did when I worked in the group home. It was also the best portrayal of that I’ve read in fiction of this era, and unlike the spies, you really got a sense that this was something Conrad understood and had experienced himself. Not a book I would recommend as an example of great fiction from this era, but one I’d recommend for people who were interested in anarchists/terrorism/spies or disabled people.
For people running around with bombs and discoursing about the nature of humanity I much prefer “Revolt of the Angels” written by Anatole France around the same time as this book. It also made me want to read “Fathers and sons” which I think would be a very different take on the nature of revolutionaries. (If I’m remembering Bill’s description accurately). It wasn’t terrible; it did also have some rather shockingly accurate descriptions of relationships within a family where one of them was learning/developmentally disabled. At on point the disabled brother started to freak out and his sister used very similar tactics to calm him down as I did when I worked in the group home. It was also the best portrayal of that I’ve read in fiction of this era, and unlike the spies, you really got a sense that this was something Conrad understood and had experienced himself. Not a book I would recommend as an example of great fiction from this era, but one I’d recommend for people who were interested in anarchists/terrorism/spies or disabled people.