The Plague and I

Improbably funny. . . equally remarkable.

Can you imagine writing a whole book about being forbidden to do anything other than lie in bed? But Betty does, and she somehow makes it a riveting chronicle.

An appetizing, well-seasoned feast. MacDonald's sharp, witty observations as she spends almost a year in The Pines Clinic, outside of Seattle, are perfectly pitched to satisfy readers of memoirs and historical and journalistic fiction, with a huge dollop of idiosyncratic humour. It more than satisfies, in fact, because MacDonald is an impressive and engaging storyteller.

MacDonald writes about her seclusion in a way that is painfully, barkingly funny. . . . Her style is completely her own, the sprawling sentences packed with anecdote, incident, bang-on simile and throwaway wit-it's like overhearing a conversation between someone who keeps forgetting to breathe and another who keeps asking `and what happened next?

Betty MacDonald (1907-1958), the best-selling author of The Egg and I and the classic Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle children's books, burst onto the literary scene shortly after the end of World War II. The Plague and I takes up Betty's delightful misadventures where The Egg and I left off. She continued chronicling her life story with memoirs Anybody Can Do Anything and finally Onions in the Stew. She lived on Vashon Island in Washington's Puget Sound.