It seems like decades ago, but it was only four years when the world closed within itself. In March 2020, schools and businesses closed, travel became very difficult, many people wondered when, not if, they were going to get the new virus.
During the first 14 days of quarantine, a group of people gather every evening on the roof of a ratty Manhattan apartment building. As people have since they could communicate, they begin telling each other stories.
That's the premise of Fourteen Days, a collaborative novel dreamed up by Douglas Preston. He and Margaret Atwood gathered the work of 36 authors and edited it into one volume. The work is a project of the Authors Guild of America. On its website, the organization notes it "advocates for the rights of writers by supporting free speech, fair contracts, and copyright. We create community and we fight for a living wage." Preston is a past president of the guild.
In an opening note, they call the project "a celebration of the diversity of North American authors and a thumb in the eye of the literary balkanization of our cultures." This is a project for readers who believe in reading widely and deeply and not being bound by genre. Proceeds benefit the guild's foundation, including support for writers hurt by pandemic publication delays, and the closing of bookstores and libraries.
The individual stories are varied, as any reader would expect the work of such a large group of writers to be. And they are a diverse group, including not only Atwood and Preston, as well as Celeste Ng, Erica Jong, Diana Gabaldon, Tommy Orange, John Grisham, R.L. Stine, Charlie Jane Anders, Angie Cruz, Emma Donoghue, Tess Gerritsen, Maria Hinojosa, Mary Pope Osborne, Scott Turow and Meg Wolitzer.
Some of the stories work very well as stand-alone tales, including ghost stories, love stories and stories of "what the hell just happened?" At least one was inspired by something that happened to its author in real life. At least one will stay with this reader.
There are tales that harken back to the Decameron, Dante and Chaucer (with a fascinating conversation by the characters following attempts to study the old classics). And stories of travels and the awful things that the storytellers have done.
All the stories are woven together as the building's new super records each night's tales on her phone, then transcribes them as testimony to their time together. She has a story as well, one that ties everything together at the end.
Because the stories are told by many voices, there is the feeling throughout the novel that it was not written by one person. That helps keep the suspension of disbelief from collapsing.
The stories lead toward an overall point about how people form communities. When the group offers hospitality toward the end, it is apparent that the individual storytellers, for all their differences, have become a community. It's a sign of hope and resilience for humanity.
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