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A review by shosh
Fever by Mary Beth Keane
2.0
I've been fascinated by Mary Mallon's story for a long time. This book did a great job of depicting her love for cooking, one of the few joys she has after a hard life first in Ireland and then as an immigrant in New York City. It helped me understand the choices she made and the dimension of her character. She was a woman struggling to survive in a rough city with a little autonomy in her life (plus no universal understanding of how disease spread works).
But the book dragged on and I frankly did not care about her longtime boyfriend, some early 1900s proof that f***bois have been around for awhile. The story sometimes veered towards his struggles, especially later on, but didn't connect them well with Mary's; it seemed like a disjointed effort to show the immigrant struggle or Mary's empathy, or both. Overall I feel like the book could have been shorter.
But the book dragged on and I frankly did not care about her longtime boyfriend, some early 1900s proof that f***bois have been around for awhile. The story sometimes veered towards his struggles, especially later on, but didn't connect them well with Mary's; it seemed like a disjointed effort to show the immigrant struggle or Mary's empathy, or both. Overall I feel like the book could have been shorter.