Rudyard Kipling was waiting patiently on my reading list because of his Nobel Prize. I was finally able to meet this great author with the Light That Failed during the three weeks I spent with my family. I always find myself in front of their various bookshelves. There is one in their bedroom, in the living, in the hall, in the guest room. You can guess how fun it is for me to visit them. So I looked through every book they acquired even before I was born. It was exciting when I saw Rudyard Kipling among many classics. The fact that my mother read the book at my age is, of course, priceless.
The Light That Failed is a beautiful novel by Rudyard Kipling, which was written in 1890, telling the story of a famous painter who had a difficult childhood. There is a whole world in it: the gap between the rich and the poor, love, friendship, selfishness, betrayal and many more. I can say that it is an eloquent and pleasant book, and, Rudyard Kipling is an excellent author. The main character in the book transitions from war painter to becoming a famous painter. In the meantime, we read about the suffering and the will to change. Check this out if you’d like to read an adult fiction from Kipling.
The Light That Failed
In 1/1878 Kipling was admitted to the United Services College, at Westward Ho!, Devon, a school founded a few years earlier to prepare boys for the armed forces. The school proved rough going for him at first, but led to firm friendships & provided the setting for his schoolboy stories Stalky & Co., published years later. During his time there, he met & fell in love with Florence Garrard, the model for Maisie in his 1st novel, The Light That Failed, initially published in 1890 in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.
Dick Heldar is a war correspondent & an artist, known for the drawings he sends home to the London papers from wars in exotic places like Sudan. When he returns to London, he attempts to make a career for himself as a serious artist & encounters his childhood sweetheart, Maisie. They fall in love. Then he learns that a minor problem with his eyes is actually the onset of blindness, incurable–the result of a head wound he took during the war. As his vision fails, the light of everything around him–his life, his hopes, his dreams–fail with it. There are terrible choices to be made between the love of the woman he treasures & the love of the men who stood by him at the front.
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India, which inspired much of his work. Kipling’s works of fiction include The Jungle Book, Kim, and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King”.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
