
In 'the stifling heat of equatorial Newark', a terrifying epidemic is raging, threatening the children of the New Jersey city with maiming, paralysis, life-long disability, even death. This is the startling and surprising theme of Roth's wrenching new book: a wartime polio epidemic in the summer of 1944 and the effect it has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.At the centre of Nemesis is a vigorous, dutiful, twenty-three-year old playground director, Bucky Cantor, a javelin thrower and a weightlifter, who is devoted to his charges and disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. Focusing on Cantor's dilemmas as polio begins to ravage his playground - and on the everyday realities he faces - Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: the fear, the panic,...
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Recensioner
2011-02-25
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Ibland är det varmt ute, då är det bra att vara stark. Ibland dör folk i krig, eller av värme, eller är det polio? Hur muskulös eller förlamad man än är kan man lida. Självömkan rås inte på av några omständigheter, något som Roth långrandigt och via lösa associationer vill jobba in i sina läsare. Man mår bättre av att lyfta hela boken 280 gånger än att lyfta dess 280 sidor individuellt. Det blir mindre lidande så.