Joseph Conrad – Amy Foster

Amy Foster

TYPE: Can’t Say

RATING: 4/10

REVIEW:

I have no idea why the book is named Amy Foster, when the book carries a description not of her, but of another person who became her husband in the later part of the story. I suppose, I’ll never get the gist of these philosophical stories, if there was any involved in this one.

The story begins with someone visiting an old doctor in the countryside and he relates to him the sad story of Amy Foster. The story has a social castaway, a ship-wrecked man who was taken up by the Swaffers and offered food, clothing and a roof over his head. The stranger soon learns to read, write and speak in the common dialect and then falls in love with Amy Foster and decided to marry him.

She does marry him, and she bears his child but then after that I lose the idea of the story because she starts hating him for talking to the child in his own tongue and keeps thinking that he wants to harm the child and then finally abandons him. That about sums up the story which doesn’t look like much to me.