Reviews for The plague and I

The average rating for The plague and I based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-08 00:00:00 James Guttschall My enjoyment of this book is very much due to the authors tone and sense of humor. Tuberculosis was a terrible scourge that cost many their lives. Many were sent to sanitarium which is where MacDonald is sent when she is diagnosed. Stays were often indeterminate, some stayed for years, some for months and of course many never left. The reader receives a day by day accounting in the lives of these patients. The authors pithy observations and comments, worries, fears are candidly stated and her insightful comments on the women with which she shares a room are honest oftentimes amusing. She formed many friendships during her stay, and in a few cases continued these after her release. She details the treatment, most of which I had never heard. In one they removed the patients ribs from one side of the body. Windows open in all rooms regardless if the weather. Many patients would get wet from the wind and rain pouring in the open windows. Freezing cold, allowed only a serviceable amount not linen, blankets, they would wear multiple layers of clothes, even for sleeping. That anyone was cured was unbelievable, yet intentions were good and treatments were experimental and at times barbaric. We come to know Betty, her life inside and outside the hospital. Her family, glimpses of her personal life and the trouble she had adjusting after her hospital stay. It is a glimpse of a thankfully bygone era of a disease that effected so many and that few knew his to treat. It was much like Covid is to us now. A new disease, not completely understood, with a trial and error type of treatment.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-02 00:00:00 Kathleen Peist I found this book while trawling through a charity shop. It had a beat up old green-and-white Penguin binding, and having a bit of a secret love for plague stories -- like _A Journal of the Plague Year_ -- I bought it for something like 10 p without even cracking it open to get a taste. Turns out it is one of my favorite books of all time, all space. This woman was a comic genius. This is the memoir of a year she spent laid up in a Tuberculosis sanitarium outside of Seattle Washington, sometime in the 1940s. She wasn't supposed to move, she wasn't supposed to talk . . . and hilarity ensued. Oh yes, a book about recovering from TB is, indeed, one of the funniest books in the English language. After reading this I went out and found all her other books for adults. The Egg and I was her big hit -- they even made a movie out of it. It's ok -- amusing rather than hilarious, and quite racist. Anybody Can Do Anything is a memoir about her sisters and her mother surviving the Depression by taking any job at all and simply claiming they could do it. It's pretty wonderful. But The Plague and I is simply the best. This is my first Goodreads review and I thought I would start with a book I am 100% sure of -- and one where the author cannot care what I say. RIP, Betty -- you were one hilarious woman!