The Corona Chronicles – I Have Seen “The Beast”

Well, the question of whether or not to have the “booster” jab is now settled – for me, at least. The week before last, I had what appeared to be a cold (and, I have to say, I have had worse colds). I didn’t think much about it, but when, after 3 days or so, a slight temperature appeared, I thought it might be a good idea – since we had a family dinner planned for Rosh Hashana – to make sure that a cold was all it was. So I took myself off to the nearest COVID – testing station for a test, which, to my dismay, proved positive for COVID-19. And that was that, as far as the family dinner was concerned, since my father and stepmother, and anyone else with whom I had been in contact during the previous week (even before the symptoms appeared) now had to remain in quarantine for 14 days.

Now, see how ridiculous the rules are. My contacts had to observe 14 days of quarantine from the actual day of contact. I, on the other hand, was obliged to remain in quarantine for 10 days from the day I took the test, even though the symptoms had actually first appeared several days earlier, and had all but disappeared by the time I was tested! The result was, they were out of quarantine before I was! And, in fact, if I had waited for an appointment with my healthcare fund, which my family doctor told me was overwhelmed, I might have had to wait another week for the results!

Even more ridiculous, in order to be released from quarantine at the end of 10 days, I was not required to take another test, but merely to contact the COVID hotline of the healthcare fund to which I belong, and answer a few questions about whether I had had any symptoms during the previous three days, (to which I was truthfully able to reply that I had not), after which I was issued with a Confirmation of Convalescence.

But since we have been hearing about people who forged test results in order to be allowed to return to Israel from the Ukraine, I think it’s safe to assume that not everybody is as truthful as I – which raises the question: what kind of a system is this???

Anyway, to get back to the question of the vaccine. On the one hand, those in favour of the “booster” shot will no doubt claim that if I had received the third shot a month ago, I might not even have caught the very mild illness which I did, eventually, suffer.
That is one possibility, certainly. On the other hand, since we now know that the vaccine does not prevent catching the disease, but only serious illness and death from COVID-19, it is also possible that I might, even with the booster shot, have contracted the disease in an even milder form than I actually did (which, as I said, was pretty mild). In which case, I might not even have suspected that I was ill, would not have gone to be tested – and might have ended up infecting everyone at the family dinner.

Make of it what you will. At any rate, since I now have the natural immunity conferred by contracting the disease and recovering, in addition to the original two shots of the vaccine, I no longer require the booster shot.

And now to the book review I promised in my last post.

The Vanished Bride by Bella Ellis – a self-confessed Brontë devotee for most of her life, as her pen name makes clear – is a typical, Victorian Gothic-style mystery, featuring the Brontë sisters, home together at Haworth Parsonage in the summer of 1845, as amateur detectives. Word has reached them of the disappearance of a young woman from a nearby mansion, leaving no trace other than a large pool of blood in her bedroom. The fact of her disappearance having been first discovered by an old schoolfriend of Charlotte’s, employed in the house as a governess, suffices to convince them that it is their duty to investigate the mystery themselves. They soon discover that all was not well with the presumed victim’s marriage – and that her husband’s first wife had died in tragic, not to say mysterious, circumstances.

I used to be a big fan of Gothic romances (not that there is any romance in The Vanished Bride), and so I had high hopes for this novel, but I was rather disappointed. The plot was, alas, entirely predictable – certainly for anyone acquainted with the writings of the Brontë sisters – and the style of writing was patchy. In some parts, it was very good indeed, especially in the descriptive passages, such as this one:

A deep, dreamy sense of peace settled over Charlotte, the last of their small party, as she followed her sisters through the long, golden grass of the meadow. Her fingers outstretched, she brushed her palms across the tips of the ears of seeds, plucking a sprig of first harebells and then fireweed from the meadow, tucking the small wildflower bouquet into the buttons of her blouse. What had that old gypsy woman meant about a flame within her, that if ignited might burn forever? It seemed impossible to Charlotte that such a prediction could be true of her, and yet something about it chimed within. It was a sense of possibility.

As they descended into the heart of the valley, they followed the barely detectable path into a deep, tree-covered tunnel, where midday sun dappled in flashes like a school of minnows and the exposed roots of trees seemed to reach out in a bid to catch all passing intruders. It seemed to Charlotte that the deeper they travelled, the slower time passed around them – that perhaps, as they walked on, it might even begin to turn backwards.

In other places, I found the writing commonplace and very obviously written from a 21st century point-of-view. Even some of the writer’s stylistic choices appeared clumsy to me. For example:

‘I hardly know,’ Charlotte said, watching Emily some several yards ahead muttering and gazing about her like she was entranced by some kind of vision, which to be quite honest wasn’t all that unusual behaviour for Emily…

The use of “like she was” is a mistake here. “Like” is a simple comparison, and should be followed by a noun or a pronoun. When preceding a verb, as here (“she was entranced), the writer should have used “as if”. (“muttering and gazing about her as if she was entranced…”)
In fact, come to think of it, the verb should have been in the past subjunctive (“muttering and gazing about her as if she were entranced”).
This particular mistake occurred several times throughout the book and, at the risk of being branded a “Grammar Nazi”, I must confess it drove me crazy.

That said, if you enjoy Gothic novels and are not too sensitive to inappropriate grammar, and especially if the many injustices to which women were subjected in Victorian England make your blood boil, this book is not a bad choice for a week in lockdown or quarantine, or for a rainy weekend.

I would like to write more, as I have two more books to review, but that will have to wait till next week, as this evening, I have a choir rehearsal and must rest beforehand.

Before I go, since Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) starts tomorrow evening, let me wish you all a favourable sealing in the Book of Life, an end to the pandemic, and a return to health and to prosperity.

גמר חתימה טובה

G’mar Hatima Tova.