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Laddar... Nemesis (2010)av Philip Roth
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Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken. Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken. This gut-wrenching story of a polio outbreak in New Jersey during World War II was one of Roth’s final books in a literary treasure chest that contains nearly three dozen tomes. Talk about prolific. Roth wastes no words delving into the themes of community fear and paranoia – issues that are sadly all-to-relatable in this Covid era. It's a depressing but riveting tale that will likely be appreciated by fans of historical fiction. ( ) World War II is not quite over, but in the summer of 1944 there is a war of a different sort on the home front. A deadly polio epidemic is sweeping the playgrounds and streets, attacking randomly, and children, teens and adults are in iron lungs and left paralyzed or dead. No one is quite sure how polio is transmitted, and everyone is frightened: "We were warned not to use public toilets or public drinking fountains or to swig a drink out of someone else's soda-pop bottle or to get a chill or to play with strangers or to borrow books from the public library or to talk on a public pay phone or to buy food from a street vendor or to eat until we had cleaned our hands thoroughly with soap and water." Bucky Cantor, a young school teacher, is the playground director for the summer in a Jewish Newark neighborhood. After several of his playground charges get polio, Bucky wonders whether he could be doing more to protect them. He has already been feeling guilty because he was unable to enlist in the army due to his poor eyesight. Now he feels he is failing in the battle on the home front. It gets worse when his girlfriend tries to convince him to give up his job at the inner city playground and join her in the "safe" countryside as a camp counselor. Particularly having recently experienced the covid epidemic, I found the evocation of the fear and paranoia to be very real and convincing. (I don't know when the polio vaccine became widespread, but I don't think it was available until I was a few years into elementary school. I do know there were at least two kids at my very small school in leg braces from having had polio.) It is also a very good depiction of Bucky's doubts and feelings of helplessness, and self-blame: "He was struck by how lives diverged and by how powerless each of us is up against the force of circumstances. And where does God figure in this?" Highly recommended 4 stars First line: "The first case of polio came early in June, right after Memorial Day, in a poor Italian neighborhood, crosstown from where we lived."
It’s all a bit by the numbers, though Mr. Roth executes Bucky’s story with professionalism and lots of granular period detail. Ingår i förlagsserienGallimard, Folio (5735) PriserPrestigefyllda urvalUppmärksammade listor
HTML: Den heta krigssommaren 1944 drabbas New Jersey av en polioepidemi. Unga människor insjuknar, förlamas, några dör. Invånarna i Newark är förtvivlade. Ingen vet hur sjukdomen sprids, desperationen och ilskan tilltar. Möjliga syndabockar finns plötsligt överallt. Så inleds Nemesis, romanen som sätter punkt för Philip Roths författarskap. I centrum av handlingen står den rättrådige fritidsledaren Bucky Cantor, som blir alltmer påverkad av poliokrisen. Han slits mellan viljan att göra det bästa för stadens unga och förmaningarna om att tänka på den egna hälsan. Vilket val är det rätta? Bucky Cantors liv blir ett svar på den frågan. Så läggs grunden för en amerikansk tragedi som bär på den ödesdigra dramatik som kommit att känneteckna Philip Roths sena författarskap. Nemesis är en avskalad och klassisk skildring av ett människoöde som krockar med de oförutsebara omständigheter som är livet, en fulländad avslutning på ett unikt författarskap som under mer än ett halvsekel förändrat den moderna romankonsten. . Fiction. Literature.Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas. |
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Google Books — Laddar... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Klassifikation enligt LCBetygMedelbetyg:
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