Lord of the Flies

I started it on the flight out and finished it today. It's a little thing, but it does not go quickly. Golding's prose demands thinking about.

Somehow I managed to get through all my formal schooling without ever having read it. I knew of it, and knew the plot outline as well. And now having read it, I can see why it's on reading lists.

In contrast, DH and I saw Prometheus last weekend, and it was a crashing (literally) pretentious bore.  Its attempts to tackle primal questions (Who are we?  Why are we here?) were so awkward and obvious and predictable.  Lord of the Flies asks many of the same questions but with elegance and power.  Both works have scenes of terror, suspense, and violence, and both deal with isolated populations coming to grips with human nature, but that's where the similarities end.

100 years from now, we'll still be reading Golding, and no one will even remember Prometheus.