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A review by books_n_bananas
The Plague by Albert Camus
3.0
Okay, I understand why it's a classic. Camus pegs real trends in predictability of human behavior. He found a way to write down pieces of real life.
Living through a pandemic and reading this novel was so interesting in that the behaviors that Camus points out-- at first, frustration, then disillusionment, the people trying to cheat the system out of their denial, the mass depression and anxiety-- it's all there. It's all real.
BUT
this one was hard to get through because the characters just lacked much depth or personality
And honestly, it was overwhelmed how absent any female character was.
As the book is set in Northern Africa, I understand the relevance of this as women are often absent characters, even in every day life, they are submissive to the overwhelming presence of males. But in literature, it's so glaring and so obvious, it was just annoying to read. The only women were only mentioned in brief as objects of the men's obsessions. The only female character that said anything was the doctor's mother.
While this book definitely has it's place among classic literature due to the trends in humanity it so adeptly identifies, it's place should be very low among the ranks due to the uninteresting nature of the character writing and the complete lack of female presence within the novel.
Living through a pandemic and reading this novel was so interesting in that the behaviors that Camus points out-- at first, frustration, then disillusionment, the people trying to cheat the system out of their denial, the mass depression and anxiety-- it's all there. It's all real.
BUT
this one was hard to get through because the characters just lacked much depth or personality
And honestly, it was overwhelmed how absent any female character was.
As the book is set in Northern Africa, I understand the relevance of this as women are often absent characters, even in every day life, they are submissive to the overwhelming presence of males. But in literature, it's so glaring and so obvious, it was just annoying to read. The only women were only mentioned in brief as objects of the men's obsessions. The only female character that said anything was the doctor's mother.
While this book definitely has it's place among classic literature due to the trends in humanity it so adeptly identifies, it's place should be very low among the ranks due to the uninteresting nature of the character writing and the complete lack of female presence within the novel.