A review by mcleary
Iron in the Soul by Jean-Paul Sartre

4.0

Tomorrow the black birds would come...The haunting, foreboding line that finishes this book, which though brilliant is I think the weakest of the trilogy. It focuses on less characters than the previous two instalments, though dwells on them for longer stretches of time. Time with Brunet in the prison camp dragged on a little too long for me and I would have liked to have found out what was happening with the others: Marcelle, Daniel, Boris and Ivich etc. Only Mathieu really achieves closure: 'Christ. Suppose I turned out to be a coward. That would be the last straw.' Do we really know who or what we are until circumstance reveals our true nature to us? Again some brilliant, beautiful lines. His writing is harsh, brutal and completely unsentimental. He really has written a book that is 'beautiful, hard as nails and makes you ashamed of your existence.'