A review by farbooksventure
La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus

dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.5

I finally read my first Camus! Really thankful for Reka with whom I buddy read the book. If not for this, I’m going to keep procrastinating for months.

This book caught my eye way back in 2020 after I watched this particular Puppet History episode. At the beginning of the pandemic, I added a lot of pandemic-related books into my TBR list. The Plague will be the first of them that I actually (eventually) read. The book is exactly what it says on the tin.

Told by a mysterious narrator who will reveal themself at the end, The Plague is an account of what happened when a city was swept by plague. One part at the beginning when rats dying en-masse aboveground will stay with me for a while. The story basically follows a cast of characters & how they deal with the situation. As far as a plague story goes, it was horrific & devastating, yes. It also ends on a pretty hopeful note, all things considered.

I must admit that I was intimidated by the philosophy label, at first. My worries abate when I realize that I can follow the writing (and the idea) quite well. The translation is good too. It also feels like a slow-read, but I'm not sure whether it’s due to the writing style or simply the effect of reading an account of life under a pandemic.

I found this particular passage quite apt in describing my feeling for the last 2-3 years:
“In the memories of those who lived through them, the grim days of plague do not stand out like vivid flames, ravenous and inextinguishable, beaconing a troubled sky, but rather like the slow, deliberate progress of some monstrous thing crushing out all upon its path."

All in all, The Plague is not the most ideal read when you go through one. Still, I'm curious about how my opinion would change in the following years or after I read other works by Camus. I also keep my rating in the range of three because I felt the absence of meaningful woman character(s) in the story quite acutely. 
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