Nemesis

Such an odd little book. I was interested in the subject because my uncle, who died in the '50s, contracted polio as a child in the '20s. And although it's a dark story–finding happiness in a story about polio just wouldn't be real, I suppose–it held my attention. The narrator is a man who, as a boy, contracted polio during an epidemic in Newark New Jersey in 1944 (a fictional epidemic, I gather), but the focus of his tale is Bucky Cantor, then a 23-year-old athlete and playground director who was kept out of the Army because of his eyesight. Any more would spoil the plot, but for most of the book, I was engrossed. Up to a point, Bucky is a sympathetic character, but he makes a bad choice (possibly more than one), and that introduced too much melodrama for me.

Such an interesting exercise to read in May/June 2020, in the midst of COVID19 and #BlackLivesMatter, having just finished [b:For The Love Of Men 43263540 For the Love of Men From Toxic to a More Mindful Masculinity Liz Plank https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548887843l/43263540.SY75.jpg 67142358] and its assault on toxic masculinity, having spent the last two years consciously reading books by women of color and twenty years reading and thinking deeply about morality. I think the context detracted from my enjoyment of what might otherwise have been a book I'd enjoy.I found the protagonist unsympathetic, and sharply increasingly so as the book progressed. The setting, unbearably whitemale and then, in Part 2, even depressingly so. The dialog stilted, characters flat. The writing was lovely, I'll admit: beautiful evocative sentences, but there just was no real author's voice until the very end, and then it's crammed into so little space that he comes off as sermonizing.Maybe at twenty I would've found material to ponder. Where I am today, not so much. But I'm a crotchety old man, what do I know about great literature?