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"This little-known novella from one of the masters of the form is so unusual for Joseph Conrad's work in several respects, although not in its exotic maritime setting or its even more exotic prose it is unusual in that it is one of his very few works to feature a woman as a leading character, and to take the form of a romance. Still, it's a Conradian romance- a sweeping saga set in the Indian Ocean basin, against a turbulent background of barely suppressed hostilities between Dutch and British merchant navies, told by one of Conrad's classically detached narrators. In the end, the unique perspective of the sharply etched character of Freya is one of Conrad's most piercing studies of how the lust for power can drive men to greatness or its opposite."… (more)
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I actually picked this book because I wanted to try a new author and these seemed like a good choice. Great has a sensible young woman who is easy on the eyes. She has many men interested in her, two more so than
I loved the voice of this novel. You know how some voices in a book are so clear you can hear them in your head better than any audio book? That would be reading this book. I smiled, a frowned, a sighed all at the moments I know Conrad intended. Terrific novella.
However that may be, she (Jasper's ship) was as sound as on the day she first took the water, sailed like a witch, steered like a little boat, and, like some fair women of adventurous life famous in history, seemed to have the secret o f perpetual youth; so that there was nothing in Jasper Allen treating her like a lover. And that treatment restored her lustrous beauty. He clothed her in many coats of the very best white paint so skillfully, carefully, artistically put on and kept clean by his badgered crew of picked Malays, that no costly enamel such as jewellers use for their work could have looked better and felt smoother to the touch. A narrow gilt moulding defined her elegant sheer as she sat on the water, eclipsing easily the professional good looks of any pleasure yacht that ever came to the East in those days....nothing less than the best gold-leaf would do, because no decoration could be gorgeous enough for the future abode of his Freya.