A group of tenants in an apartment block, The Fernsby Arms, in the Lower East Side of New York City must quarantine as a pandemic of an unknown virus hits. No one can go in or out for 14 days. At the centre of the story is the building’s new superintendent, who has left a relationship gone sour upstate, a dad in a nursing home and any resemblance of normalcy for the cheapest living arrangement she could find in such unprecedented times.
Craving the outdoors, the building’s tenants one by one find their way to the rooftop and, when they stumble upon one another, agree that they’re all craving human connection – or at least a conversation, six feet apart. Each resident has been given a title by the superintendent’s predecessor, recorded in a detailed diary. Lady with the Rings, Vinegar and Hello Kitty, to name a few. A resident dubbed Eurovision says that they must all share a story from their life in order to secure their seat on the roof each evening.
The twist here is that this is a collaborative novel. Thirty-five largely well-known writers – including John Grisham, Celeste Ng and Emma Donoghue, gathered by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston, a US thriller writer – each wrote stories within chapters dedicated to a day in the novel. The plot references The Decameron, the 14th-century book of 100 tales told by a group of young women and men who fled Florence to escape the Black Death. The idea has been taken up in recent years, including 2021′s The Decameron Project, a collection of short stories – including one by Atwood – and Fiona Farrell’s The Deck from last year. But Fourteen Days depicts those who stayed, who didn’t have the means to leave the densely populated, dangerous city. And the characters never shy away from pouring scorn on those who were able to.
The stories are sad and joyous, meaningful and minor and seemingly mundane. As a reading experience, the constant introductions of new stories do become monotonous, the retrospective anecdotes a reminder that this really is a short story collection in disguise. But there are interesting takes on, for instance, the limited sources of distraction on offer when in lockdown, particularly for those less privileged. It also highlights some of the beauty in humanity that arose during this time: looking out for one another, a collective approach rather than individualism in a city known for being a rat-race. The authors avoid mentions of TikTok or anything too contemporary, bar jabs at the “Orange Fool” and Tiger King, meaning the novel should not date too quickly as mere pandemic fiction.
The central thread of death and shared trauma is well woven into a blend of woe and acceptance. As Mira Jacob puts it in her chapter, “The Woman in the Window”, “we were laughing the way you laugh about a thing when you’re trying to forgive it for scaring you”, or Preston’s take: “It’s not like we can keep ourselves from dying by not talking about it, no more than we can get rich by not paying our bills.” Preston provides the links between stories, blending in each author’s themes and preoccupations, and giving the whole the fluidity it needs to balance the dark with the light.
The driving question of whether the super will see her father again is answered in the last few pages in a chilling revelation. It’s a stark reminder of the harsh truths behind the fiction, ones that we in this country, all other questions aside, were largely spared.
