The African Queen by C.S. Forester

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Forester started The African Queen right off with action, killing the potentially boring character and not giving any backstory. His plot was innovative and different, a romantic adventure carried by only two characters for the bulk of the novel. These characters were peculiar and unlikely, homely and average, and yet engaging and perfectly suited to the story.

Forester's treatment of the slightly explicit romance did not even rile me. It was chaste enough, convincing enough, and un-extraordinary enough to render it essential to the story. Not material for the youngest readers, perhaps, but after all I've read, modest in comparison.

Forester presented, on the whole, a healthy view of God. His missionay female lead frees herself from the rather legalistic beliefs her deceased brother had imposed upon her, and she repents her exploits wholeheartedly toward the end.

The prose was pretty and not too long-winded, reminiscent of The Scarlet Pimpernel in its fast-paced, 20th-century sensibility. Forester's ruminations over his characters' motives, psychological makeups, and thought processes were insightful and well-put, much as they were in the Horatio Hornblower series.