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Customer Reviews of The Sheltering Sky

Changed My Life (Seriously)!
My introduction to this novel is kind of strange: One rainy day, many years ago, I went to the cinema to see what was on and there was this movie called 'The Sheltering Sky'. I walked out a few hours later, liking it alot, but kind of feeling alot went unexplained and so I immediately got hold of the novel... <
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>That novel seriously changed my life. I was in my young twenties and desperately trying to find some meaning to life at the time. Well, to make a long story short, Bowles confronted me with all those sweet & scarey existential things about life that I had suspected. Life at the time seemed amazing and full of joy and promise, but also really terrifying and tragic, too. I guess I become a bone fide signed up member to Existentialism because of this book. <
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>I am now in my mid thirties and whilst my rabid Existenitalism is now tempered by practical realities. The Sheltering Sky has become something of a bible of sorts to me. Here is why: <
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>First of all, it's style of writing. Cold and clinical. It looks at the psychologies of these people like they are ants under a microscope (and in a sense they are, three people in a huge empty wide space (the desert = the world) under a, not so much merciless, but rather a 'benignly indifferent' (to borrow from Camus) 'Sheltering Sky. To me, these people in a strange land are really a metaphor/analogy for our place in the universe: How we are 'thrown' into existence with no objective reference. How we almost find ourselves in the world (surely a strange place at the best of times) and how we desperately try to connect with others (sometimes successful, sometimes not). <
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>Anyway, it is a book that I read atleast once a year. <
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>These are merely my subjective feelings - I'm certainly not going to say 'it is the best book ever', or something to that effect. But it is certainly my favourite book. Mostly because it demonstrated to me how another humans artistic endeavour can inform and help someone else to find their own answers. And because of that we are never really alone.

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The desert as a mistress...and a mirror
Upon reflection after reading The Sheltering Sky, I found the eccentricity of the characters, the haunting, dreamlike quality of their lives, and the way in which their dreams deteriorated into abject nightmare overwhelming. So much so, that I sat and cried for the better part of an hour. <
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>Kit's desire to be close to Port leads her into the desert chasing his love of the desert, and her twin desire to be rid of all responsibilty whatsoever comes to pass as her captivity in the harem. I heard in my head the admonishment to be careful what you wish for as I read this book, and it seemed as if almost everything the character's wanted they were given, but the finer points which they failed to elucidate in their wishes were spelled out for them in lieu of further clarity on their parts as to what they wanted from their relationships to the world. <
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>I identified strongly with Kit. Port was her connection to reality, and at one time, I had my own, which mired me within the ports of the sane. For a time, I took a trip on the road to insanity, and finally found the connection to reality within myself. Kit's passage on her own trip felt frighteningly familiar. I daresay, that the description of her descent into madness is neither facile, nor unbelievable. I found it very disquieting, and the memories it engendered were quite painful. The feeling of being at more than a loss for words that Kit's character describes at one point rang all too true. At a certain point you can feel as if your native tongue is like a foreign language that you do not know, and therefore you cannot give an accurate account of your tenuousness to bystanders. <
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>All of this brings me to the point that if the ultimate journey to be made is into our own souls, then running and hiding from everything that surrounds us, looking for the exotic won't change the ultimate destination. We cannot get away from ourselves. The world is our house of mirrors. At the risk of sounding facile, we can be our own worst enemies, or own best friends. <
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>And in the adventure to understand ourselves and others, the unrelenting, and often harsh world of nature will be none to happy and emotionless about helping us to find what it is we seek. Nature, represented by the desert in this harsh existentialist tale, is a demanding mistress. The presence of the desert as a character makes me wonder about the necessity of Tunner as a character on the trip with Port and Kit. More likely, he has the significance to the story of a fly on the nose, while the desert is the true third party in this 'love triangle'. The desert is almost a transferance and personification of Port's desire to be close to the love of his life, Kit, and her intellectuality not withstanding, Kit's emptiness, her vacuousness that lies at the core of her intelligence, her veneer of intelligence, is consuming. <
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>Could not the 'sheltering sky' be like the veil of existence, or equally like the impenetrable mask of make-up that Western women apply to their faces, and which Kit obsessively does so often in the book, almost as if to keep up the barrier between what lies on the outside and what lies beneath? <
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>And what lies beneath can be almost like a seperate identity, another side to oneself that is indifferent to misery and happiness, that just exists like the blackness behind the sheltering sky. Neither good nor bad, but simply malleable in either direction. Port's mistress as the desert, is really his desire to understand himself and his relationship with Kit. He cannot fathom it. Kit, for her part, attempts to understand his fascination with the desert in order to learn the truth of both her existence and Port's, and what she learns makes her appear to everyone else as if she has been robbed of her sanity. But who truly knows? <
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>This novel is all about the unanswered and unanswerable questions of existence. More than just existential, it is a meditation on the meaning of life that refuses to give pat answers to the Hollywood crowd who wants a neat resolution in 120 minutes. Life is not like that, and neither is Bowles novel. This may deeply chagrin some who read it, and drive them to conclude that the novel is all pretention, while others like myself will read it and be bowled over by the frightening intensity with which Bowles holds the magnifying glass to the smoking insect of our lives...much as Kit does to a particular insect at a certain point in the novel. Need I mention that Bowles uses metaphor mercilessly. The glare of the sun on the truths of our lives is relentless, like the heat of the desert, and no amount of putting sheets over windows, or the locking of doors will ultimately be able to keep that out. <
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>Bowles is exceptional as a writer for his ability to make the reader see where the doorway is into understanding their own existence. This novel was never meant to be purely "entertainment" or escapism. It cruelly leads you off on that path, and then turns, when your water has all run out, and the camel is tired, and lets you see the edginess behind its pupils that you somehow seemed to miss upon first glance. Some people cut out early on the journey, as did Port, while others finish it to the bitter end. The question is, ultimately, is it really bitter? I think the enigmatic quality of the ending only points up that nothing is ever really writ in stone.

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Classic Work...not for me
Admittedly, I only got through 2/3 of this book but having read many of the reviews on this site, I knew what to expect and decided to stop reading. First, this is a classic work in the vain of other Beat generation writers such as Kerouac. However, this book did not work for me, possibly because of my South Asian heritage. While Bowles makes a worthy effort at portraying middle east culture as alienating and disorienting to the average American, I just couldn't buy the "mysteriousness" of Moroccan culture. The world is a much smaller, more cosmopolitan place than it was in 1947, so it was hard for me to relate to crucial elements of Sheltering Sky's main character, the desert.