The Fiction Spot
A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature
Also in this Monthly Bulletin:
The Non-fiction Feature: The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
The Product Spot: Jack Black lotion
The Pithy Take
The Plague, the classic Albert Camus novel from the 1940s, is an eerie echo of today’s COVID-19 devastation. One day, the townspeople of Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, notice that rats are dying everywhere, their carcasses squelching under people’s feet. The plague soon follows and Oran is suddenly isolated from the world, and the characters grapple with the startling realization that something awful is just beginning. The townspeople are hemmed in by physical barriers and mental frustrations, while protagonist Dr. Rieux frantically, despairingly struggles to care for patients who die terrible deaths.
What do we do when confronted with a relentless enormity like a plague? How is it possible for small kindnesses to persevere through anguish? The Plague knots and unknots these questions, through heroic acts and cowardly acts. Ultimately, it is a book about how to fight the urge to become disenchanted with hope when hope is elusive and rare.
The result was that poor families were in great straits, while the rich went short of practically nothing. Thus, whereas plague by its impartial ministrations should have promoted equality among our townsfolk, it now had the opposite effect…They were assured, of course, of the inerrable equality of death, but nobody wanted that kind of equality.
The Plague
Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Vintage
320 pages | 1991
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