Finished: Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro). Haunting, heartbreaking, well-written book! What you think is going to be a story about three children growing up together at an English boarding school, turns into a horrific reality. Kathy, Ruth and Tommy, raised and educated at Hailsham all their lives, even as infants, form a friendship and bond that carries them through ups and downs in their relationships and their lives until only one of them is still surviving at the end of the story. Ruth, the more dominant of the three, attaches herself to Tommy in their teens and they become a couple, when in reality, it's clear that Kathy and Tommy have more of a connection and have "loved" each other for a long time. What they, and we, come to find out is that the three friends, and many other children like them, are clones of other human beings....clones that were created for the sole purpose of some day being organ donors for "real" people. Their reproductive organs have been altered so that they can never have children. As they reach the age of 18, they are all taught first to be "carers"...people who will actually be caregivers to the organ donors. Then, after a few  years of being carers, they become the organ donors themselves...living in centers, going through surgeries, and eventually donating so many organs (usually by the fourth donation), that they die (in their terms, they "complete"), where everything else that can possibly be harvested is then taken. It's just an awful, haunting premise...scary. And it takes place in the 1990's!  Even the guardians who are their teachers at Hailsham are reluctant to embrace them, as they can't really think of them as real human beings. However, they do require the children to show their artistic abilities through painting and poetry so they can take proof back to the scientists and the financial backers that the clones do indeed have souls, and therefore should be treated more humanely. It still doesn't cover up the fact that children are created and raised, only to be harvested until their bodies are depleted. Meanwhile, in their young lives, they fall in love, have feelings, have experiences, just like everyone else. :-(  It makes me shudder to think something like this could really happen!

Finished: Cousin Bette (de Balzac). Another interesting de Balzac book from his Le Comedie Humaine. I found this one in a tiny used book store in Canon Beach, Oregon. Sigh, another nice memory of vacation! I love how so many of de Balzac's books refer to, or even include in scenes, many of the same characters. In Cousin Bette, though, recurring characters are only referred to and the action centers around Baron Hector Hulot, his beautiful, kind and virtuous wife, Adeline, and her less beautiful, spiteful, and very vengeful cousin, Lisbeth, or Bette. Jealous of all that Adeline has, Bette encourages the roving eye of Hector. Hector, who has already spent half his fortune on one mistress, becomes enchanted by the young and beautiful Valerie Marneffe, and ends up going into debt, ruining the lives of his own wife, son and daughter, being responsible for the death of his brother and his brother-in-law, and becoming destitute...all in the name of chasing after the younger woman who just strings him along for the money. Bette, having become best friends with Valerie, schemes and plots with her, as this is the perfect revenge she can take on the family...especially since Hector and Adeline's beautiful and kind daughter, Hortense, falls in love with Wecuslus, the young, equally attractive artist that Bette has been hiding away and supporting with her own money. Bette, however, is old enough to be his mother. She can't accept it when he falls in love with Hortense and they marry. She encourages Valerie to entice Wenceslas with her charms as well, and soon both marriages are on the rocks. Throw in the creepy, but rich, Crevel who used to be friends with the Baron, until the Baron stole HIS mistress from under his nose...the woman the Baron had an affair with before Valerie. With Bette and Crevel both seeking vengeance, and Valerie seeking money, and Hector willing to throw everything away, including his family, for the "woman he loves", it doesn't take long for circumstances to become dire. As Hector sinks to his lowest lows, through it all, Adeline remains dignified, loving and respected. She refuses an offer to become the mistress of the very rich Crevel in exchange for him settling all their hundreds of thousands of francs worth of debts. She actually never gives up hope in wanting Hector to come back to the family. She never scolds him or causes any scenes. Their son, Victorin, is like his mother and sister, and is a level-headed young attorney. He takes on most of his father's debts. By the end, Valerie has strung one too many lovers along and is killed by a Brazilian who had waited for her for three years. She dies an ugly, leprosy-like death from a virus-like substance he gives her. Crevel, by that time Valerie's new husband, also dies from the contagious disease. Hector runs off with his tail between his legs to skirt his debts. He changes his name and goes into hiding, but still keeps up his womanizing ways. Cousin Bette knows where he is at all times, but never lets the searching Adeline know. Finally, goodness and family perseveres. Victorin is able to pay off his father's debts and make a decent living that he, his wife and child, his mother and his abandoned sister and her child can live on. Wenceslas comes back home with his tail between his legs and remains the lazy artist who never makes another good piece of work, now that his wife has some money left to her, ironically, by the death of Valerie. Bette, dies a death of consumption, surrounded by the family that she detested, though they never knew it.  She dies in extreme unhappiness knowing how happy they have all become. Finally, Adeline finds Hector and he comes home to the family! Everyone is happy, or so it seems for about six months...until one day Adeline hears Hector telling the kitchen maid that his wife probably won't live much longer and then he can marry her and she'll be a Baroness! Say what?? After all the forgiveness and non-judgement he received from his family, and especially Adeline? Adeline dies of a broken heart. And, sure enough, the Baron runs off and marries the kitchen maid. At least he is out of the lives of his children! As usual, the de Balzac writing is witty and great. :-) I'm sure I'll read even more of his books. It would be really nice to read the entire Le Comedie Humaine in order, but that in itself would probably take an entire year. I've got to move on to some other books!

Finished: Call For the Dead (le Carre) and Six Years (Coben). I'm off on vacation and reading books when I can. I always enjoy Harlen Coben books, so I saved his latest for the airplane. It didn't disappoint. :-) A fast-paced tale about a man, Jake, who gives up the love of his life when she marries another man and asks him never to contact her again. Six years later Jake sees the obituary for his old flame's husband and goes to seek her out, only to find out that the widow is someone completely different...his old love was never really married to the man and is nowhere to be found. Mystery and intrigue ensues. :-)

Then, sitting by the ocean breezes, I read le Carre's first book about British spy, George Smiley. Smiley is introduced, as well as Peter Guillam, his co-worker, friend, and eventual betrayer years later in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. In Call For the Dead, a man turns up dead who George has just interviewed as a possible betrayer. He is classified as a suicide, but nothing is as it seems, especially when George himself is attacked and left for dead. Again, mystery and intrigue ensues. A nice book for the beginning of a good series!

And, two good travel reading books!

Finished: Decline and Fall (Waugh) A fast-pace, farcical, rather refreshing book. :-) I had no intention of reading another entire book before we left for Oregon, but this was a quick read. I can't say that it was light-hearted, but it leaves you feeling rather light-hearted, which most of the books I've read on this journey do not. I don't think I'll go into a long explanation or recap, just a short one. Decline and Fall is definitely a satire about British society, first and foremost. It's the story of British university student Paul Pennyfeather, who gets kicked out of university, not by his own doing. And then he gets strung along into different situations and experiences by "lady fortune". From teaching at a low-tier boy's school, where he meets the headmaster, Dr. Fagan, favorite student, Peter Beste-Chetwynde, and zany characters, Grimes and Philbrick, to almost marrying Peter's mother, Margot, to being wrongly sentenced to prison, to being rescued by his friends who fake his death, and going full circle back to university to start his schooling over again, it's just a book whose underlying humor kept me turning the pages. It's my third Evelyn Waugh book....and either my 2nd or 3rd favorite....Brideshead Revisited still being #1. I may have to read more Waugh!

Going to Oregon for a couple of weeks! :-) I plan to read a few books, but might not update until I get back!

Finished: The Golden Notebook (Lessing) An intense book, on the top 100 list, but I'm beginning to wonder if there's something wrong with ME that I just don't see the immeasurable greatness in some of these "top 100" books. Sigh. Anyway, The Golden Notebook is Anna Wulf's account of her life, or her grown life. She's a British author, born in the 1920's, living in the 1950's, and she belongs to the Communist Party. Much of her life revolves around being a member, or ex-member of that party. She has had writer's block since her last novel, so she takes to writing all about her life in four different notebooks: black, about her experiences in Africa before World War II with a group of young friends that shared her political ideals; red, all about her experiences as a member of the Communist Party, including clippings, world events, etc.; yellow, her attempt at another novel which closely mirrors her own unsuccessful, and heartbreaking 5-year relationship; and blue, her day to day personal journal, including bizarre dreams, failures, split personalities, you name it! In the mean time, the novel starts out to be about Anna's relationship with her best friend, Molly. Molly's got an ex-husband named Richard, and they share a 20-year old son, Tommy. In the middle of the book, Tommy, torn between being raised by his mother's socialist leanings, and his father's upper-middle class British, businessman's expectations, tries to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. He ends up living, but blind. Anna has her own 11 year old daughter, Janet, who seems to be the only person who can make Anna feel "normal" at times. Otherwise, Anna spends most of her time trying to fill the void of her failed five-year relationship with Michael by sleeping, and falling for, various men...all of whom are pretty weird. Anna's yellow diary tells more about her heartbreaking love story using characters Ella and Paul, and how the rest of her life is seemingly ruined by the very married Paul leaving her after such a long relationship. Anyway....towards the end of the book, Anna decides to face life more and ends each of her journals. However, she buys a beautiful, antique golden notebook and decides to combine all her thoughts into just that one journal. So....then she meets Saul. He comes to rent her extra room. Janet is away at girl's school. The Saul and Anna "relationship" is one of the most dysfunctional and distasteful, that I've read. It's like he's got several personalities and she seems to be able to see them all. She makes herself physically ill by falling for him, even though he can be quite abusive verbally at times. Most of the golden journal is taken up by this relationship with Saul, blech. Finally, she wises up and says he needs to go. He insists he won't go until she begins writing her next novel. He even writes the first line for her. She then writes the first line of what HIS novel will be, and they part ways. Of course, the first line that he wrote down becomes the first line of The Golden Notebook. So, the writer's block is cured? Anyway, that's about it...600 pages worth of being inside Anna's every thought, maniacal or depressed or sexual, during a few years of her life. I wanted so much to love this book, but I just didn't.

Finished: Veronika Decides to Die (Coelho). A really good book, especially the ending. :-) The story of 24-year old Veronika, a young woman living in Slovenia, who has decided that she's done everything she can with her never-progressing life, so she decides to commit suicide. Unfortunately (for her), she doesn't take enough pills and wakes up in the local sanitarium, Villete, still alive. The head of Villete, Dr. Igor, informs her that she was touch and go for a week, but that she definitely survived her attempt. The bad news?....Veronika irrevocably damaged her heart and will not live more than a week. Veronika feels cheated at first, but then decides to accept the fact that at least she'll still die, it will just take a little longer. In the meantime, she comes into contact with a few of the other hospital's patients, Mari, Zedka, and Eduardo, in particular, and along with rediscovering her piano talents, discovers that she'd also like to live....live like she never did before. Mari, Zedka and Eduardo all have different influences on her decision. Eduardo is a diagnosed schizophrenic who likes to stand there in his own little world and just listen to the beautiful piano music. In reality, and as Veronika comes to see, he is really a young man who didn't want to follow in his diplomat father's footsteps, and instead wanted to become a painter of "scenes of paradise". When his parents refused to accept that, he withdrew from his life and his parents had him committed. Needless to say, when Veronika is getting weaker and weaker and has only about 24 hours to live, Veronika and Eduardo realize they love each other. They decide to leave the hospital and spend the next day doing whatever they want in the city. They do all kinds of sightseeing and drink too much wine. That night, as they look at the moon, Veronika feels as if she's dying happy in Eduardo's arms. When Eduardo wakes the next morning, Veronika is laying there so still, he assumes that she's died.....but no, she stirs! A miracle, they think, another day to enjoy together! Meanwhile, back at the hospital, when the nurses report to Dr. Igor that Veronika and Eduardo are missing, he outwardly shows all the appropriate outrage, but when he closes the door and sits down to himself, we hear the real truth! In his experiments with trying to get people to get rid of the poisonous "vitriol" within themselves, which he believes is the root of most mental illness, he has actually been giving Veronika a drug to simulate heart problems. Her heart is actually as strong as ever! He knew that the rate of reattempting suicide was so high in the first few weeks after a failed attempt, that he decided to try this unique approach....make Veronika think she was still going to die so she'd spend her last few days living as much as she could...with the hopeful result being that she'd actually find a reason to really stay alive....which she did in the end. :-)

A good book written by the author of  The Alchemist, which is supposed to be very good as well. I may just have to give it a try!

Finished: The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) An interesting, fantastical, satirical novel set in early 1900's Russia. The devil visits Moscow one night when two men are arguing the existence or non-existence of the devil. The two men, Berlioz, the director of Moscow's literary bureaucracy, and Ivan Ponyrev, an up and coming poet are then instantly thrown into turmoil when the devil himself, in the form of a "professor Woland" arrives to chat with them. The devil correctly prophesizes Berlioz's imminent death by tram car beheading. In trying to convince the police about what has just happened to Berlioz, Ivan is considered to be mentally ill and sent to the psychiatric hospital. While there, he meets a man known simply as "the master". The fellow patient proceeds to tell Ivan about his love for a married woman named Margarita. Margarita loves the master in return, and while the master was writing his novel, Margarita was his lover as well as his literary cheerleader. When the master finished his novel he had taken it around to various publishers and critics only to be laughed at and highly criticized. Humiliated, the master left Margarita, since he felt he was not worthy of her, and took himself to the psychiatric hospital. Margarita is now devastated and sits in her house wondering what has become of the master. As it turns out, the master's novel was the story of Pontius Pilate and how he gave the ultimate order for Jesus to be executed. The Master and Margarita then splits from the story about the devil in Moscow and goes back in time to the actual Pontius Pilate plot. The book goes back and forth in this unique way, and as "out there" as all the book's antics are, going back and forth between the two stories really kept me turning the pages. While Pontius Pilate is personally wishing he didn't have to sentence Jesus to death because he wants to personally get to know him, back in Moscow the devil and his entourage, including a giant walking, talking black cat, wreak havoc on several people's lives. However, the devil takes Margarita under his wing and makes her a witch. He tells her that if she'll be the queen of Satan's ball for one night, that she can have whatever she wishes. Margarita longs only to know what has become of the master, her beloved. After the spooky Satan's ball, the devil keeps his word and he brings the master to Margarita. Of course...their eventual future is another matter, and a surprising one to me. The entire book is supposed to be a satire on the mostly atheist population of Russia at the time, or so the introduction says. I can't ever figure out in satires what fictional character is supposed to match up with what true life person, but it wasn't really necessary for me to enjoy the book....a book given to me by my son with the recent European and Russian Studies Masters degree from Yale. :-)

Finished: The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) A good book that just kind of quietly absorbs you while you're reading. It is supposed to be Hemingway's greatest book, but that might be a little bit of an over-rating. I don't usually find myself with much compassion for those writer artistes after World War I who were called the Lost Generation. It seems that they had money to spend, time to kill, alcohol always present, and they had a displeasure for living in America. I always kind of thought of them as whiners, even though many of them wrote some great books! However, actually, reading The Sun Also Rises I felt a little more compassion for some of the characters because they'd actually been IN the war, and had some physical, as well as emotional scars from it. The protagonist in The Sun Also Rises is Jake Barnes. He's an "ex-patriot" American journalist living in France. He was made impotent by an injury he received in the war. He is in love with the divorced Lady Brett Ashley, and she with him...but they cannot consummate their love because of his physical inability. Lady Brett forgoes the sexless love with Jake and has many relationships, even though she's engaged to another war vet named Mike. Mike spends most of his time getting drunk, and sometimes jealous, but he doesn't seem to mind Lady Brett bedding most of the men she does, hmmm. Jake and company have decided to travel from France to Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls and the week long festival that surrounds it. Jake is fascinated by bullfighting, and wants his friends to see the spectacle. Enter Jake's college buddy, Robert Cohn, who was a championship boxer at Princeton. He falls instantly for Brett and has a several day fling with her before going down to Pamplona. Once they are all in Pamplona, Robert then proceeds to act very possessive of Brett, even right in front of her fiance, Mike. Jake gets mad, Mike gets made, Robert gets mad...and punches them both to the ground. Robert is mostly mad because Brett's head has been turned by the gorgeous, and really good, 19 year old bullfighter, Pedro Romano. She goes off to have a fling with Romano and even thinks she's fallen in love with him. He fights his fights for her, clearly. This makes all the men jealous, but Robert Cohn goes ballistic and beats up Romano before his final and biggest bullfight. The group asks him to leave Pamplona, which he does. Romano, though battered, is successful in his last bullfight. Mike and Jake continue to get drunk every night, and Brett and Romano continue their affair. The descriptions of the bullfighting scenes are intense. I've never liked the idea of bullfighting because I just don't like maliciously hurting or toying with any animal. And, one sad result of Brett getting involved with Romano....because Jake is the one who brought Brett to Pamplona, Jake loses the respect of his Spanish friends, who he has been visiting for years when he goes to the bullfights. They didn't like the fact that he let his "friend" have such an influence on their young bullfighter. So, after the last bullfight is over, Brett runs off with Romano. Jake drops Mike at another little city where he will continue to drink, and Jake heads back to France to get back to work. Before Jake even reaches his destination, though, he gets a telegram from Brett. She's in Madrid and she needs his help. Of course, he drops everything and goes because he loves her. When he arrives, Brett tells Jake that she let Romano go because he wanted her to become his exclusively and she knew down the line she would crush him and break his heart. She wonders if Jake will give her some money to make it back to Mike? Brett and Jake ride around in a cab together, and as she leans on his shoulder and they wonder how life could have been for them if they COULD have ended up together, the story ends. It's not a very long or complicated book, but it did tug at my heartstrings a bit for Jake and Brett. However, their lifestyle was one of total debauchery, lol. Anyway....I think I'll probably eventually read For Whom The Bell Tolls and I will have read all the major Hemingways. :-)

Finished: An American Tragedy (Dreiser). A good, good book with a very appropriate title! An American Tragedy is one of those loooonnnggg books (856 pages) that is on the Top 100 list that I've been putting off reading. Well, now I've read it. And, it was a tragic story. It could have stood for a little editing...been a little shorter, but it was a compelling story. When I read the back flap and saw that the Elizabeth Taylor/Montgomery Clift movie, A Place in the Sun, was based on this book, I knew what the major tragedy would be right away! Sadly, the story is about Clyde Griffiths, a poverty-stricken young boy being raised by street-preaching parents. His upbringing has kept him from any formal education, and from most practical education as well. He doesn't really believe in what his parents are peddling, and by the time he's 17 he leaves the family "business" and finds himself his first job at a luxury hotel as a bellboy. Suddenly, he's making more money than he's ever seen....and his true moral nature comes to the surface. Rather than innately giving up most of his earnings to his impoverished family to help out, he lies about the amount of money he's making and, instead, spends more and more money on nice clothes for himself. He is a good-looking, pretty charming boy, who longs to be nicely dressed and longs to associate with girls and other guys in a higher social class than himself. At this point in his life....any social class is higher than his. Unfortunately his first experience at love is with a young girl, Hortense Briggs, who sees how infatuated he is with her and totally strings him along so he'll spend all his extra money on her, taking cruel advantage of him. When one of the other bellboys takes a car of his uncle's employer without permission so all the friends can go on an adventure out of town (Clyde and Hortense included), tragedy occurs as the gang is rushing back to town with unsafe speed so the boys will not be late back to their jobs and they accidentally hit and kill a 10 year old girl in the street. Fearing prosecution for them all, the boys scatter and Clyde runs away to Chicago. Three years later, at 20, he's working at an exclusive Men's Club, again in a service roll, when he runs into his rich uncle, Samuel Griffiths. Samuel is his father's well-to-do brother. He owns a collar making factory in upstate New York. Samuel feeling somewhat guilty that his own father had been estranged from Clyde's father, and therefore excluded him from the wealth of his will after he died, decides that maybe he can do something for his impoverished nephew. Oh, don't get me wrong....he doesn't think Clyde should be elevated into the same social stratosphere as Samuel and his children, Clyde's cousins. As a matter of fact, he's a bit concerned about how bringing the poor relation to work in his factory might reflect on the Griffiths name...but his "compassion" wins out and he offers Clyde an opportunity to come and work at the very lowest level in the factory. Clyde jumps on the opportunity and heads to New York to work for his uncle. Gilbert Griffiths, his 23 year old cousin, Samuel's son and heir, HATES the idea of splitting anything at all with this interloper. He pretty much runs things at the factory and assigns Clyde, with his father's consent, to the sweaty, manual labor of the collar "shrinking" room. Sadly, and this is one of the few times I feel sorry for Clyde, he really is caught between a poor-rock and a rich-hard place. He doesn't want to do to anything at all to disappoint his uncle or to besmirch the Griffiths name, in great hopes that the family will eventually embrace him and fold him into their world. At the same time, the family really wants nothing to do with him socially. So, while he avoids socializing with anyone in the lower class who he actually works with, he's shunned by his own "family".  Therefore, Clyde is extremely, extremely lonely and, at times, in despair. After a couple of months, when his uncle realizes he's still languishing in the shrinking room, he tells his son that Clyde has worked hard enough down there and Gilbert needs to find him a small managerial position. After all...how does it look to keep a Griffiths down in the shrinking room for so long? Clyde is moved up to the collar stamping room where he is put in charge of a bunch of 20-something young women. Gilbert lectures Clyde that management types never, ever, ever fraternize with the worker types...and especially not the young women. Clyde understands and does fine keeping things to all business for a few weeks until the beautiful, sweet, also impoverished, young Roberta Alden comes to work under him. Clyde is immediately smitten with Roberta and she with him. He once again wears his heart on his sleeve and almost immediately declares his love for her. He rather pushily finally convinces her to embark on a sexual relationship. In his own mind, he knows he can never marry someone like Roberta because he fully expects to climb his way into the higher social class of his uncle's family. However, Roberta is certainly good enough for him to have a super-secret relationship with. All goes well with them, especially since no one knows about them, until one day when Samuel Griffiths finally decides that it's time to have Clyde out for a family dinner. Clyde arrives nervously, but seems to get more at ease as he gets to know one of Samuel's daughters, Myra. She's the homely one, so she's at home most nights. Gilbert is as snobby as ever, and treats Clyde pretty coldly. Finally, teenage Bella breezes in the door with her two socialite friends, Sondra and Bertine. Clyde is, once again, instantly smitten....with Sondra. She's gorgeous and well-dressed and doesn't give him a second look. However, he is instantly in love. Not really thinking he's got a chance ever with Sondra, he continues to sleep with Roberta, but now his heart and mind are elsewhere. Finally, Clyde starts getting invited to the upper crust society events and Sondra DOES actually take an interest in him. Of course, all the rich kids know that he's a poor relation, so none of them can really get serious about him, but since Sondra becomes infatuated herself, she keeps figuring out ways to have Clyde invited to events. Clyde is thrilled with the turn of events and begins blowing off Roberta. Just when Sondra has declared her love for Clyde and they are trying to figure out how they can be together once she turns 18 in the fall, Roberta comes to Clyde and tells him that she's pregnant. Poor Roberta. :-( She's a really nice girl who has given herself to Clyde because she didn't want to lose him. And now, he treats her terribly, standing her up all the time...and now she's pregnant. Clyde and Roberta try to come up with a way to "take care of the pregnancy", but it doesn't work. Roberta insists that Clyde should marry her so her baby can at least be legitimate, even if Clyde doesn't love her anymore. However, this is not acceptable at all to Clyde because he can't let Sondra or anyone else know he has been in relations with Roberta. To move things along here, Clyde does the unthinkable when Roberta threatens to go to his uncle if Clyde doesn't do right by her. Clyde lies to Roberta that he's taking her on a pre-wedding trip, and then takes her out on a remote lake with the intent of tipping the rowboat over and letting her drown, and pretending to drown himself, but then swimming out. He signs them in at the lake Inn with fake names and thinks that all is hunky dory with his plan. When he gets to the point of tipping the boat, though, he can't go through with it. He gets such a weird look on his face, though, that Roberta stands up suddenly to reach out to him. She lunges towards him and he accidentally hits her with his camera and she tips the boat over and they both go in the water. The boat hits her on the head, but she's still conscious and struggling because she can't swim (which Clyde already knew). Clyde watches as Roberta drowns. He does nothing to save her. He makes that conscious decision knowing that it will free him up to be with Sondra, and after all, he didn't murder her...he just didn't save her. Uggh. Anyway, Clyde has not covered everything as nicely as he thought, and after he's made his way to the high-class weekend cabin of his rich friends, including Sondra, the police are soon on his tail and arrest him. All his nightmares of them finding out about him come true. The rest of the book (which is based on a true story that happened in upstate New York in 1906), is all about Clyde's trial and eventual death sentence. It's also about his uncle and family, and all the other rich "friends", caring far more about their names and reputations than helping Clyde out at all. Needless to say, Clyde never sees Sondra again. Clyde's poor mother finally makes it out to see him after he's sentenced, but Clyde is still in denial that he is guilty since he had decided not to murder Roberta after all, but she still died. It's really just like it says...a tragic story. I think Clyde is a victim of his awful upbringing, no education, undo influences at an impressionable age, and also the class system. However, so many people who have Clyde's disadvantages are not so narcissistic that they can think only of themselves and their answer to getting rid of a "problem" that will hinder their social climb is to kill the problem. I've got to say that Clyde is one of my least favorite characters in a book in a long time. However, his rich uncle and his family aren't much better in my mind.