Conspicuous Consumption

  This is the third book in Conrad's "Lingard Trilogy," coming after his first and second novels,   Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands . Though Conrad began The Rescue  not long after finishing  Outcast , it was not published until twenty years later, twenty years during which Conrad published masterpieces like  Heart of Darkness ,  Lord Jim , and Nostromo . The Conrad who composed the final version of The Rescue was, therefore, a much more mature and confident writer than the neophyte of Almayer's Folly . The novel is gripping from start to finish. Conrad wrote of the novel, "I want to make it a kind of glorified book for boys – you know. No analysis. No damned mouthing. Pictures – pictures – pictures. That's what I want to do," and he succeeds in exactly what he set out to do. The novel pulls one along just as boy's adventures should, and the atmosphere he creates of the tropical archipelago where the novel is set sucks us in. R...