Month: October 2019

TBR Challenge 2019: The Plague by Albert Camus

On By kepagewriterIn Book Reviews, TBR Pile Challenge 2019Leave a comment

Genre: Disease, Allegory, Classics

Narrative Style: First person but which gives the points of view of lots of other characters

Rating: 3/5

Published: 1947

Format: Kindle

Synopsis: In the town of Oran in North Africa, the rats are starting to die in unprecedented numbers. The locals start to panic. Then people start to die from a unexplained fever. At first the authorities do not believe what the doctor knows, this is a return of the bubonic plague. 

Reading Challenges: TBR Challenge 2019 – Time on Shelf – about five years.

This was an interesting rather than an enjoyable read. Camus is a clever observer of human frailties and the descriptions of the various reactions to first, the plague and then, the quarantining of the town, seem apt and still have resonance today. However, the characters felt a little flat, a little too of a type to have real emotional resonance.

There are many ways of reading this novel. At first glance, it is merely the story of a town fighting for its life, going through various stages of reaction to an emergency. Various battles are fought at an interpersonal level. Then there are the sociological elements such as Doctor Rieux’s fight with the authorities to have the plague taken seriously and his willingness to sacrifice his own life to treat those that are sick. There is the priest who preaches that the plague is God’s punishment. Finally, there are allegorical elements as to what the plague represents. As this was written in 1947, the Nazi threat would likely be high in Camus’ mind. At the end of the novel, when the plague has retreated, many return to their lives confident that it will never return. Rieux knows better and that it will return when the circumstances are once again correct. If that is not a moral for our current times, I don’t know what is.

Camus’ style is readable and the novel is clever but I stayed detached. It felt like what it is, an allegorical tale, with characters serving that purpose rather than developing in their own right.

Works in Progress – Some Twitter Queries Answered

On By kepagewriterIn Becoming a writierLeave a comment

Finally, I am keeping my promise of being more involved on Twitter. I don’t know why it makes me so nervous – perhaps because I’m not a naturally sociable person and Twitter seems a bit like going up to strangers and tapping them on the shoulder. I’m getting used to it though and have been answering questions from fellow writers quite happily. However, I do find some questions hard to answer so I’m going to detail my difficulties in this post.

What genre do you write in? I realise that this should be a straightforward issue. And with Choose Yr Future it is relatively straightforward as it is a dystopia. However, new projects are not (mostly anyway). They are about often relationships and love but definitely too dark to be traditional romance. They are often about violence but are not crime fiction. I suppose you might say they are psychological but I’m not sure they would fit the idea of a thriller. I would say they are literary fiction but that is quite a broad church and doesn’t really narrow it down any.

Any questions relating to my WIP. The problem with this is that now that Choose Yr Future is finished and being polished, it is no longer a WIP. I’m yet to decide what comes next. I’m flitting between a number of things at the minute. Hopefully one will become pressing and I won’t be forever writing 4 or 5 different books. (That is what happened last time. Choose Yr Future just became the most interesting. It wasn’t the oldest or the newest.) Here is a list of the possibilities:

Surface Details – A family is thrown into turmoil when the mother suddenly disappears. While trying to find out what has happened they stumble upon many secrets. MC – Karen, Adam, Jenny and Nate Murrow.

The Practise of Deception – A year in the life of a group of friends and lovers looking at the lies that they tell each other. MC – Matt Murphy, Martyn Wilson and Steph Wilkinson

The Meaning of Sickness – A gay teenager stabs the girl who has been bullying him but she has struggles of her own with anorexia. MC – Dan Hughes, Carol Mitchell, Lee Stratham

Scars – Religious intolerance forces a teenager to run away from home. MC – Sebastian Tilling, Blake O’Sullivan

The Box – A dystopia looking at gene selection and creating designer babies – MC – Jake and Heather.

Not to mention the many ideas and notes that are awaiting attention.

Protagonist V Antagonist – Often Twitter asks what is your villain like. Maybe it is because I don’t write genre fiction but I don’t have obvious villains. Some characters are less good than others. Some are downright horrible. But they all have reasons for their behaviour and I try to make sure that they are not 100% bad. Similarly, the supposed good guys are not 100% good.