According to a recent survey, one in four Americans didn’t read a book last year. As a public service, we look back on all the classics you only read the Cliffs Notes for.

So there’s this guy, Meursault. His mom just died, but he’s not too concerned: “Mother died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”

In case you couldn’t tell, that’s kind of a strange reaction. The death of a parent, kind of a big deal. He goes to his mom’s funeral, and all he can think about is the heat, which again, is kind of weird.

When Meursault comes back from the funeral, he hangs out with this girl Marie. Even though this book was written in the 1940s, it’s still pretty socially relevant. Their relationship is exactly like the one your best friend bitches about nonstop. They have good sex, she loves him but he’s like whatev. But unlike your best friend’s fuck buddy, he’s pretty upfront. When she asks him if he loves her, he says, “I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so.” Ouch, the truth hurts. Later Marie asks if Meursault wants to get marry, and he’s like, eh, but goes along with it anyway because Marie wants to.

Meursault has this neighbor, Raymond, who is sort of a creep. He’s a pimp, and he beats up his mistress for cheating on him. Foil alert: Meursault doesn’t care much about Marie, or anything at all, but Raymond is all passion. Obviously he’s only hurting his mistress because he loves her so much.

So three of them go to the beach, and who should they run into but Raymond’s mistress’s brother, known as the Arab, and his friends. Awkward! Raymond and Meursault get into a scuttle with them, and Raymond wants to kill the Arab, and Meursault is all, “dude, it’s totally not worth it.” A few hours later, Meursault goes back to the spring and sees the Arab and kills him for no real reason.

This lands Meursault in jail. Instead of freaking out about the dead Arab, everyone’s all, “how could you not care about your dead mom?” to which Meursault is like, “back off, I’ll care about whatever I want to care about.” And since Meursault doesn’t care about his dead mom, he gets sentenced to death. In jail, Meursault misses women, nature and cigarettes—you know the true pleasures—but then he gets over it.

While he’s in jail awaiting death, the chaplain visits to ask Meursault to reject atheism and turn to God. Meursault is like, um not so much, there's no point to existence. Right before his execution, Meursault thinks

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.

A happy ending! Just kidding, life is so meaningless.

Extras:

• Albert Camus would never call himself an existentialist, but basically he was.

• What is an existentialist? Their philosophy can pretty much be summed up as “what you see is what you get.” There’s no afterlife, so you can do whatever you want, but it’s not like whatever you do is going to make a difference.

• Camus heavily influenced French author Michel Houellebecq. His breakout book Platform opens “Father died last year.” Get it? The whole book is sort of like The Stranger with more sex.