Review: Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I managed to live 59 years without reading “Lord of the Flies”, or seeing the entire movie. But while filling out reading lists on the website List Challenges, I kept running across this book. Fearing I was missing something, I gave the audiobook a listen. I found a story that I already knew, to quite a level of detail. Since this book was used as examples in so many other books that I’ve read, and since movie clips were used in many documentaries that I’ve seen over the years, I found that I didn’t really need to read the book for the basic story, for the personalities of the boys, the island descriptions. I found this surprising when reading this book. “Is that all there is?” I thought when done. To me, it appeared to end quite abruptly – so I can say that the specific ending I hadn’t picked up over the years. Or perhaps it just wasn’t as memorable as the rest of the story. It wasn’t. It was a bit of a disappointment. But I will say that the story here is a good one for the collective consciousness, as anyone can refer to it and find at least some people get the reference. I’m glad I read it, at least to verify my understanding of the story.

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