The Sickness

Начало книги

I was afraid to read this book.

My father died after a course of illness very similar to Javier Miranda’s when I was just finishing my training as a pediatrician. It was an experience that I am reluctant to relive, if I can help it. The premise of The Sickness is made quite obvious on the back cover, and you don’t have to read more than a page or two to realize that Alberto Barrera Tyszka writes powerfully affecting prose and is unlikely to pull any punches, either by design or accident, as he escorts his reader through the nightmare emotional and physical landscapes inhabited by very sick people and the people who love them. This is a great book by a great writer, I thought after only a few pages. But I wanted to put it in a lead box and forget about it.

I did set it aside for a long time, but I could not forget about it, and I spirited it away from its containment more and more frequently, for longer and longer stretches, feeling somehow as if I were peeking through my fingers at the words. Eventually, I dropped my hands from my mind’s eye, gave myself over to Tyszka, and finished the novel. Then I read it again in a single sitting.

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