Ingrid's BART/MUNI Read of the Month

November 2003


Due Preperations fro the Plague
by Janette Turner Hospital


Reviewed by Ingrid

As I herded my small-town sister the kindergarten teacher and her adorable seventeen-year-old daughter onto the 71-Haight Noriega, I truly felt like a shepherd keeping the hungry wolves at bay. First there was the bus driver who couldn’t have been crankier when my sister’s dollar bill wouldn’t slide in perfectly. I’d tried to avoid this situation by stockpiling quarters, but it was late in their stay and change was running low. As I ride the bus every day, I know the problem wasn’t just with my sister but with the crummy fare boxes. What struck me was the attitude of the driver. I mean, really, we live in a city that gains a huge chunk of revenue from tourism. We’re moaning and groaning about empty hotel rooms, but employees of our fair city who, if I’m thinking correctly, are paid in part by our taxes, ignore the first lesson of hospitality: make ‘em feel welcome. Okay, so the second Muni observation of the day had to do with the riders, a few of whom expressed satisfaction for my niece as she looked for a seat. At least I think that’s what they meant to do. I’m so old and unhip, what they said sounded more like an insult. Well I guess my niece is pretty unhip too, because she fastened onto them with a surprisingly savvy glare. The spent the next 20 minutes of the bus ride looking at their sneaks, having violated the first rule of bus travel—remember that unless you feel like catching a different bus, you’re stuck with the people around you for the duration of the ride. So show your fellow travelers a little respect: they’ll feel better, and you’ll feel better knowing they’re not talking about you behind their hands. The week’s visit was so exhausting—nice, but exhausting, I couldn’t wait to sit down, catch my breath, and dive into a good book the minute they went home.

Which brings us to this month’s BART/MUNI read, Due Preparations for the Plague by Janette Turner Hospital. Hospital’s earlier novels, Oyster and The Last Magician were New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and this one certainly doesn’t disappoint. The book opens on the anniversary of a hijacking, and looks at the lasting effects on survivors and surviving family members—some of whom are obsessed with finding the truth; others, with ignoring it. Due Preparations for the Plague is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, and of individual and national complicities in an age of terrorism. Where does the line dividing paranoia and truth lie? This is a wonderfully taut, psychologically engaging, and sometimes painful story. The characters are so real and multi-dimensional that you wouldn’t be surprised to find one them sitting next to you on the bus . . . maybe that is the real achievement of Hospital’s writing: capturing the terror that people walk around with everyday.