Lord of the Flies

By William Golding

Published 1954

GoodReads rating: 3.66  out of 5

GL rating: 6 out of 10 stars

(Comments originally published on FB June 9, 2018)

Not a novel I would have picked up myself, but because I’m going to hear some interesting people talk about it, I just finished Lord of the Flies. I think I read it in junior high school (?) or part of it. Had no idea that William Golding was a Nobel Laureate. It was also his first novel. Anyway, it’s probably a book that many people read in high school and then never look back on, but it’s a great novel. The use of symbolism is remarkable.

The novel I read prior to it, Blindness ... the structural (or maybe thematic) similarities were surprising, although maybe unintentional.

8-10-18 update: This was kind of a crazy book, I've not read any other novel that was so good while simultaneously being so flawed. The characters are very two-dimensional, is the main problem. At the same time, Golding is clearly a genius.