Fourteen Days, a collaboratively written novel/series of short stories is the first Covid-19 book I’ve read. I’ve seen others reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist, but I’ve always passed them by. It always seemed too soon. Fourteen Days appealed to me when I saw it listed on NetGalley mostly because Margaret Atwood’s name is prominently displayed on the cover and because the description referenced Boccaccio’s Decameron. Reading Fourteen Days led me to reflect on why I’ve chosen to skip so many other books.
I’m still angry at the loss of life caused by people refusing to mask, self-isolate, or vaccinate. So many people died and suffered who might have been kept safe if more people had taken precautions. Reading realistic descriptions of people choosing not to mask or to go do something social after testing positive for Covid brings up so much unprocessed anger that it’s hard to stay focused on the narrative.
Is it possible to make lockdown interesting? Because I spent so many months just hanging out in my house, I’m not especially interested in reading a character’s experience of keeping themselves entertained or annoying their family/roommates. I’m also not especially interested in hanging out in the mind of a character spiraling with anxiety about infection rates or the progress of the vaccine—because I already did that, too. Maybe I could enjoy a genre novel set during lockdown, perhaps a locked room mystery or a comedy of errors.
Do I know too much? I’ve enjoyed historical fiction about the Black Death and the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic because I loved learning about the setting and the archaic medical practices. I learned about Covid-19 in real time and catching discrepancies in the text takes me out of a story. I fall into red pen mode and any pleasure in reading the book goes straight out the window.
It’s not really over. I still see people regularly masking and hear of friends, colleagues, and internet acquaintances testing positive for Covid. It feels premature to read fiction that, even if only a little, tries to write a conclusion to a character’s Covid story because we still don’t know what the full long-term effects will be—like calling a game in the third quarter. I’m not going to say that Covid is off-limits for authors. I don’t think anything is off-limits. Some premises are ill-advised, sure, but not off-limits. Perhaps what I mean is that it would take a lot of deep, careful thought to write a conclusion to an event that is still so present in our lives.
I’m curious if anyone else has shied away from Covid novels. If so, why? Do my thoughts jibe with yours? If you don’t avoid Covid novels, what do you like about them?
Yes, definitely. I have not read a single novel that focuses on the pandemic. It is still too real and raw for me. I might have read a few that mentioned it in passing, as a background detail, but I can’t recall which now so it must not have been a main part of the story.