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Conrad writes the most perfect of observations about human nature in the now romantic setting of a sailing ship, subject to the hazards of penurious owners, dangerous seas, & all manner of hardships. As a young man & as an older commander he knows the fallibility & failings of men, & does not pull his punches. This is seasoned with the pride of the best in doing their work well & sometimes in risking their lives to save the ship & thereby others on board, whether they deserve such heroism or not. It is more than adventure stories though. The text reflects on what has been learned the hard way, over a lifetime, & what sets apart men who will risk everything against the most powerful elements of wild wind & water. There is also chance, which unaccountably singles some men out for misery or greatness. Conrad's prose is unequalled. It moves easily from a brilliant description of place or mood to complex specialised proceedures; to the wider context of philosophy; & elegaic hymns of praise to the joys of being young & alive & of having your potential tried to its fullest, with no small degree of risk riding on the outcome. Such descriptions seem effortless & are always fluid & easy to read. Even at his most complex Conrad takes his reader by the hand & shows him what it is like to be a member of that crew. The sentences seem leisurely, but they are compact & full of necessary detail. Conrad never waffles. Like a hard-working man, he gets on with what is necessary.

I love this story (it's about 55-60 pages). It's not only a good read, but it's also quite important in the history of literature, appearing as it did at the end of the Victorian era and helping to usher in the modern era. If you only read one thing by Conrad, this could be it. Overshadowed by Heart of Darkness (for good reasons), but I like it better as literature.

The Kindle version of this book is different from what is advertised. If you need the case studies for a college class, you will have to order the actual book, not the Kindle version. I was very disappointed when I ordered the Kindle version to find that it only offered an intro to the author while the rest of the book remained the same. Luckily, Amazon lets you return it for a refund if you discover you have the wrong item.

I love sailing and seafaring stories in general but the 3 in this book left me feeling a bit empty. Maybe it is the age of the stories or the nature of the times it describes, but each tale just seemed a bit ho-hum, and failed to excite me. Conrad spends a bit of time in each story developing the characters but only to the minimum necessary. I am probably very obtuse since I could never quite figure out who was the protagonist in any story; the stories all just seemed very flat to me.

A great book! I enjoyed reading it!

Did not read

Contrary to what other reviewers imply, this excellent collection has three of Joseph Conrad's most acclaimed shorter works: The Secret Sharer, Youth, and Typhoon. Anyone who does not have them would do well to get this; it is convenient, and the price is near-unbelievable.

"The Secret Sharer" is one of Conrad's final works of major short fiction and one of his best. It finds him returning to the sea after a long absence and has much of the suspense and adventurous spirit of his early works. Indeed, it may well be his most suspenseful and conventionally entertaining work of all; its influence on later writers is easy to see. This is so much so that it can be enjoyed by nearly anyone on this surface level, but as always with Conrad, there is deep symbolic value. "The Secret" again dramatizes outsider status, though more subtly and ambiguously than prior works. It also deals with other important themes, including the clash of rules and personal morality, authority vs. individualism, etc.

"Youth" is one of Conrad's most famous and acclaimed stories but is in my view the weak link. Like the better-known "Heart of Darkness," it is told by the character Marlow through another first-person narrator, but the plot is more akin to the symbolic, adventure-esque seafaring stories of prior Conrad. There is more traditional excitement and suspense than in most Conrad, especially later work, which may attract those who usually dislike his fiction. However, as nearly always with him, symbolism is the real point. As the title suggests, this is a tale about youth and all it stands for and arguably one of its best literary representations. Marlow recalls the excitement and elation he felt when he first captained a ship, fondly recalling exuberance and naïveté long since lost. However, as so often in such situations, nearly everything goes wrong, and youthful ideals are put to experience's harshly dramatic test. "Youth" is thus a sort of mini-bildungsroman, though Marlow's mad rush for the symbolic finish at the end of his story proper shows he learned very little at the time. However, he is now wiser and older, and retelling the old story brings several ambivalent feelings. He sees how much he has conventionally grown and learned but cannot help lamenting the loss of idealism that is possible only in youth and that steadily dissipates with age to the extent that it becomes hardly recognizable. Many will unfortunately relate strongly to this, and there is a good dose of Conrad's always beautiful prose and, very unusually for him, even a little humor. "Youth" would easily be most writers' masterpiece but lacks the scope, ambition, and style of Conrad's best works.

Though not Joseph Conrad's most ambitious or important work, Typhoon is a strong short novel that fans will like. Like nearly all Conrad, it can be enjoyed on a very basic level as an exciting adventure. As the title suggests, the majority of the action describes a typhoon's monumental effects, specifically how it impacts a ship. The extended scene portraying it is one of the best of its kind, recalling a similarly strong depiction in The...Narcissus (Amazon won't allow the full title.) We get a powerful impression of nature's astounding force and just how insignificant humanity and its creations can be in the face of it.

Engrossing as this is, it is of course really just fodder for Conrad's larger themes, the most immediate being the vast amount of things beyond humanity's control; for all our arrogance, there are many situations where we can do little or no more than sit back - or, in this case, hold on - and hope for the best. Typhoon is also in part a bildungsroman, though a somewhat unconventional one. The middle-aged Captain Macwhirr is ostensibly the protagonist, but the young Chief Mate Jukes takes center stage here. He enters the voyage with a considerable ego and pokes much fun at the literal-minded Macwhirr but comes to see that, for all his eccentricities, the latter's simple practicality, level-headedness, and strict determination are not without worth. Hapless as Macwhirr may be in numerous ways, he succeeds where many - perhaps most - ostensibly more intelligent people would fail. Jukes comes to see his value even if he cannot bring himself to give all deserved credit. The same is true of other characters to a lesser degree. Macwhirr himself also learns something in the course of the tale; though experienced and in many ways competent, he had never sailed through harsh weather and is tested in a way he never thought he would be. His near-surreal stubbornness means he perhaps did not learn nearly as much as he should have, but he made it through after all. Conrad leaves it open whether this is due to subtle strength or pure luck; it is certainly debatable whether Macwhirr is capable and even heroic in his own way or simply a fool. In any case, he and other characters find that, as he repeatedly says, you can't learn everything from books; Conrad leaves no doubt that there is often no substitute for experience.

The setting and some of the action are very similar to several other Conrad works, but Typhoon also has its own strengths and is in some ways unusual. For example, characterization is very strong - not in the sense of being rounded, Macwhirr in particular being almost a Dickensian caricature, but in being simply memorable. The characters may be archetypes but are very entertaining - and many readers will see people they know in them. Typhoon is also quite humorous, which is surprising in an author whose humor is nearly always black in the rare cases where it exists at all. Macwhirr is of course the butt of much comic fodder, but there is a light-heartedness to many descriptions outside the central scene. Some, such as those in the sailors' households, have satirical bite, which will please those who miss Conrad's cynicism, but those who normally find him too dark may well be pleasantly surprised overall.

This is certainly not Conrad's strongest story; the frustratingly abrupt way in which the storm's second half is passed over even seems to suggest he grew bored with the work and rushed toward the end. I personally think further storm descriptions would have simply been too much, and he perhaps thought so too, but there certainly should have been a less jerky transition. Some will also dislike the indirect narration toward the end, but I found it a successful, if not overly ambitious, experiment from an author renowned for constantly pushing narrative's proverbial envelope. More fundamentally, Typhoon lacks the astonishing psychological depth and dense philosophical dramatization that were always Conrad's top strengths. The latter is here to a certain extent but far less so than elsewhere, automatically putting the book below his best, though some of the other elements partly atone.

Anyone at all interested in Conrad should certainly read these works, whether here or elsewhere.