Customer Reviews

Amy Foster

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For a while now, Amazon had been recommending for me a DVD entitled Swept from the Sea, which never having heard of it, I ignored. My curiosity finally got the best of me, and I clicked on it to see what it was about. The premise sounded promising. It also happened to mention that it was based on a story entitled Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad. Since books (or stories, as is case here) are almost always better than movie adaptations, I decided to read the story instead. I had high hopes. Unfortunately, this story did not work for me. It felt more like an outline of a story that was never fully fleshed out. I think that this was mostly the result of the way the story was told - from the first person by someone who heard it told to them from someone else. Anyone who has every played telephone knows that the further removed you are from the actual events, the more diluted and distorted the story gets. Rather than getting into the main characters' heads to find out what their motivations are, we have a second hand account of what someone thought they might have been thinking.

Since I never really connected with the characters, I did not find the story to be particularly engaging or memorable. In the years to come, this review will probably be the only evidence I'll have to remind myself that I did, indeed, read this story.