6/25/2023 0 Comments Fever keane![]() ![]() ![]() She wondered whether it was possible to know a truth, and then quickly un-know it, bricking up that portal of knowledge until every point of light was covered over.” Mary acknowledges, “It was possible to live in such a way as to keep one’s back to the things that were not convenient….She’d taken a risk, but living was itself a risk, and more people agreed it was a risk worth taking.” And toward the end of the novel, Mary reflects: “ wondered whether it was possible for a person to know something and not know something at the same time. Giving up cooking means not just giving up her livelihood, but admitting that the health officials were right: that she is a carrier, that she did – inadvertently – bring sickness and death to many families. Three years later, she finally wins her freedom, but only by agreeing to give up her life’s work and passion: cooking. Eventually, a government “sanitation engineer” tracks her down, and she is essentially kidnapped and imprisoned. ![]() Mary, who makes her living as a chef to fancy households in New York, is one of the first known carriers of typhus she is immune, but can pass on the disease through her cooking. Fever by Mary Beth Keane (Scribner, publication March 12, 2013)įever is a richly imagined, sympathetic portrait of Mary Mallon, the Irish immigrant better known as Typhoid Mary. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |