December 2, 2015

The thing on my chest

Oh, it only gets better and better. That thing that’s been sitting on my chest for the last twenty-four hours has turned out to be pneumonia. Which has certainly undermined our plans to have me all up and repaired by tomorrow at the latest. But it’s also a relief—hooray for pneumonia, because finally it’s a non-vague diagnosis AND it has antibiotics. But no one has responded to the news by sending me platform shoes and a gong to bang. Apparently pneumonia is no fun? Oh boy. But I have started reading Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name. I read My Brilliant Friend when we were away in the spring, and while I liked it well enough, I wasn’t nuts for it. It’s possible it’s not the kind of book for that kind of vacation, when you don’t really want to tote around something heavy and when you only have a few minutes here and there throughout the day to dip in and out of the story. But pneumonia is kind of the opposite, because where I don’t really have anywhere to go now. And there is something about this second book that has hooked me much more immediately than the first one did. By which I mean that if do end up getting Ferrante Fever, on top of everything else, the time is probably right now.