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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Like being punched in the gut...in a good way,
By "lucas_donahue" (New Brighton, MN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Strait is the Gate (Paperback)
Before reading Strait is the Gate, I already considered Gide one of my favorite writers. Now, I am dedicated to reading all of his work. Strait is the Gate hit me so hard with the agony of its characters that I felt pysically ill as the novel went on. Like Gide scholars say, the book is the counterpart to The Immoralist. While in The Immoralist, Gide portrays hedonism taken to an extreme, in Strait is the Gate, he takes self sacrifice to its heart-tearing conclusion. The story's main characters, cousins Jerome and Alissa, grow up together reading poetry aloud in the gardens of their home. They fall in love with each other--both out of admiration for the other's religious devotion. However, they are kept apart for long periods of time and their love's fervor is lost entirely to religion. While reading the story as told by Jerome, I can't help but want to scream out "don't just sit there--do something!" But it ends up being too late, and the helpless feeling of the characters--in being unable to regain what they were once on the brink of--hurts us as we read of its effects on Jerome and Alissa. Not only is the content of the story meaningful, but the style is smooth and image-conjuring (at least in the Dorothy Bussy translation). This is a change from what I experienced in the first pages of the Dover Thrift Edition of The Immoralist (but don't let that keep you from The Immoralist!) Instead, Strait is the Gate is nearly as clean and clear as Justin O'Brien's translation of The Stranger by Camus. I give the book 5 stars--quite easily. About Gide's other work... I find "The Return of the Prodigal Son" to be absolutely brilliant. In his retelling of the bible story, Gide describes the feelings of the atheist towards God (to Gide "God" was not a creator, but the goal of humanity), the church, religious friends and family, and to other religious questioners. His story is so touchingly honest and subtle that I cannot read or even think of the end without tears coming to my eyes. Five stars for all of Gide's stuff.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
beautiful book,
By PuppyTalk "BlackMutt" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Strait is the Gate (Tusk Ivories Series) (Paperback)
I read this book long long ago when I was 15 or so. It was one of the first real literary works I have ever read, and, at that age, the purity in human relationship which this story pursuits came through naturally for me (getting ideas about human relationship through this book was definitely better than through tabloids or crappy magazines or romance novels or Hollywood movies!). I have never cried or suffered over a relationship, and been happily married for 25 yrs now.
In the Afterward in the edition I have read, the translator explained that the story reflects Gide's own marriage, or the relationship with his wife. Gide loved his wife dearly, but they hardly had a sexual relationship, or something to that effect, and throughout their marriage, Gide was tormented. To me, at age 15, the idea, the kind of love that Alissa was looking for -- "divine" and on a higher plane, spiritual than physical, intangible than tangible, and eternal and true -- was quite attractive. It may look unhealthy, but you don't read a story and take it literally. It is a story of Gide's thoughts and ideals, not the story of literal facts. You don't really live your ideal, but to keep that ideal in your mind while you live your daily life is a great way to live. This book's ideal doesn't go with today's trend or culture, and it is hard to understand. But I think Gide's endeaver was well worth it. It's a very good book to read, especially for young people. It will take you to a -- if not a higher plane, a different realm, and you will see love and relationship from a totally different angle.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sensitive Soul Selects Self-Sacrifice,
By Robert S. Newman "Bob Newman" (Marblehead, Massachusetts USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Strait is the Gate (Paperback)
You can bet that old Omar Khayyam loved a few women in his day and when he got out there under the spreading bough with his loaf of bread, a book of verse, and a jug of wine, he did not fail to eat, drink, recite, and all the rest. That's what I think life is about. Dreams are central, but if you have a chance to realize your dream, and you don't because you think you'll be happier if you don't, then your dreams are just so much junk and you are kidding yourself. Self-denial may be good for your health, but not for your soul.
Andre Gide wrote this novel back before World War I, when extreme sensibility had not been crushed by the horrors of modern war; a time when the words `holocaust' or `genocide' had not been much heard. I am not claiming that this is a bad novel---no, on the contrary---it is a very complex and finely-crafted piece of literature. However, I found it impossible to like. Jerome and Alissa, two extremely sensitive and religious young people in Normandy, fall in love early in life, but spend the rest of the novel avoiding each other, sacrificing themselves for `purity', turning to God instead of to each other, embarassed by their own passion, and other vain exercises in psychological self-mutilation. The twists and turns that Gide manages to write into this short, but extremely complex novel are breathtakingly clever and believable, but the whole effect was to make me feel somewhat nauseous and exceedingly disturbed. Alissa writes to her lover who thinks only of her, "No, don't cut short your journey for the sake of a few days' meeting. Seriously, it is better that we should not see each other again just yet. Believe me, I could not think of you more if you were with me. I should be sorry to give you pain, but I have come to the point of no longer wanting your presence---now. Shall I confess ? If I knew you were coming this evening I should fly away." And so it goes, desire, rejection, reunion, the heights of platonic passion, and again separation. A second love story underlines the first to give it the traceries of poignancy. Some years ago in Australia, there was a campaign to get people away from their television sets, out to do some healthier activity. The slogan then was "Life ! Be in it !" This couple's slogan is definitely, "Life ! Be out of it !" If you have read Kafka's "The Castle" and enjoyed it, then this book is definitely for you. If you ever thrilled to Ring Lardner's "The Ecstasy of Owen Muir" or Kawabata Yasunari's "House of Sleeping Beauties", then I suppose you will be drawn to STRAIT IS THE GATE. I am not an expert on Gide by any means, but it may be that he wanted to write several books showing the complex depths of various human emotions. It's five star writing, but in the opinion of this reviewer, it is a twisted book that will not give you much pleasure.
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