William Golding Omnibus

Like the other reviewer here, I was assigned this book in my junior year of high school by a well-meaning teacher who was so frustrated by his students' lack of interest (or comprehension) of Free Fall that he simply gave up. Three years later I picked my copy off the shelf and gave it a second try. Although there are still times when I have to blink and reread a paragraph several times to absorb the frenetic stream-of-consciousness style of narration, I am constantly in awe of Golding's exquisite writing. To all brave readers, give this one a chance.

I heard about 'Freefall' from my old English taecher, a man called Mr. Breen. You could never have said that we got on very well, probably as a result of his compulsive, patronising behaviour and my downright laziness and inability to accept authority. Anyway he was a man who liked to tell stories, and one of his favourites related to a curious book by the name of freefall. It was two years later and I was about to come and live in Paris when I saw the book in question in the token airport lobby bookstore . I bought it, and then read it. It is hard to explain the feeling that you get when you are so intimately touched by a piece of literature that you become almost posessive about it and protective when you find out that someone else has obtained the same sense of enjoyment out of it as yourself. That is why I greet the fact that I am the only one to have reviewed this book with a mixture of elation and sorrow. The story revolves around the analysis of the narrator's life (Sammy Mountjoy), and tries to ascertain where it was that he lost the ability to manipulate his own fate - where he lost his freedom. We are presented with various episodes from his life as he tries to find out 'where it happened'. The obscurity of his period in the concentration camp is somewhat baffling, but the rest of the novel is written so beautifully and with such convoluted yet clear language that it is a joy to read. This novel is far too good to miss, but remember, I got there first.