Lunchtime read: The Immoralist

In the end the slide away from not only his morals but his wife starts to snowball even before she has died of the very disease that almost finished him off – tuberculosis.

After leaving Paris and drifting through Switzerland, down into Italy before finally heading back to Tunis Michel’s wife’s health continually decreases. In Italy he kisses a boat hand and hangs around the port in Naples. Back in Tunis he looks up his old favourite among the boys that used to come to the house and he is with him and his mistress the night his wife takes a turn for the worse.

He runs back but she is on her last legs coughing up blood and she dies not long after. He then finishes the story he has been telling his friends. From their perspective what they notice is the almost complete lack of remorse. If anything he is almost oblivious to how he might be judged and seems to feel that having brushed so close to death himself and survived there is not much sympathy that should be spared on those who have failed.

A review will come soonish…