Also enjoyable is the number of details Oldfield has crammed in here about the rumours surrounding the whys and wherefores of the plague-people saying that the plague is caused by earthquakes sending pestilence around, saying that a walnut shell filled with mercury will ward it off, that kind of thing. Which is realistic! But there’s only so much whining I can take. But she doesn’t want to go be with her cousins, whom she doesn’t like, so they just all stay in the city and worry and go on with their normal lives-going on excursions and going to church and having singing lessons and so on.īy far the most amusing part of this not-all-that-hilarious book is the ongoing dichotomy between the actual problems of the city (the plague, the stress about the potential war with the Dutch, that kind of thing) and Alice’s constant whining about how awful her family is and how they don’t understand her or let her do anything, and how miserable she is. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly what happens here-rumours are flying that the plague has come to the city, and Alice’s father wants to send her to their family in the country, thinking she’ll be safer there. The problem, of course, is that stories about the plague are very, very well-trodden territory, and generally follow a very predictable pattern: rumours about a dangerous disease fly, some people flee to the country but most scoff and hope it’s nothing, before long people are getting sick and dying in the streets, and then it’s too late and the plague has overtaken the city. Oldfield isn’t tempted to make Alice more mature or brave than she needs to be, and it doesn’t come across as false or over-done. Alice does grow up and mature during the book-kicking and screaming all the way, which is pretty darn realistic. So I don’t start out sounding like I completely hated it, there were some very nice aspects to this book! Alice, our heroine, is a reasonably well-off girl living with her aunt and father in London, along with her little dog and their maidservant. The Great Plague: A London Girl’s Diary, 1665-1666, Pamela Oldfield, 2012. Which is too bad, considering that “novels about the Plague” is usually a genre I really like! Is that a weird thing to say? I don’t know, I enjoyed Year of Wonders and The Doomsday Book so very much that they’ve ruined me for anything else. I was somewhat disappointed in this one-I’ve so enjoyed most of the My Story books I’ve read so far, but this one left me cold.

The Great Plague by Pamela Oldfield