Sati Marie Frost’s Reviews > The Stranger: The Original Unabridged and Complete Edition > Status Update

Oh, he’s turned Hantengu. How unjust! How unfair that I should be in this position! He’s convincing enough that I’m howling along with him, even though he deserves it. Uncanny.

Not once has he said, or been asked, why he killed the guy. And I have no idea. He seemed to have a pretty decent life, and I have no idea why he did it.

This is such a curious book. I feel outrage at the behaviour of this kangaroo court, trying to make him out to be a killer with no morals - and then I remember that he did, in fact, kill a man in cold blood for no real reason.

Ah, so that’s why I find our protagonist slightly scummy but charming. He reminds me a bit of my mother.

This is a hard one for me, because it’s incredibly engaging, but I can’t help but feel our protagonist is kind of scummy. The whole friends-with-Raymond thing icks me out. And yet his voice is not off-putting the way a lot of protagonists from these sorts of stories are. He’s quite charming, for all that he’s a void.

Aaaand there it is. Not as joyful as I thought.

So far, I like this. It feels like he’s finally learning how to be joyful after his mother’s death, the way I had hoped to. But I have a feeling that something terrible will happen.