NEMESIS

Editor Carolyn Yoder, sent me a heads-up email that Philip Roth will be on NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED this afternoon.  

Turns out he's releasing a new book today - The Nemesis.

In this case the nemesis is polio.  The time is 1944.  The place is Newark, NJ  - 622 miles from Hickory, North Carolina where another polio epidemic rages at the exact same time!

Contrasting communities.  Roth's character lives in a Jewish neighborhood in the city.  Mine lives in a mostly Christian rural area.  It's easy to imagine the differences.

But there were so many similarities - fear, change of plans, the challenges of the WWII homefront, and guilt.
Lives changed by disease with all its attending emotions.


I, for one will be reading THE NEMESIS.  If you read and blog it, can you do me a favor and mention BLUE at the same time?   It's geared toward a younger audience but is deeply and widely appreciated by adults.

I suspect these two books would complement each other very well. (If I do say so myself!)