This was going to be one of my incredibly popular (i.e. read by Mrs. Monkeyshines and/or Binky) present tense book reviews, but a) I’ve been too busy doing nothing over Christmas to faff around on my website, and 2) it’s quite short, and also superb, so I rattled through it in no time. It’s by Philip Roth, by the way.
I’ve liked some of his earlier books very much, and Nemesis is brilliant. I’ve written and deleted several attempts at explaining why, but it’s hard without sounding facile; just trust me, it’s much better than I make it sound. It’s framed fabulously, with a narrator relating one man’s personal crisis during a polio outbreak in Newark in the 40s, almost 30 years later. The panic and the grief caused by the mysterious, virulent polio virus are brutally and movingly described. But the story is mostly about one man, Bucky Cantor, a decent, if rather humourless, young man, whose life is ruined by polio. Or, perhaps, a man who lets his life slip through his fingers.
Roth paints a complex, nuanced portrait of a man, and dissects the effects of chance and contingency on an individual’s life, and does so with wonderful, masterly style. A thoughtful, enjoyable read.
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