I just finished this book, it only took two days to read (it's only 129 pages long). It is about Meursault, a Frenchman living in Algeria. he seems to be in his mid-to-late twenties, single, and working at a job he neither loves nor hates. That is the crux of the story he neither loves nor hates anything; he approaches everything with disinterest. This makes him an honest character in that he only sees what is there, without embelishment. Unfortunately, it also allows his environment to dictate his actions.
The story begins with his mothers death. At the funeral he is distracted by how tired he is, and so he doesn't cry. After the funeral he meets Marie, who he gets engaged to, and Raymond, a new friend. Through Raymond, he becomes entangled in a messy domestic crime, which ends on the beach with Meursault shooting a man who had drawn a knife on him, shooting him mainly because it was so hot, and the sun was shining in his eyes.
The rest of the story is about the trial, and its effects on someone who has no priority in their view of the world. Camus says he wrote it to examine "the nakedness of man when confronted with the absurd", but it seemed to me more about describing an absurd man. Meursault finally finds freedom in disinterest, his own disinterest in the world, and the world's disinterest in him. It is this relationship that allows him to feel happy, probably by allowing him to focus all of his mind on himself.
Overall I liked it.
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The real value of this book is that it is a reaction to life. Camus wrote this book to examine some facet of his own experience; to answer a question that remained unanswerable in his life. Perhaps Camus at times felt that life would easier if he could simply approach it without emotion, or without feeling, without attachment. Meursault does this, and it makes his life easy. This is why he does not cry at his mother's funeral, or wonder whether he should marry Marie. One gets the feeling that Meursault would have befriended the Arab just as easily as Raymond, and killed Raymond in the same way, and felt the very same disinterest. The moral of this story is that as much as we would to cast off our feelings at times, because of sorrow, or pain, these feelings are intrinsic in our experience. They teach us and guide us; we must not rationalize, drug, or inebriate them away.
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