The Authors Guild

An ambitious collaborative novel - not a collection of linked stories - set in New York in late March and early April 2020, at the beginning of the global pandemic, as COVID-19 infections and deaths skyrocket in the city and state, and everyone is in lockdown. At the Fernsby Arms, a decrepit old apartment building ignored by the landlord, a new super, Romanian-American Yessie, and the various tenants make their way up to the roof each night, banging pots and pans to support essential healthcare workers, and telling stories, a la the Canterbury Tales, while they wait. Preconceptions and prejudices they hold about and against each other fall away as they learn more about one another. Various genres are employed, and the ending answers many questions.

Quotes

"And you know what all this solitude has made me realize, that I've been lying to myself. When the shit hits the fan, we're alone. And that people will kill each other for the last roll of toilet paper." (Day Three, p. 50)

This world - to what may I liken it?
To autumn fields darkening at dust,
dimply lit by lightning flashes. (Day Five, p. 103)

"Progress is really just the fiction every generation tells itself to justify the current fashion in ignorance, fear, and prejudice." (Day Six, p. 133)

"It was hard to argue about assimilation, a process that was inevitable and that required you to erase large parts of yourself. I didn't know if I had been erased yet..." (Day Nine, 200)

*Spoiler*
Everyone on the roof is a ghost, dead of COVID.… (more)

So many books coming out referencing the pandemic -- this one fascinated me. Collectively written by 36 authors, many genres, many of whom I have read. Set in a rundown tenement house in NYC in the first 14 days. The individuals quarantined in the building end up gathering nightly on the roof, to cheer for the essential workers in the city, and to share stories. Oral history in a pandemic. Go figure. The stories weave around. The characters are diverse, yet stuck in the same situation. 2024 read.… (more)

This is a confusing audiobook. Without words, there is no way to consistently identify each narrator of rooftop tales rendered by tenants cloistered by the early days of Covid in a derelict tenement in lower Manhattan. They assemble every evening to celebrate the first responders and to swap mostly sad and some truly gruesome stories. I did not find any of them particularly memorable, though the roster of authors involved in this Decameron-like project (in fact, one of the more amusing stories is one where the white professors teaching a literature course are severely criticized by each of their students, for choosing The Decameron as the subject of the course) includes almost every renowned contemporary writer you've ever read, ie Tommy Orange, Margaret Atwood (editor), Celeste Ng, and De'Shawn Charles Winslow. The ending is one I did not see coming, though I'm sure that many readers of horror and fantasy did, and I liked it the best of all the stories. There's a big clue at the very beginning, but who could remember it twelve discs later? The author of each tale is revealed to anyone who buys the audio, but not to a reader who borrowed it from the library. At this point, I'm not too bothered by missing the ownership. If the Author's Guild makes bank from it, that's fine.… (more)

... Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and Celeste Ng to Tommy Orange and John Grisham.

... One week into the COVID-19 shutdown, tenants of a Lower East Side apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbors gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants—some of whom have barely spoken to each other—become real neighbors. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn’t escape when the pandemic hit. A dazzling, heartwarming, and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days reveals how beneath the horrible loss and suffering, some communities managed to become stronger.

... Includes writing from:
.. Charlie Jane Anders
.. Margaret Atwood
.. Joseph Cassara
.. Jennine Capó Crucet
.. Angie Cruz
.. Pat Cummings
.. Sylvia Day
.. Emma Donoghue,
.. Dave Eggers
.. Diana Gabaldon
.. Tess Gerritsen
.. John Grisham
.. Maria Hinojosa
.. Mira Jacob
.. Erica Jong
.. CJ Lyons
.. Celeste Ng
.. Tommy Orange
.. Mary Pope Osborne
.. Douglas Preston
.. Alice Randall
.. Ishmael Reed
.. Roxana Robinson
.. Nelly Rosario
.. James Shapiro
.. Hampton Sides
.. R.L. Stine
.. Nafissa Thompson-Spires
.. Monique Truong
.. Scott Turow,
.. Luis Alberto Urrea
.. Rachel Vail
.. Weike Wang
.. Caroline Randall Williams
.. De’Shawn Charles Winslow
.. Meg Wolitzer!… (more)