Review: The Plague

The Plague by Albert Camus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is a fascinating power to The Plague, where Camus has managed to build a story that draws you in so subtly that you cannot even tell you have been drawn in. The descriptions are matter of fact, the characters so simply explored that their complexity is hidden till something joyous or terrible happens. Then, clutching the book, I found myself breathing faster or slower. At one point, I squealed and pumped my fist in a cafe as a certain triumph felt so real and so powerful. I did not know I cared for this character, but I so clearly did. That is the beauty of this book, it deceives you into believing it is simple, it crawls in with its unheroic people, its passage of time, its bare descriptions, till you are in the town of Oran and fighting the plague yourself.

Reading this book so soon after a pandemic adds a sense of modern relevance to it, an analogy to real events beyond the Nazi occupation that Camus intends to reference. I think that did help. When I started reading, I had not learned of the context of the novel. In time, as I discovered the situation in which it was written and published, some of the motifs became clearer. Before and after, however, the novel remained enjoyable and stark.

Camus is a strong writer, though there were bits where the logical flow was interrupted for unsatisfactory reasons. Some of the asides feel ill-placed, some descriptions a little too long. Yet, at its core, this is a complex and beautiful story with characters that feel real, and events that explore emotions and ideas that are rarely discussed with such clarity in literature.

Definitely worth reading.

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