Albert Camus ~ “The Plague”

Albert Camus ~ “The Plague”

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The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, “The Plague” is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.

The Plague is easily one of the best ten novels ever written, far surpassing even the erstwhile classic “The Stranger”. Whereas we examine an uncommonly cold-hearted man in a normal world in the pages of The Stranger, in this novel it is a harsh outside world which closes in on a group of fascinating characters. It is in this much more developed context that Camus’ most remarkable notions of humanity, life, and existence can be fleshed out and communicated more effectively. The lessons of good, normal lives in a world gone mad are much more instructive and meaningful than the observations in “The Stranger” of a man gone mad in a normal world.

A word to the wise: when large numbers of rats come out of the woodwork and commence dying nasty, bloody deaths in the streets and houses, something is definitely wrong. In the port city of Oran, the population ignores the signs of danger and only grudgingly admits that an epidemic, a form of the bubonic plague to be exact, has taken root in their city. The protagonist, Dr. Rieux, is a doctor who finally helps convince the authorities to take extreme measures in the interest of public safety and to eventually quarantine the entire town. Over the course of the novel, we get to observe the manner in which Dr. Rieux, his companions, and prominent men of the community react to the worsening plague and its social consequences. Dr. Rieux has just sent his unhealthy wife off to a sanitarium before the plague breaks out, and he must suffer her absence alongside the stresses of working 20+ hours a day trying to save people’s lives while accomplishing little more than watching them die horrible deaths. Dr. Rieux's attempts to make sense of everything is a basic pulse of the story; an atheist, he cannot find happiness but goes on day after day fighting the disease with all his might because that is what he as a doctor is supposed to do. His friend Tarrou supplies much of the knowledge we glean about the reactions of society as a whole as month after month of isolation continues in the face of death’s greedy fingers. His journal records small but important facts about all manner of men, yet he himself cannot be said to find ultimate peace. We first encounter M. Cottard after he has hanged himself and been saved before death. A criminal type yet not a bad man, his initial worries over inquiries into his suicide attempt fade away as the plague’s grip on Oran tightens. He emerges from a self-imposed exile to actually become a communicating member of society; he alone seems to enjoy the plague because it makes everyone else like him, forced to live each day with the fear of a brooding, horrible fate. Then there is M. Grande, one of the favorite characters in all of literature. A simple civil service employee, he devotes himself to volunteer work computing plague statistics and the like while still continuing his fervent efforts at writing a novel. Grande’s wife left him years earlier because he got too wrapped up in his work and lost the words to communicate his love for her; he began writing a novel in an attempt to find those words. With great devotion and commitment he works on his writing, determined to produce a perfectly crafted novel, one where each word is meaningful and necessary for the story - in short, one that will inspire the future publisher to introduce it to his publishing house cohorts with the phrase, “Hats off, gentlemen.” After untold months of dedicated effort, Grande has yet to get the first sentence to sound exactly right; he engages all of his efforts into perfecting this one sentence, sure that the rest of the novel will fall into place after it is perfected.

These main characters are all fascinating character studies. Not all of them live to see the plague’s end, but each of them struggles to find meaning in his own experience - e.g., one character continues living because that is what is required of human beings, to go on fighting for life in a meaningless world; another character seeks to become a saint of sorts by helping his fellow man fight the pestilence. The overriding message that is left with at the end is that life is worth living despite the arbitrary cruelties of an unforgiving world because there is more good in man than there is evil. The book delivered in fact a rather darkly uplifting celebration of the human spirit; one’s loved ones give life its meaning in a hostile world. “The Plague” succeeds in ways “The Stranger” never could because the characters in this novel are utterly human and represent diverse aspects of the lives of each of us.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

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Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”

All across America, readers are talking about Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novels, set in Sweden and featuring Lisbeth Salander — “one of the most original and memorable heroines to surface in a recent thriller”. The "trilogy" is an international sensation that will grab you and keep you “reading with eyes wide open”. It is intricately plotted, lavishly detailed, written with a breakneck pace and verve, but “be warned: the trilogy is seriously addictive.”

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”

(1) Once you start “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, there’s no turning back. This debut thriller - the first in a "trilogy" from the late Stieg Larsson - is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name is extended by an old-school titan of Swedish industry. The catch - and there’s always a catch - is that Blomkvist must first spend a year researching a mysterious disappearance that has remained unsolved for nearly four decades. With few other options, he accepts and enlists the help of investigator Lisbeth Salander, a misunderstood genius with a cache of authority issues. Little is as it seems in Larsson’s novel, but there is at least one constant: you really don’t want to mess with “the girl with the dragon tattoo”.

(2) Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family’s remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden’s dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a "trilogy" introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption — at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy.

“THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE”

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Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”

All across America, readers are talking about Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novels, set in Sweden and featuring Lisbeth Salander — “one of the most original and memorable heroines to surface in a recent thriller”. The "trilogy" is an international sensation that will grab you and keep you “reading with eyes wide open”. It is intricately plotted, lavishly detailed, written with a breakneck pace and verve, but “be warned: the trilogy is seriously addictive.”

“The Girl Who Played with Fire”

(1) In “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE”, the second volume in the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”, publisher Mikael Blomkvist and the police are conducting parallel investigations into three horrifying murders - and their initial evidence points straight at young computer genius and social misfit Lisbeth Salander. Kalle Bastard Blomkvist (as Salander has begun referring to him) hasn’t seen Salander in nearly two years, except for one night when he happened to witness a huge man attempting to kidnap her and both she and the attacker eluded him. He’s bewildered about why she cut him off cold, but had accepted her decision - until now. He doesn’t believe Salander killed these victims. Well, at least not two of them. He has to contact her, find out how she's become embroiled in this, and help her. Salander, as usual, has her own ideas about who she will see and when….

(2) In “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”, Larsson partnered Blomkvist and Salander as they unraveled a twisted tale of corporate greed, Fascist connections, and perverse sex and violence. “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE” highlights another subject on which Larsson wanted to shine light, namely the underbelly of the sex trade, a swill of human misery being forcibly imposed for money and simple loathing of women. Blomkvist’s magazine, “Millennium”, plans an issue devoted to the subject based on the interviews and reporting of a criminologist and a journalist, and there follows much in-house discussion of the lurid material and how it should be presented to the public. But the three murders turn the magazine and its people on their heads.

Meanwhile, Salander travels, changes her appearance, and matures in the early chapters of the 569-page book that covers four months in total and is told in four parts. Among her pursuits: attempting to proof Fermat’s “Last Theorem” in a way Fermat himself might have done, furnishing her new abode, and keeping tabs on Bjurman (whom, recall, she memorably tattooed in “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO”). Then, she disappears for quite a spell as the murder investigation gets cranking, and finally, she regains the spotlight as the book rushes headlong into a heart-stopping denouement.

The last book in this series - tentatively entitled “THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNETS’ NEST” in its English translation - was not scheduled for release until 2010. However, the entire “TRILOGY” had already been published in Swedish (naturally), French, and German. Larsson reportedly had planned a ten-volume series. He had written part of the fourth book and had outlined volumes five, six, and seven. Sadly, due to his early death, only the “trilogy” is complete. After reading “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE”, the thought creeps in that perhaps the trilogy will not provide closure, and that the reader could be left dangling, unsatisfied. That would be a crying shame because Salander and Blomkvist - along with other continuing characters - do burrow themselves deeply into the reader’s affections. Fortunately, reviewers who have read, in the other aforementioned languages, the entire story arc, including the final novel, seem generally very satisfied. Some claim that the last book, also the longest, is a “grand finale” that answers all outstanding questions. A few are less effusive, stating that the last book can’t meet the anticipatory heights set by the stunning, unusual first one, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

This last criticism can be applied to the second book as well. “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE” does not pack quite the punch of uniqueness that “THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO” did. One can perhaps think of the movie trilogy THE MATRIX, MATRIX RELOADED, and THE MATRIX REVOLUTION as an analogy. The smash introductory film awed with its mind-bending perspective. The second and third passes were very solid, even amazing, but they only reiterated the cutting-edge magic so novel in The MATRIX, building on it, not inventing something mind-blowingly fresh. Familiarity takes a bit of the bloom off the rose, but it certainly doesn’t breed contempt in these instances. Larsson’s “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE” lags a little during the mid-section in which criminal investigation procedure grinds along and the author belabors certain points, seeming to believe his readers novices at crime mysteries. But overall, “THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE” accelerates the enthralling story of Lisbeth and Mikael with panache. One can’t help thinking the world they inhabit is too slimy, too vicious, but Larsson was a man with many crusades and causes, and his “trilogy” vividly paints the harsh pictures of society that he hoped to reform. The “Millennium Trilogy” encompasses uncompromising social critique; prickling thrills; and curious, bittersweet romance.

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”

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Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”

All across America, readers are talking about Stieg Larsson’s best-selling novels, set in Sweden and featuring Lisbeth Salander — “one of the most original and memorable heroines to surface in a recent thriller”. The "trilogy" is an international sensation that will grab you and keep you “reading with eyes wide open”. It is intricately plotted, lavishly detailed, written with a breakneck pace and verve, but “be warned: the trilogy is seriously addictive.”

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest”

As the finale to Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy”, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” is not content to merely match the adrenaline-charged pace that made international bestsellers out of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played with Fire”. Instead, it roars with an explosive storyline that blows the doors off the series and announces that the very best has been saved for last. A familiar evil lies in wait for Lisbeth Salander, but this time, she must do more than confront the miscreants of her past; she must destroy them. Much to her chagrin, survival requires her to place a great deal of faith in journalist Mikael Blomkvist and trust his judgment when the stakes are highest. To reveal more of the plot would be criminal, as Larsson’s mastery of the unexpected is why millions have fallen hard for his work. But rest assured that the odds are again stacked, the challenges personal, and the action fraught with neck-snapping revelations in this snarling conclusion to a thrilling triad.

This closing chapter to The Girl’s pursuit of justice is guaranteed to leave readers both satisfied and saddened once the final page has been turned.