by Paul Bowles

isbn: 0880015829
subject: Fiction and Literature
finished: 6/3/2001

The Sheltering Sky is about three Americans, Port and Kit Moresby and their friend Tunner, who travel to Morocco a few years after the Second World War. The leave the relative comfort of Tangiers and head towards the Sahara following the same impulse that drove them to travel in the first place: Port and Kit's marriage is dissolving and they seek external experience to make up for a lack of intimacy and connection between them. Tunner is a less interesting character and is just along for the ride; he desires Kit, and he also wants to be with Port and Kit because they're interesting and he isn't.

The early part of the book moves slowly and has a lot of dialogue; later, as Port falls ill and the couple is separated from Tunner, the dialogue is more and more replaced by descriptions of the wide desert and of the characters' internal experiences as they grow farther from reality. In the end, the story is about Kit and how she loses herself once separated from Port and from her cultural context. There are many contrasts at work in The Sheltering Sky: between the pragmatic natives and the ugly Americans, between the harsh and unreasoning nature of the desert and the dim conception of its dangers that the travelers have, and between the finiteness of life and our perception that it will last forever. There are also parallels; the most obvious one, I think, being between the wild emptiness of the desert and the meaninglessness of life.

Since all the main characters in The Sheltering Sky are dislikable, the enjoyment in reading the story comes not from them or their horrifying situations, but rather from Bowles' polished prose. I'd recommend this book, but only to people who enjoy writers like Conrad and Camus.