Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and powerful drama!
Review: Camus made one of the best novels in the XX century with this merciless story . The plague appears and every human being in this bitter novel will never be the same .
The clear , superb and crude metaphor represented for this disease will live in your mind ever .
Camus told in an interview days after his well deserved Literature Nobel Prize that the Plague , far from all the given interpretations and subliminal messages given for many critics , meant simply the Nazi presence in France .
Rating:
Summary: "Hats off!" to Camus!
Review: It is July, I am in my forties, and I have finally begun reading Camus. First, I read The Stranger. Today, I just finished The Plague. Unlike some reviewers who "had" to read the book, I have had the pleasure of voluntarily escaping into both of these masterful classics, which were apparently not required reading for me in high school or college. I did not select them for a summer beach read, but read them after my husband brought them home from the library. Suffice it to say, our dinnertime discussions have had a little more depth of late.One of the eeriest qualities of Camus' writing is how the applicability of his timeless writing gives one pause: in a post 9/11 society, even one of his last sentences in The Plague takes on new meaning: "...in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts..." My husband worked on a project in Shanghai during the SARS epidemic there and noted that he could identify with some aspects of the book, especially as he went about the town as a tourist and saw the shopkeepers manning virtually deserted stores. I recall helping supply his suitcase with Purell and dustmasks and wondering if he would wind up being quarantined. I recall shuddering some years ago at a newspaper account of nurses faced with the fear of encountering an unknown, lethal disease at local New Mexico hospitals. The disease was eventually diagnosed as Hantavirus but the nurses at the hospital were merely given ice cream in the employee lounge as some sort of comfort-measure. At the time, I was glad that I had not pursued a career in nursing. Nevertheless, I am in total admiration for the characters of Dr. Rieux and Tarrou and the book has somehow, hopefully, ennobled me, in a way that motherhood and maturity have not completed. I have a much greater admiration for those in the medical profession and much more sympathy for humanity and the plight of being human than I did before reading this book. Would that I aspire to being like Tarrou...siding with the victim in any situation, "...so as to reduce the damage done." "Hats off" to Camus for changing 21st century lives!
| 
