Customer Reviews:
 One of the best August 6, 2008
I was given this book as a teenager, and made half-hearted efforts to read in over the past twenty years but rarely got beyond the first couple of pages. I had decided on very little basis that I didn't like Conrad, that his writing was uncomfortable, old-fashioned and read like another language translated into english.
I have entirely changed my mind. Older, not neccesarily wiser, but more exposed to the world and its vageries I have fallen utterly in love with Conrad and his writing which is engaging and modern. He is the most humane of writers, capable of being moving without lapsing into sentimentality, and maps the human spirit with all its pride, nobilty, hope, optimism, youth, experience, realism, and evil. Lord Jim combines all these with the excitement of an adventure story and prose that is beautifully written. As I rush headlong towards middle-age I can see much of my past, and my changing attitudes, in the tale of Jim.
I can understand people that don't like Conrad, having been one of them myself: that has changed completely, and he is now undoubtedly my favourite author. Maybe it's akin to liking olives, or cigars, or whisky, a passion that comes with age - but it's been worth the wait.
a master of the English language December 2, 2007
When I read Lord Jim for the first time as a teenager I found it boring. Many years later I now find it an amazing book. Conrad himself spent sixteen years at sea in the late 1800s, so this book is to some degree autobiographical. The version of this book that I have even quotes Conrad: "Every novel contains an element of autobiography." In this book, the protagonist, Jim, travels to a remote region of the world, far from Victorian England. In this sense, the plot is similar to that in one of Conrad's other famous works, Heart of Darkness. Other than that book, I'm not familiar with Conrad's other works, nor am I an expert in Victorian literature, so I can't place this in its proper historical context. However, it seems like an amazingly well written story in and of itself. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.
 'Lord Jim' is a novel that embodies the struggle within us. January 7, 2000
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
'Lord Jim' is a book about heroism and cowardice, life and death, building and destroying and the growing up of someone who could dream yet never really attain that dream. Marlow takes us on his moral, psychological and personal journey yet again, as this book follows on from the equally brilliant 'Heart of Darkness' also by Joseph Conrad. The hopeful characters of Stein (the butterfly collector and interior trader) and Jim (the man who keeps on hoping to achieve his romantic end and re-gain his heroism) living and trying to re-build the corrupt and evil world on the Malayan Island of Patusan is both charged with conflict and emotion. With the help of Doramin and the Islanders their struggle against the evil and tyrannical Sherif Ali and Rajah Allang is full of anxieties and complications. What will happen in Jim's final struggle against Gentleman Brown, anything but a gentleman? Read 'Lord Jim' and explore the difficulties of 'How to be', and the post-colonial world of Patusan.
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