A review by sky_books_pmm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

There are classics and there are classics, and I think for me, now, my experience can be split into two categories: ones I 'get' (I get the concept, I get the message, but neither are new to me, and the execution wasn't to my taste), and ones I <i> get </i> (I get the message, the nuance, the characters resonate deep in my soul, and the characters crop up in my thoughts daily). Unfortunately this book falls somewhere in the middle, nearer to the former than the latter. I feel like another read-through might clear some things up for me, but the whole superiority complex of the people that recommended it to me really put me off my usual process of figuring things out for myself - I think that's why I often tend to fall for classics that are more disliked than liked by the general public, because there's less pressure in the reading, less shame when I don't understand exactly what the author is trying to convey, and is overall a more private process where I can mull over things at my own pace. I think that is the great fault of those who are always complaining that my generation don't 'read' any more - they don't see the barrier that their every pretentious word sets up between the young reader and the great classics.

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is, I think this would've been a great classic, but the style wasn't exactly for me, and it was harder to overlook due to the various middle-aged men (there were four, in the span of the three or so days in which I was reading this book) that kept on telling me that this book was going to 'change my life'. It put pressure on me, but even more pressure on the author to outperform impossible expectations.