It is always difficult to review a book of collected works and this one is more difficult than most. I loved The Plague and would give it four stars for sure. But a couple of the stories in here were extremely problematic (Camus was not known for being an anti-racist, feminist.) Some of it was just rather boring. That said, reading The Plague was exactly the kind of dark meditation on life that I needed right now. Yes. We are all on a losing battle with death. There is often not much we as individuals can do about the worst that happens - war, disease, sociopaths. But we can struggle and fight and find joy and commiserate with all the other poor fools in this same mess that we are in.