Kim, what many regard as Kipling's literary masterpiece, was the novel which was most recently dissected at the reading group which I attend. It is one of those books which I have always meant to read, but which I never got round to doing . That is how it should have remained.
I suppose that I was expecting a fast moving yarn of daring do in the Raj, a precursor of Bulldog Drummond and his ilk. Instead I found myself wading through a stultifyingly boring walk in the North West Frontier with Kim O'Hara and his Tibetan lama friend. With the introduction to the plot of what is referred to as, "The Great Game," there was ample opportunity to rack up the pace of the story, but Kipling seems unable to move from him ambulatory style.
Maybe it was a daring selection for an Edwardian spinster aunt to give her nephew at Christmas but the years have not been kind to it.
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