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Fourteen Days
14 hours, 7 minutes
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, and Meg Wolitzer!
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, and Meg Wolitzer!
Audiobook
First published February 6, 2024
About the author
Margaret Atwood
580 books93.5k followersMargaret Atwood was born in 1939 in Ottawa and grew up in northern Ontario, Quebec, and Toronto. She received her undergraduate degree from Victoria College at the University of Toronto and her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.
Throughout her writing career, Margaret Atwood has received numerous awards and honourary degrees. She is the author of more than thirty-five volumes of poetry, children’s literature, fiction, and non-fiction and is perhaps best known for her novels, which include The Edible Woman (1970), The Handmaid's Tale (1983), The Robber Bride (1994), Alias Grace (1996), and The Blind Assassin, which won the prestigious Booker Prize in 2000. Atwood's dystopic novel, Oryx and Crake, was published in 2003. The Tent (mini-fictions) and Moral Disorder (short stories) both appeared in 2006. Her most recent volume of poetry, The Door, was published in 2007. Her non-fiction book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth in the Massey series, appeared in 2008, and her most recent novel, The Year of the Flood, in the autumn of 2009. Ms. Atwood's work has been published in more than forty languages, including Farsi, Japanese, Turkish, Finnish, Korean, Icelandic and Estonian. In 2004 she co-invented the Long Pen TM.
Margaret Atwood currently lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
Associations: Margaret Atwood was President of the Writers' Union of Canada from May 1981 to May 1982, and was President of International P.E.N., Canadian Centre (English Speaking) from 1984-1986. She and Graeme Gibson are the Joint Honourary Presidents of the Rare Bird Society within BirdLife International. Ms. Atwood is also a current Vice-President of PEN International.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,211 reviews
November 27, 2023
This was more or less exactly what I expected.
Fourteen Days is essentially a short story collection with a twist-- all the stories are fed to us via characters in a New York apartment building, and each one is written by a different author. Set during the COVID lockdown, the cast of characters gather on the roof of their building to exchange stories.
Like virtually every single short story collection I have read, this book has its stronger stories and weaker stories. Some kept my eyes glued to the page, while others I have already forgotten. The stories are all spoken aloud to a group and while some authors adapted well to this, other stories contained too much detail or were so overly weird that they did not feel realistically like spoken word.
Ironically, some of the big names that most attracted me to the book did not write the best characters. I guess this project may have been pretty low priority for them. Atwood's short contribution, for example, showcases one of my favourite authors at her weirdest (and not in a good way). They tried to give her an odd character to accommodate her eccentricities but, even so, it felt totally bizarre and unbelievable to me.
Also, I found the chitchat and set-up between the stories quite tedious. Because they chose this specific framing, it made it necessary for the narrator to introduce each day, scene and character before launching into the next story. It was mostly filler.
An ambitious experiment that didn't quite work, in my opinion. So many stories, characters and voices led to a book that was uneven and incohesive. And I didn't like the ending.
Fourteen Days is essentially a short story collection with a twist-- all the stories are fed to us via characters in a New York apartment building, and each one is written by a different author. Set during the COVID lockdown, the cast of characters gather on the roof of their building to exchange stories.
Like virtually every single short story collection I have read, this book has its stronger stories and weaker stories. Some kept my eyes glued to the page, while others I have already forgotten. The stories are all spoken aloud to a group and while some authors adapted well to this, other stories contained too much detail or were so overly weird that they did not feel realistically like spoken word.
Ironically, some of the big names that most attracted me to the book did not write the best characters. I guess this project may have been pretty low priority for them. Atwood's short contribution, for example, showcases one of my favourite authors at her weirdest (and not in a good way). They tried to give her an odd character to accommodate her eccentricities but, even so, it felt totally bizarre and unbelievable to me.
Also, I found the chitchat and set-up between the stories quite tedious. Because they chose this specific framing, it made it necessary for the narrator to introduce each day, scene and character before launching into the next story. It was mostly filler.
An ambitious experiment that didn't quite work, in my opinion. So many stories, characters and voices led to a book that was uneven and incohesive. And I didn't like the ending.
![Profile Image for s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all].](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/users/1735525095i/6431467._UX200_CR0,11,200,200_.jpg)
Want to Read
February 21, 2023Wait, I'm sorry, WHAT? Atwood, R.L. Stine, Nora Roberts, Celeste Ng, Neil Gaiman, David Byrne from the Talking Heads, the Magic Treehouse lady and the author of Sex in the City (with many many more that you would never expect together) all writing different characters in one novel!? Pre-ordered this SO hard. What was this group-chat like?
Also why are there so many one-star ratings of a book that ARCs doen't even exist of yet?
Also why are there so many one-star ratings of a book that ARCs doen't even exist of yet?
April 3, 2024
An incredible collaborative novel with 36 authors that is an extraordinary literary event. The authors range in age from 30s to 80s and are from a variety of cultural, political, social and religious backgrounds; they also write in a wide range of genres. The result is a literary masterpiece.
Proceeds from book sales go toward The Authors Guild Foundation which was established on the belief that a rich, diverse, body of free literary expression is essential to our democracy. Amen to that! Portions of the books' advance went toward fighting book bans and library closures. Margaret Atwood led the project.
The book is focused on tenants in a rundown apartment in New York City that gather on the rooftop to share stories during a fourteen day period when the pandemic forced a shut down of the city. The stories are incredibly varied and poignant.
Memorable passages include:
* As humans, we have faced our gravest challenges with stories
* Stories tell us where we've been and where we're going
* Stories skewer the powerful, expose the fraudulent, and give voice to the disenfranchised
* Storytelling invokes magical powers to heal and transform
]
*Storytelling is hardwired in us. It makes us human.
* Death is like the distant sound of thunder at a picnic
* Sex is the sworn enemy of common sense
* War is where brutality meets farce
* Lies are the lubricant of life
* Feel the exhilarating call to adventure
* Jerry Garcia: You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know
* From a musician: I play or I die.
I highly recommend Fourteen Days!
Proceeds from book sales go toward The Authors Guild Foundation which was established on the belief that a rich, diverse, body of free literary expression is essential to our democracy. Amen to that! Portions of the books' advance went toward fighting book bans and library closures. Margaret Atwood led the project.
The book is focused on tenants in a rundown apartment in New York City that gather on the rooftop to share stories during a fourteen day period when the pandemic forced a shut down of the city. The stories are incredibly varied and poignant.
Memorable passages include:
* As humans, we have faced our gravest challenges with stories
* Stories tell us where we've been and where we're going
* Stories skewer the powerful, expose the fraudulent, and give voice to the disenfranchised
* Storytelling invokes magical powers to heal and transform
]
*Storytelling is hardwired in us. It makes us human.
* Death is like the distant sound of thunder at a picnic
* Sex is the sworn enemy of common sense
* War is where brutality meets farce
* Lies are the lubricant of life
* Feel the exhilarating call to adventure
* Jerry Garcia: You ain't gonna learn what you don't want to know
* From a musician: I play or I die.
I highly recommend Fourteen Days!
November 25, 2023
I love the idea of this and was excited by all the authors. involved. However, I didn't enjoy if nearly as much as I was hoping to.
It started to pick up at the end with the last 15% being a lot more engaging than the first 85%. The stories being told were supposed to be have been spoken aloud to the group on a rooftop of an apartment building however, some of them didn't have the feel of spoken word or verbal storytelling and didn't feel natural.
It started to pick up at the end with the last 15% being a lot more engaging than the first 85%. The stories being told were supposed to be have been spoken aloud to the group on a rooftop of an apartment building however, some of them didn't have the feel of spoken word or verbal storytelling and didn't feel natural.
November 21, 2023
3.5 rounded up
Thirty six American/Canadian authors from a variety of literary backgrounds, collaborate to tell the stories of a group of New Yorkers who are unable to escape the city during the Covid pandemic, unlike affluent city dwellers. It’s March 31, Day One, the first day of lockdown and the story is told over the next 14 days. The characters are tenants of the grandly named Fernsby Arms, a misleading name indeed, for a rundown block, which has thus far avoided gentrification. The new super of the less than salubrious building holds the whole thing together, I love her ironic tone, as life has dealt her many lemons, and yet she is still an upstanding, tough, strong woman. In amongst the detritus left by the previous super, she finds “The Fernsby Bible”, a handmade book of observations of tenants, who glory in appropriate nicknames, such as Vinegar, Eurovision, Florida, and Hello Kitty. She’s also left a little bit of “magic“ “, a key to the rooftop terrace, which affords spectacular views way beyond the price of the rent. One by one, the tenants drift up here, find a place to sit, socially distanced naturally, the price of admission is to tell a story, and so they do.
Yes, I’m sure some of you will be thinking not another pandemic novel, but whether we like it or not it is a cataclysmic and pivotal event that will go down in the history books as hugely important and significant. Many of us are still living with the aftermath, and let’s face it, the wretched thing is still here. Some of us are still trying to make process and make sense of it and this is where books like this come in. In many ways this is very unlike any other pandemic novels I’ve read. You do get references such as the gloomy statistics and tolling symbolically in the background are the bells of Saint Patrick. However, the main focus here is the stories that each of them tell. You get their backgrounds or things they’ve done (which are not necessarily true!) stories of the people in their lives, their reflections, the state of the country or the world, the injustice and it does become quite philosophical at times. It leads to them forming a daily rhythm and a release from the isolation of Covid rules. They make connections and become neighbourly, they recall the loss of loved ones and get reminders of their own mortality.
Although many of the stories are genuinely interesting, it does get a bit overwhelming by about 60%, the pace has slowed down and I find my attention has drifted. However, that brilliant, unpredictable ending nails the book for for me. I so don’t expect that, but it feels perfect and so raises it to a justifiable four stars.
It is exceptionally well written, it’s lively, it flows and it’s so well edited you actually wouldn’t know it’s a collaboration. I’m glad I don’t know who wrote what until the end as it may have swayed me in some ways. A big shout out to for the very clever use of literary references, especially Shakespeare and Boccaccio’s Decameron. How appropriate. It’s very different, it’s thoughtful, intelligent, and very acutely and well observed.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House, Vintage for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
Thirty six American/Canadian authors from a variety of literary backgrounds, collaborate to tell the stories of a group of New Yorkers who are unable to escape the city during the Covid pandemic, unlike affluent city dwellers. It’s March 31, Day One, the first day of lockdown and the story is told over the next 14 days. The characters are tenants of the grandly named Fernsby Arms, a misleading name indeed, for a rundown block, which has thus far avoided gentrification. The new super of the less than salubrious building holds the whole thing together, I love her ironic tone, as life has dealt her many lemons, and yet she is still an upstanding, tough, strong woman. In amongst the detritus left by the previous super, she finds “The Fernsby Bible”, a handmade book of observations of tenants, who glory in appropriate nicknames, such as Vinegar, Eurovision, Florida, and Hello Kitty. She’s also left a little bit of “magic“ “, a key to the rooftop terrace, which affords spectacular views way beyond the price of the rent. One by one, the tenants drift up here, find a place to sit, socially distanced naturally, the price of admission is to tell a story, and so they do.
Yes, I’m sure some of you will be thinking not another pandemic novel, but whether we like it or not it is a cataclysmic and pivotal event that will go down in the history books as hugely important and significant. Many of us are still living with the aftermath, and let’s face it, the wretched thing is still here. Some of us are still trying to make process and make sense of it and this is where books like this come in. In many ways this is very unlike any other pandemic novels I’ve read. You do get references such as the gloomy statistics and tolling symbolically in the background are the bells of Saint Patrick. However, the main focus here is the stories that each of them tell. You get their backgrounds or things they’ve done (which are not necessarily true!) stories of the people in their lives, their reflections, the state of the country or the world, the injustice and it does become quite philosophical at times. It leads to them forming a daily rhythm and a release from the isolation of Covid rules. They make connections and become neighbourly, they recall the loss of loved ones and get reminders of their own mortality.
Although many of the stories are genuinely interesting, it does get a bit overwhelming by about 60%, the pace has slowed down and I find my attention has drifted. However, that brilliant, unpredictable ending nails the book for for me. I so don’t expect that, but it feels perfect and so raises it to a justifiable four stars.
It is exceptionally well written, it’s lively, it flows and it’s so well edited you actually wouldn’t know it’s a collaboration. I’m glad I don’t know who wrote what until the end as it may have swayed me in some ways. A big shout out to for the very clever use of literary references, especially Shakespeare and Boccaccio’s Decameron. How appropriate. It’s very different, it’s thoughtful, intelligent, and very acutely and well observed.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House, Vintage for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.
March 26, 2024
I can’t even say “I’m not mad I’m just disappointed” because I am both mad and disappointed.
God, the stories were so fucking boring. The star is awarded to me for finishing the book (I should’ve DNF’d).
God, the stories were so fucking boring. The star is awarded to me for finishing the book (I should’ve DNF’d).
June 3, 2024
Sorry all, this book wore me out. Depressing times during COVID in NYC with incoherent stories that I couldn’t make sense of. The idea of involving so many authors is great, but the implementation tells me they’re better off telling a holistic story on their own. Too many cooks spoil the broth. Wasn’t for me.
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December 31, 2023
When I read the premise that immerses us into the frightening days of Covid 19 in early lockdown in a dilapidated New York lower East Side tenement, Fernsby Arms, set over a period of 14 days, I was thrilled because the diverse, offbeat voices of people, who were unable to leave, are each written by an incredible cast of big authors, that include the likes of Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, Celeste Ng, Louise Erdich, and Meg Wolitzer. It forms the structure of a loose collection of short stories told by the residents, many of whom barely knew each other at all, told on the rooftop with its magnificent views, with everyone suitably socially distanced. This lockdown gathering offers the opportunities and means for a real community and neighbourly relations to develop amidst a background and experience of devastating loss and grief.
The global nature of the pandemic crisis and the isolating lockdowns ensure that there is much that will resonate with the reader, and lets face it, Covid remains with us, with the vulnerable remaining at risk. As might be expected from such a wide selection of stories, some were more interesting, thoughtful and fascinating to me than others, there a sense of the chaotic and it does not always feel cohesive when it comes to the links between the different narratives. I think there are likely to be stories that appeal to a variety of readers, whilst simultaneously there is the possibility of coming across and being exposed to authors you have never previously encountered, so I can definitely recommend this, even if it is not perfect. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
The global nature of the pandemic crisis and the isolating lockdowns ensure that there is much that will resonate with the reader, and lets face it, Covid remains with us, with the vulnerable remaining at risk. As might be expected from such a wide selection of stories, some were more interesting, thoughtful and fascinating to me than others, there a sense of the chaotic and it does not always feel cohesive when it comes to the links between the different narratives. I think there are likely to be stories that appeal to a variety of readers, whilst simultaneously there is the possibility of coming across and being exposed to authors you have never previously encountered, so I can definitely recommend this, even if it is not perfect. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.
January 15, 2024
This was a Goodreads Giveaway win!
And this is why you should never be deterred by low ratings on here. If you want to read something then just READ IT. I have a feeling that people who gave it low ratings didn’t understand the format of this. I love sitting around and listening to people share stories so this was right up my alley. Now some stories for me were stronger then others but man oh man did I have a tough time putting this down. I loved being able to look at the back of the book so see who wrote which parts. And the cast of characters who met on the roof every night to share these stories were so fantastic that I felt like I was excited to get back up on that roof with them to hear more stories.
Oh my gosh that ending though.
Favorite short story? The Angel in the Mexican town square.
And this is why you should never be deterred by low ratings on here. If you want to read something then just READ IT. I have a feeling that people who gave it low ratings didn’t understand the format of this. I love sitting around and listening to people share stories so this was right up my alley. Now some stories for me were stronger then others but man oh man did I have a tough time putting this down. I loved being able to look at the back of the book so see who wrote which parts. And the cast of characters who met on the roof every night to share these stories were so fantastic that I felt like I was excited to get back up on that roof with them to hear more stories.
Oh my gosh that ending though.
Favorite short story? The Angel in the Mexican town square.
Want to Read
August 29, 2021This looks completely bananas...
May 26, 2024
3.5 🌟 za zakończenie, którego się nie spodziewałem!
February 3, 2026
EXCERPT: DAY TWELVE
The days were getting longer, and the seven o'clock commotion was now happening just before sunset instead of at dusk. This evening was the most beautiful I could recall in years, with bloodred clouds overspreading the city that cast a fierce glow downward into the streets as we banged on our pots and cheered. It was like being underneath a huge fire.
After the city went quiet, as the lightshow reached its peak, a commotion came from the street below. Out in the Bowery, a man was shouting into a cell phone. At first I wondered if someone had just discovered Gund's body after all. But from the disjointed phrases floating up, it appeared the man's partner in an apartment nearby was dead or dying of Covid and he'd fled to the street to call 911. Everyone's faces on the roof were imprinted with horror as we realized what was happening, as the faint, desperate voice drifted across the rooftop. Soon enough, we heard an ambulance siren coming up the Bowery and halting nearby, and then the blare of radios and EMTs shouting to one another. Nobody went to the parapet to watch. Ten minutes later, the siren started up with a series of whoops and faded away down the Bowery, and all was quiet again.
La Reina said, 'God just gave the rabbit box another turning over.'
Monsieur Ramboz eventually cleared his throat. 'I think we're doing something extraordinary up here by telling stories in the face of this goddamned disease.' He added, 'Maybe we should start recording them for posterity.'
'Record us?' said Vinegar. 'No way.'
'I appreciate that sentiment,' Prospero said. 'But what's happening on this roof is an assertion of our humanity against the terror and brutality of a virus. It shouldn't be forgotten.'
'Oh, hush,' said the Lady with the Rings. 'I, for one, am going to boycott this rooftop if anyone starts recording.' I couldn't blame her, after the story we'd just heard.
'If Boccaccio or Chaucer hadn't written down the stories they'd collected during his lifetime,' Ramboz insisted, 'we'd have lost some of the great works of the Western canon.'
There was some eye-rolling at the words "Western canon". No one else stepped in to agree with Ramboz's proposal. I, of course, kept my mouth shut - and my recording going.
ABOUT 'FOURTEEN DAYS': Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is a surprising and irresistibly propulsive novel with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbours has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice-from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng.
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 neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants - some of whom have barely spoken to each other - become real neighbours. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't get away from the city 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:
Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, Celeste Ng, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, James Shapiro, Sylvia Day, Mary Pope Osborne, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Tommy Orange, and more!
MY THOUGHTS: Such collaborations as this either work or they don't. Fourteen Days does work, with each author giving voice to a different character. On most evenings, two characters tell their stories to the other building residents gathered on the roof. The stories told are not only of their own experiences, but of family history, of things they have heard happened and at least one (one I did not like at all) a pure fantasy.
We know the characters mostly by the names assigned to them by the building's previous superintendent - nicknames reflecting their personalities or peccadillos. The Lady with the Rings, Pardner, Lala, Vinegar and Tango are but a few.
The stories are mostly amusing and entertaining. Some are thought provoking, some a little creepy. There were only two that I actively disliked: 'The Exterminator' written by Margaret Atwood from the POV of the character known as the Spider; and Nelly Rosario's 'Rivington Rosary' written from the POV of a Family of Strangers. I particularly enjoyed John Grisham's 'Another Brother for Christmas', Tess Gerritsen's 'The Doctor', and Erica Jong's 'Vagina Monologues'. The other stories all fell somewhere in between and mostly towards the upper end of the scale.
Although this is set in one of humanity's dark times, the characters' shared love of storytelling becomes the bond that draws a very disparate group of characters together and binds them.
The ending wasn't entirely unexpected, but I enjoyed it and felt it was quite fitting.
⭐⭐⭐.5
#FourteenDays @WaitomoDistrictLibrary
The days were getting longer, and the seven o'clock commotion was now happening just before sunset instead of at dusk. This evening was the most beautiful I could recall in years, with bloodred clouds overspreading the city that cast a fierce glow downward into the streets as we banged on our pots and cheered. It was like being underneath a huge fire.
After the city went quiet, as the lightshow reached its peak, a commotion came from the street below. Out in the Bowery, a man was shouting into a cell phone. At first I wondered if someone had just discovered Gund's body after all. But from the disjointed phrases floating up, it appeared the man's partner in an apartment nearby was dead or dying of Covid and he'd fled to the street to call 911. Everyone's faces on the roof were imprinted with horror as we realized what was happening, as the faint, desperate voice drifted across the rooftop. Soon enough, we heard an ambulance siren coming up the Bowery and halting nearby, and then the blare of radios and EMTs shouting to one another. Nobody went to the parapet to watch. Ten minutes later, the siren started up with a series of whoops and faded away down the Bowery, and all was quiet again.
La Reina said, 'God just gave the rabbit box another turning over.'
Monsieur Ramboz eventually cleared his throat. 'I think we're doing something extraordinary up here by telling stories in the face of this goddamned disease.' He added, 'Maybe we should start recording them for posterity.'
'Record us?' said Vinegar. 'No way.'
'I appreciate that sentiment,' Prospero said. 'But what's happening on this roof is an assertion of our humanity against the terror and brutality of a virus. It shouldn't be forgotten.'
'Oh, hush,' said the Lady with the Rings. 'I, for one, am going to boycott this rooftop if anyone starts recording.' I couldn't blame her, after the story we'd just heard.
'If Boccaccio or Chaucer hadn't written down the stories they'd collected during his lifetime,' Ramboz insisted, 'we'd have lost some of the great works of the Western canon.'
There was some eye-rolling at the words "Western canon". No one else stepped in to agree with Ramboz's proposal. I, of course, kept my mouth shut - and my recording going.
ABOUT 'FOURTEEN DAYS': Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is a surprising and irresistibly propulsive novel with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbours has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice-from Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng.
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 neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants - some of whom have barely spoken to each other - become real neighbours. In this Decameron-like serial novel, general editor Margaret Atwood, Authors Guild president Douglas Preston, and a star-studded list of contributors create a beautiful ode to the people who couldn't get away from the city 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:
Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, Celeste Ng, Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, John Grisham, Diana Gabaldon, Ishmael Reed, Meg Wolitzer, Luis Alberto Urrea, James Shapiro, Sylvia Day, Mary Pope Osborne, Monique Truong, Hampton Sides, R. L. Stine, Scott Turow, Tommy Orange, and more!
MY THOUGHTS: Such collaborations as this either work or they don't. Fourteen Days does work, with each author giving voice to a different character. On most evenings, two characters tell their stories to the other building residents gathered on the roof. The stories told are not only of their own experiences, but of family history, of things they have heard happened and at least one (one I did not like at all) a pure fantasy.
We know the characters mostly by the names assigned to them by the building's previous superintendent - nicknames reflecting their personalities or peccadillos. The Lady with the Rings, Pardner, Lala, Vinegar and Tango are but a few.
The stories are mostly amusing and entertaining. Some are thought provoking, some a little creepy. There were only two that I actively disliked: 'The Exterminator' written by Margaret Atwood from the POV of the character known as the Spider; and Nelly Rosario's 'Rivington Rosary' written from the POV of a Family of Strangers. I particularly enjoyed John Grisham's 'Another Brother for Christmas', Tess Gerritsen's 'The Doctor', and Erica Jong's 'Vagina Monologues'. The other stories all fell somewhere in between and mostly towards the upper end of the scale.
Although this is set in one of humanity's dark times, the characters' shared love of storytelling becomes the bond that draws a very disparate group of characters together and binds them.
The ending wasn't entirely unexpected, but I enjoyed it and felt it was quite fitting.
⭐⭐⭐.5
#FourteenDays @WaitomoDistrictLibrary
August 9, 2024
The novel Fourteen Days (2023) edited by Margaret Attwood and Douglas Preston is the creative effort of thirty-six different authors contributing to the seamless tale of tenants gathering on their New York apartment rooftop. Set in the height of Covid-19, the various people are socially distant and tell each other a story to pass the evening, before they join the nightly applause for the first responder medicos. Whilst readers may not want to revisit these historic times, the compendium of authors, each penning a different chapter, makes for a heartful, truly enjoyable, human tale. A seamless flowing narrative depicts the best of people in the worst situation of social isolation: a tender story with a surprising ending of a five star read rating. As always, the opinions herein are totally my own, freely given and without any inducement.
March 18, 2024
an ambitious endeavour that didn't quite live up to its potential. some stories were more interesting than others, but a lot of them were too short to truly connect with them. 2.5 stars
March 30, 2024
Further support for my heartfelt contention that nothing worth a damn ever came out of a committee, certainly nothing in a creative, artistic or meaningful mode...
It's hard for me to crap on this book with a one-star rating, especially since it was a birthday gift, features Margaret Atwood's name on the cover, falls under the category of pandemic lit (a genre I have a fondness for myself having engaged in a small pandemic lit reading group during that shittiest of years), and is inspired by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio's Decameron, two of the all-time greatest works of literature. So I was looking forward to it, when I discovered what Fourteen Days was all about and how it was written. But while Chaucer labored on his own for decades to develop his fascinating collection of "sundry folk" and craft their collection of mostly brilliant tales using the frame device of a story-telling contest on the road to Canterbury, the only remarkable thing about this rushed mess of half-baked, mostly dull stories told by a collection of crabby New Yorkers on the rooftop of their crappy apartment building over the course of two weeks at the beginning of the lockdown is the way Atwood and Doug Preston convinced 34 of their fellow writers to join them on this project, each author contributing a story without attribution with Preston apparently (according to the "note" which kicks off the book) weaving them together in the pandemic frame device.
So...kudos to Atwood and Preston for assembling this collection of sundry writers to join them on this potentially significant project. Sadly, however, as with most committee work, it fails to move beyond the initial idea into something meaningful and remains a group of unrelated stories, most of which feel phoned in by the authors, both great and small.
Here's what Fourteen Days promises in the opening note: "Above all, Fourteen Days is a celebration of the power of stories. since long before the invention of writing, we human beings have faced our gravest challenges by telling stories. When we are confronted with war, violence, terror--or a pandemic--we tell stories to sort things out and push back against a frightening and incomprehensible world. Stories tell us where we've been and where we're going. They make sense of the senseless and bring order to disorder. They transmit our values across generations and affirm our ideas. They skewer the powerful, expose the fraudulent, and give voice to the disenfranchised .... stories are what make us human."
And that's so true for The Canterbury Tales (and for most of what we call great literature). But it has almost nothing to do with the contents of Fourteen Days, most of which fails to shed any light on the human condition at all, and adds no sense to the senseless and pretty much collapses into disorder by the fourteenth day, despite Preston's best efforts to craft his frame device which, like Chaucer's, showcases the squabbling story tellers, and sadly outshines most of the stories they tell. If only the different authors had been up to the challenge of providing better tales for their tellers, this might have become an excellent reflection of life during the pandemic. But as it is, this collection of stories feels more like just another victim of the pandemic instead of something that will transcend time and endure to show future generations of readers what life was like during this time in history.
As a great fan of Chaucer, here's what I did: I began the book with great anticipation and pen in hand. I scribbled a hasty matrix in the back of my book with apartment numbers and story tellers: 1A) The Super, 2B) Vinegar, 2D) The Lady with the Rings, 3D) Darrow, 4D) Whitney, 5E) Amnesia, et al, sketching out the 24 or so tenants by apartment number and "pilgrim" name, along with the story tellers who join them along the way on their journey, a la Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman. Then I attempted to provide a short descriptor for each story, hoping to trace the thematic elements and establish correspondences between the tales and their tellers, along with some pertinent details about each "pilgrim": their job, gender, ethnicity, status, etc., which like with Chaucer's tellers, generally reflects on their tales.
Ha. What a waste of time, attempting to establish my own order on the disorder of this mishmash of stories. By the halfway point I realized my efforts were going to be in vain, but I kept at it and as the days continued the lack of structure and unity became more and more apparent because unlike Chaucer who has labored to create thematic and structural arcs throughout his collection of stories, shedding light on his contemporary societal hierarchies and providing sharp commentary on the power structures of his time, our authors in Fourteen Days each seem to be writing in a vacuum without any idea of the order of their tales, who their teller is, who is responding to whom, or what themes and concerns they might be addressing. Our 36 authors fail to provide much in the way of correspondences among the stories or even provide much real insight into the inequities and fragilities of life during the pandemic or the terrible challenges we were facing then.
That's not to say that it's all a disaster in Fourteen Days. There is a small handful of gems here to be found among the approximately 40 stories, beyond the interactions of our feuding tale tellers in Preston's frame device. For me, I did not want to ruin the fun by flipping to the "About the Contributors" at the end of the book to find out who wrote what. But when I finally did, I quickly discovered my two favorite pieces were written by the two most regarded authors in the project (fancy that), Atwood herself and Ishmael Reed. And then I learned that one of my other favorites was written by none other than Erica Jong, whom I had assumed was long dead. Mirabile dictu. There's life in the old lady yet.
Reed's piece might be the best of all, and possibly the most pertinent. In it, his "pilgrim," the Poet (a Black professor of poetry with connections in the New York publishing world who has been recently asked to write a life-coaching book instructing white people on techniques about how to get along with Black people), relates a story from just before the lockdown when he is invited by a pair of his former students to join a pandemic reading circle at an art gallery that will be exploring "classical readings about the plague," beginning with the Decameron. The reading collapses in hilarious chaos by the second session as the academics and artists attending the discussion become bogged down in their various contemporary concerns finding Boccacio to be privileged, Eurocentric, homophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic, classist, and able-ist, among the long litany of horrified objections voiced by the participants. Reed must have greatly enjoyed himself here, skewering both the contemporary concerns along with the dusty classics, and also poking some fun at a number of his fellow writers on the project. I would love to know what Reed really thought about joining this group of mostly much younger writers.
+++++++++++++++++
Well-intentioned birthday gift from my brother. Sorry!
It's hard for me to crap on this book with a one-star rating, especially since it was a birthday gift, features Margaret Atwood's name on the cover, falls under the category of pandemic lit (a genre I have a fondness for myself having engaged in a small pandemic lit reading group during that shittiest of years), and is inspired by Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio's Decameron, two of the all-time greatest works of literature. So I was looking forward to it, when I discovered what Fourteen Days was all about and how it was written. But while Chaucer labored on his own for decades to develop his fascinating collection of "sundry folk" and craft their collection of mostly brilliant tales using the frame device of a story-telling contest on the road to Canterbury, the only remarkable thing about this rushed mess of half-baked, mostly dull stories told by a collection of crabby New Yorkers on the rooftop of their crappy apartment building over the course of two weeks at the beginning of the lockdown is the way Atwood and Doug Preston convinced 34 of their fellow writers to join them on this project, each author contributing a story without attribution with Preston apparently (according to the "note" which kicks off the book) weaving them together in the pandemic frame device.
So...kudos to Atwood and Preston for assembling this collection of sundry writers to join them on this potentially significant project. Sadly, however, as with most committee work, it fails to move beyond the initial idea into something meaningful and remains a group of unrelated stories, most of which feel phoned in by the authors, both great and small.
Here's what Fourteen Days promises in the opening note: "Above all, Fourteen Days is a celebration of the power of stories. since long before the invention of writing, we human beings have faced our gravest challenges by telling stories. When we are confronted with war, violence, terror--or a pandemic--we tell stories to sort things out and push back against a frightening and incomprehensible world. Stories tell us where we've been and where we're going. They make sense of the senseless and bring order to disorder. They transmit our values across generations and affirm our ideas. They skewer the powerful, expose the fraudulent, and give voice to the disenfranchised .... stories are what make us human."
And that's so true for The Canterbury Tales (and for most of what we call great literature). But it has almost nothing to do with the contents of Fourteen Days, most of which fails to shed any light on the human condition at all, and adds no sense to the senseless and pretty much collapses into disorder by the fourteenth day, despite Preston's best efforts to craft his frame device which, like Chaucer's, showcases the squabbling story tellers, and sadly outshines most of the stories they tell. If only the different authors had been up to the challenge of providing better tales for their tellers, this might have become an excellent reflection of life during the pandemic. But as it is, this collection of stories feels more like just another victim of the pandemic instead of something that will transcend time and endure to show future generations of readers what life was like during this time in history.
As a great fan of Chaucer, here's what I did: I began the book with great anticipation and pen in hand. I scribbled a hasty matrix in the back of my book with apartment numbers and story tellers: 1A) The Super, 2B) Vinegar, 2D) The Lady with the Rings, 3D) Darrow, 4D) Whitney, 5E) Amnesia, et al, sketching out the 24 or so tenants by apartment number and "pilgrim" name, along with the story tellers who join them along the way on their journey, a la Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman. Then I attempted to provide a short descriptor for each story, hoping to trace the thematic elements and establish correspondences between the tales and their tellers, along with some pertinent details about each "pilgrim": their job, gender, ethnicity, status, etc., which like with Chaucer's tellers, generally reflects on their tales.
Ha. What a waste of time, attempting to establish my own order on the disorder of this mishmash of stories. By the halfway point I realized my efforts were going to be in vain, but I kept at it and as the days continued the lack of structure and unity became more and more apparent because unlike Chaucer who has labored to create thematic and structural arcs throughout his collection of stories, shedding light on his contemporary societal hierarchies and providing sharp commentary on the power structures of his time, our authors in Fourteen Days each seem to be writing in a vacuum without any idea of the order of their tales, who their teller is, who is responding to whom, or what themes and concerns they might be addressing. Our 36 authors fail to provide much in the way of correspondences among the stories or even provide much real insight into the inequities and fragilities of life during the pandemic or the terrible challenges we were facing then.
That's not to say that it's all a disaster in Fourteen Days. There is a small handful of gems here to be found among the approximately 40 stories, beyond the interactions of our feuding tale tellers in Preston's frame device. For me, I did not want to ruin the fun by flipping to the "About the Contributors" at the end of the book to find out who wrote what. But when I finally did, I quickly discovered my two favorite pieces were written by the two most regarded authors in the project (fancy that), Atwood herself and Ishmael Reed. And then I learned that one of my other favorites was written by none other than Erica Jong, whom I had assumed was long dead. Mirabile dictu. There's life in the old lady yet.
Reed's piece might be the best of all, and possibly the most pertinent. In it, his "pilgrim," the Poet (a Black professor of poetry with connections in the New York publishing world who has been recently asked to write a life-coaching book instructing white people on techniques about how to get along with Black people), relates a story from just before the lockdown when he is invited by a pair of his former students to join a pandemic reading circle at an art gallery that will be exploring "classical readings about the plague," beginning with the Decameron. The reading collapses in hilarious chaos by the second session as the academics and artists attending the discussion become bogged down in their various contemporary concerns finding Boccacio to be privileged, Eurocentric, homophobic, antisemitic, misogynistic, classist, and able-ist, among the long litany of horrified objections voiced by the participants. Reed must have greatly enjoyed himself here, skewering both the contemporary concerns along with the dusty classics, and also poking some fun at a number of his fellow writers on the project. I would love to know what Reed really thought about joining this group of mostly much younger writers.
+++++++++++++++++
Well-intentioned birthday gift from my brother. Sorry!
Want to Read
April 26, 2023Do I need more pandemic novels? Not necessarily.
Do I need more Margaret Atwood and lot’s of other great writers? Yes.
Sign me up! 📖
Do I need more Margaret Atwood and lot’s of other great writers? Yes.
Sign me up! 📖
August 2, 2024
This collaborative effort by the Authors Guild of America provides the reader with a curious story woven together by the minds of many wonderful writers. Taking the premise of COVID-19 isolation, the story shines a light on a rag-tag group that met on the roof of their apartment building, sharing ideas and stories about their lives. This group, isolated from the world due to the pandemic, learn about one another and themselves as they gther over two weeks. What comes of it will change them all, as life is transformed, both on the roof and in the larger world. A great story that showcases the wonders of author collaboration.
When COVID-19 hit the world, it almost froze people in their tracks. Isolation became the way to be and many people found themselves locked away, scared to engage with others, for fear of getting sick. On New York’s Lower East Side, a group of people have been left to stay in their apartments, wondering what is next for them. They find themselves gravitating onto the apartment roof, to chat, to make noise, or simply to toss off the shackles of isolation.
These nightly gatherings allow neighbours to come together and share stories about these lives. While they have lived next to one another for periods of time, they discover they are strangers. This nightly connection turns many from faceless entities into closest friends, as the stories pile up and people begin to lower their walls. Truths come to light and ideas spark new stories, as well as those people had long buried in their pasts. While the pandemic is not going to end soon, the connections and bonds developed over these fourteen days will bring a community together and make fast friends of those who might never have given one another the time of day in their apartment hallways. A stellar collection of ideas from some of the greatest writers in the industry to date. One not to be missed for those who enjoy something a little different.
While I do not usually gravitate towards some of these larger collaborative efforts, I could not help but take a look at this one. The Authors Guild of America pulls together those from both the fiction and non-fiction genres, seeking to create a story that is unlike many I have read. Using COVID-19 as a backdrop, the writers prepare a story that illustrates how individual and united people are, and how one pandemic could bring people together to show just how similar they can be, given the chance. With strong chapters and key themes emerging on each page, the authors provide the reader with something they can enjoy, talk about, and ponder as the story takes on various twists and turns. I could not help but be impressed with what the collection brought out in me. A great piece for those who can relax their expectations and prepare for the unexpected.
Kudos, Authors Guild of America, for this strong story that opened my eyes and mind alike.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
When COVID-19 hit the world, it almost froze people in their tracks. Isolation became the way to be and many people found themselves locked away, scared to engage with others, for fear of getting sick. On New York’s Lower East Side, a group of people have been left to stay in their apartments, wondering what is next for them. They find themselves gravitating onto the apartment roof, to chat, to make noise, or simply to toss off the shackles of isolation.
These nightly gatherings allow neighbours to come together and share stories about these lives. While they have lived next to one another for periods of time, they discover they are strangers. This nightly connection turns many from faceless entities into closest friends, as the stories pile up and people begin to lower their walls. Truths come to light and ideas spark new stories, as well as those people had long buried in their pasts. While the pandemic is not going to end soon, the connections and bonds developed over these fourteen days will bring a community together and make fast friends of those who might never have given one another the time of day in their apartment hallways. A stellar collection of ideas from some of the greatest writers in the industry to date. One not to be missed for those who enjoy something a little different.
While I do not usually gravitate towards some of these larger collaborative efforts, I could not help but take a look at this one. The Authors Guild of America pulls together those from both the fiction and non-fiction genres, seeking to create a story that is unlike many I have read. Using COVID-19 as a backdrop, the writers prepare a story that illustrates how individual and united people are, and how one pandemic could bring people together to show just how similar they can be, given the chance. With strong chapters and key themes emerging on each page, the authors provide the reader with something they can enjoy, talk about, and ponder as the story takes on various twists and turns. I could not help but be impressed with what the collection brought out in me. A great piece for those who can relax their expectations and prepare for the unexpected.
Kudos, Authors Guild of America, for this strong story that opened my eyes and mind alike.
Love/hate the review? An ever-growing collection of others appears at:
http://pecheyponderings.wordpress.com/
April 13, 2024
This book’s concept and list of authors sold me from the first. Fourteen days quarantined in New York City during the early days of the pandemic. Telling stories nightly on the rooftop. Written by a diverse group of excellent authors. What’s not to love.
Some of the characters and stories were less believable than others but I was intrigued. At times the stories and days felt overlong and draggy which was consistent with how those long days, weeks, of quarantining felt.
Although there are a number of negative reviews I stand by my five star rating. Oh, there is a bit of a twist at the end. Don’t read ahead.
Some of the characters and stories were less believable than others but I was intrigued. At times the stories and days felt overlong and draggy which was consistent with how those long days, weeks, of quarantining felt.
Although there are a number of negative reviews I stand by my five star rating. Oh, there is a bit of a twist at the end. Don’t read ahead.
May 29, 2024
...........i can't believe this is the ending....... after all that......... i went through so much to get to the end of this book for FIVE months for that?!
February 27, 2024
This Authors Guild Foundation collaborative project is a Covid-era Decameron update in which the residents of an increasingly derelict New York City apartment complex meet on the rooftop every evening for two early lockdown weeks to clap for healthcare workers, indulge in adult beverages, and swap random stories. The tenants all go by nicknames like “Hello Kitty,” “Florida” and “Vinegar.” The frame narrative has the building superintendent (Yessie, a lesbian of Romanian heritage) worrying over her father’s wellbeing in a care home and surreptitiously recording the oral stories on her phone to later transcribe into the “bible” kept by the previous super. We’re told up front that the manuscript ends up in police custody.
I had a misconception that each chapter would be written by a different author. I think that would actually have been the more interesting approach. Instead, each character is voiced by a different author, and sometimes by multiple authors across the 14 chapters (one per day) – a total of 36 authors took part. I soon wearied of the guess-who game. I most enjoyed the frame story, which was the work of Douglas Preston, a thriller author I don’t otherwise know.
There was a promising idea here, but problems with the execution. One is that, for the most part, the stories are pointless. The characters get hung up on whether they’re ‘true’ or not, but for readers it’s all made up and, while one or two individual tales might be amusing, they do nothing to build a plot and so I found myself mostly skipping over them to get back to the interactions on the roof and the super’s commentary. Another is that, to stand out from an ensemble cast, a voice needs to be really distinctive, and only “Eurovision” (flamboyantly gay) was that for me – based on my love for his rabbit story in particular, I should be reading Joseph Cassara. And finally, the book culminates with an annoying twist that made me cross.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
I had a misconception that each chapter would be written by a different author. I think that would actually have been the more interesting approach. Instead, each character is voiced by a different author, and sometimes by multiple authors across the 14 chapters (one per day) – a total of 36 authors took part. I soon wearied of the guess-who game. I most enjoyed the frame story, which was the work of Douglas Preston, a thriller author I don’t otherwise know.
There was a promising idea here, but problems with the execution. One is that, for the most part, the stories are pointless. The characters get hung up on whether they’re ‘true’ or not, but for readers it’s all made up and, while one or two individual tales might be amusing, they do nothing to build a plot and so I found myself mostly skipping over them to get back to the interactions on the roof and the super’s commentary. Another is that, to stand out from an ensemble cast, a voice needs to be really distinctive, and only “Eurovision” (flamboyantly gay) was that for me – based on my love for his rabbit story in particular, I should be reading Joseph Cassara. And finally, the book culminates with an annoying twist that made me cross.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
December 14, 2023
What a book! Anything with Margaret Atwood’s name on it has my vote, but I usually avoid collaborative texts, feeling ‘less is more’. But this one blew my socks off.
36 Canadian and American writers assume the identity of a persona resident in an apartment block in New York during lockdown.
The new ‘Super’ of the building finds the key to the roof door and the roof becomes her ‘place’.
From this vantage point, she has stupendous views over the city and we get a vivid sense of the impact of lockdown.
Gradually the residents join her (socially distanced, of course), and the stories they want and need to share are told over 14 days.
And so, we are transported from this rooftop into these captivating experiences; funny, wise, brutal, beautiful worlds. Stories are hosted by the self-appointed emcee, Eurovision. And the numbers keep growing. So many voices, so many lives.
And the tragedy of Covid is eventually revealed in for me, a completely unexpected ending.
Who contributed what?
You have to wait, to find out.
Astonishing and brilliant.
Thank you @netgalley and @vintage books for my ARC. What a gift!
36 Canadian and American writers assume the identity of a persona resident in an apartment block in New York during lockdown.
The new ‘Super’ of the building finds the key to the roof door and the roof becomes her ‘place’.
From this vantage point, she has stupendous views over the city and we get a vivid sense of the impact of lockdown.
Gradually the residents join her (socially distanced, of course), and the stories they want and need to share are told over 14 days.
And so, we are transported from this rooftop into these captivating experiences; funny, wise, brutal, beautiful worlds. Stories are hosted by the self-appointed emcee, Eurovision. And the numbers keep growing. So many voices, so many lives.
And the tragedy of Covid is eventually revealed in for me, a completely unexpected ending.
Who contributed what?
You have to wait, to find out.
Astonishing and brilliant.
Thank you @netgalley and @vintage books for my ARC. What a gift!
February 29, 2024
Why?!? Such a good premise drew me in to slog through this book of stories about the pandemic... New York as a setting... a collaborative effort that includes many famous authors... for a while the stories themselves kept my interest but the ending is the reason for this one star review
April 21, 2025
Special thanks to Harper Perennial for sending a free, physical copy of this novel to me in exchange for an honest review.
“Fourteen Days” is a collaborative novel with contributions from authors such as Diana Gabaldon, R.L. Stine as well as two of my Canadian favourites, Margaret Atwood and Emma Donoghue (as well as many, many more).
Set during two weeks of the Covid pandemic, in New York City, a group of apartment dwellers meet nightly, socially distant of course, on the rooftop of their building, in order to tell stories and form connection with the outside world during the lockdown.
Each chapter of the novel features a few of the building’s residents, each telling stories, of themselves, or of others, some true and some maybe-not-so-much. Each story in the novel is penned by one of the many fiction authors attached to the novel but it is so well-written and put together, that it is absolutely impossible to tell which author penned what chapter (although there is a breakdown at the back of the novel for the extremely curious, like myself).
The lockdown is still fresh in all of our minds and being reminded of the isolation and lack of connection is definitely an emotional soft spot for most of us. However, the downtrodden characters of the Fernsby Arms apartment building are fresh and refreshing, unique, rare and delightfully human, and it was easy to be welcomed into their socially distant circle as they slowly started to make connections through the art of storytelling. Ironically, or maybe not so much, the novel itself is a representation of creative people coming together to form connection through storytelling, and it was crafted beautifully.
I cannot imagine the challenge involved in writing a story-within-a-story, especially as an effective collaboration with a group of other exceptionally talented writers, but “Fourteen Days” shows exactly what the best example of this could be.
The stories were heartwarming, reminding us of a time when humans were simply trying to survive their day-to-day, all told by characters from every background and experience and the ending was unexpected and completely surprising in the best way.
Through a collection of seemingly unconnected stories, eccentric characters, and the darkest of times, “Fourteen Days” will make a deep connection with readers through the shared love of storytelling.
“Fourteen Days” is a collaborative novel with contributions from authors such as Diana Gabaldon, R.L. Stine as well as two of my Canadian favourites, Margaret Atwood and Emma Donoghue (as well as many, many more).
Set during two weeks of the Covid pandemic, in New York City, a group of apartment dwellers meet nightly, socially distant of course, on the rooftop of their building, in order to tell stories and form connection with the outside world during the lockdown.
Each chapter of the novel features a few of the building’s residents, each telling stories, of themselves, or of others, some true and some maybe-not-so-much. Each story in the novel is penned by one of the many fiction authors attached to the novel but it is so well-written and put together, that it is absolutely impossible to tell which author penned what chapter (although there is a breakdown at the back of the novel for the extremely curious, like myself).
The lockdown is still fresh in all of our minds and being reminded of the isolation and lack of connection is definitely an emotional soft spot for most of us. However, the downtrodden characters of the Fernsby Arms apartment building are fresh and refreshing, unique, rare and delightfully human, and it was easy to be welcomed into their socially distant circle as they slowly started to make connections through the art of storytelling. Ironically, or maybe not so much, the novel itself is a representation of creative people coming together to form connection through storytelling, and it was crafted beautifully.
I cannot imagine the challenge involved in writing a story-within-a-story, especially as an effective collaboration with a group of other exceptionally talented writers, but “Fourteen Days” shows exactly what the best example of this could be.
The stories were heartwarming, reminding us of a time when humans were simply trying to survive their day-to-day, all told by characters from every background and experience and the ending was unexpected and completely surprising in the best way.
Through a collection of seemingly unconnected stories, eccentric characters, and the darkest of times, “Fourteen Days” will make a deep connection with readers through the shared love of storytelling.
March 24, 2024
1.5 stars
Fourteen Days is a collaborative novel set over the course of two weeks in April 2020 in New York. It tells the story of a group of tenants in a run-down apartment block in New York who congregate ever night to celebrate the essential works and tell stories as the pandemic rages around them. Every chapter is written by a different author. It's funded by the American Society of Authors and features some big names - Margaret Atwood, Celeste Ng among them.
And it reads like a bad writing school project. It's self-indulgent and inconsistent. Some chapters are tight and interesting and engaging and others don't work for me because the authors are too disparate in their styles. It could have been so good but because each author wants to write in THEIR style, it feels cheap and, yes, I'll say it again, self-indulgent. I enjoyed the parts written by Douglas Preston as he set up and closed the story and I thought the ending was clever but the rest of it was bad. And Margaret Atwood's chapter? As much as it pains me to say it, it was one of the worst.
Maybe it's too soon for me to read Covid narratives. Maybe the collaborative novel isn't for me. Or maybe someone should have gently told these authors and the American Society of Authors that this was a nice idea but best left in the classroom or on a blog.
Fourteen Days is a collaborative novel set over the course of two weeks in April 2020 in New York. It tells the story of a group of tenants in a run-down apartment block in New York who congregate ever night to celebrate the essential works and tell stories as the pandemic rages around them. Every chapter is written by a different author. It's funded by the American Society of Authors and features some big names - Margaret Atwood, Celeste Ng among them.
And it reads like a bad writing school project. It's self-indulgent and inconsistent. Some chapters are tight and interesting and engaging and others don't work for me because the authors are too disparate in their styles. It could have been so good but because each author wants to write in THEIR style, it feels cheap and, yes, I'll say it again, self-indulgent. I enjoyed the parts written by Douglas Preston as he set up and closed the story and I thought the ending was clever but the rest of it was bad. And Margaret Atwood's chapter? As much as it pains me to say it, it was one of the worst.
Maybe it's too soon for me to read Covid narratives. Maybe the collaborative novel isn't for me. Or maybe someone should have gently told these authors and the American Society of Authors that this was a nice idea but best left in the classroom or on a blog.
February 19, 2024
Absolute garbage! One if the worst books I’ve ever read. I had such high hopes for this with an array of great authors collaborating but it was beyond disappointing. I only continued to the end because it was expensive and I desperately hoped for improvement. It never came! The stories are disjointed, bizarre, dull, pointless in the main. And trigger warning - one story contains rape and another suicide. Just awful all round and a huge waste of time
April 17, 2024
this collection of short stories didnt totally do it for me enjoyed some of them
June 2, 2024
If I could give this book half a star I would. It sounded like a good idea; it wasn't. I have no idea what Margaret Atwood or any of the others involved with this book were thinking.
The premise was that for fourteen days during NYC's covid lockdown a group of apartment dwellers all go up to the rooftop. Here they take part in the 7pm cheer for all the emergency workers, doctors and nurses. After that they share stories with each other. Some are personal and some are made up. Different authors were tasked with the writing of each day.
There was an attempt to frame the stories together but it failed. I didn't care about the characters or their stories. I was expecting each individual author to stand out. None did. They all sounded the same. In the end it began to resemble a university literature group project in which each group member decided that all they needed was a pass.
I barely read the final story it was so pretentious and the conclusion to this mess just made me mad. Avoid at all costs.
The premise was that for fourteen days during NYC's covid lockdown a group of apartment dwellers all go up to the rooftop. Here they take part in the 7pm cheer for all the emergency workers, doctors and nurses. After that they share stories with each other. Some are personal and some are made up. Different authors were tasked with the writing of each day.
There was an attempt to frame the stories together but it failed. I didn't care about the characters or their stories. I was expecting each individual author to stand out. None did. They all sounded the same. In the end it began to resemble a university literature group project in which each group member decided that all they needed was a pass.
I barely read the final story it was so pretentious and the conclusion to this mess just made me mad. Avoid at all costs.
May 11, 2026
A book of people sharing stories. It have many different angles and was pretty fun. Although some story worked better than others.
August 13, 2024
Que horror de libro
February 5, 2024
I guarantee that FOURTEEN DAYS is unlike anything you have ever read before. It is a 'collaborative novel' set in NYC amidst the recent COVID-19 Pandemic. The novel is told through stories from a myriad of different characters and is incredibly powerful.
The concept for FOURTEEN DAYS is a brilliant one as created by Editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and on behalf of the Authors Guild Foundation. This is not a serial novel nor does it follow the rules of classic frame narrative as seen in such works as the Decameron or The Canterbury Tales. Rather, the fourteen days depicted in this story contain a series of novellas strung together by the various authors to portray different stories being shared by the residents of an apartment building in the Lower East Side where the residents meet nightly at 7PM on the rooftop to cheer medical personnel and swap stories. It is a novel about the very essence of story-telling and celebrates the written word in an incredibly unique way.
If there is a narrator to this story, it would be the Romanian female super of the building, who keeps a record of the various stories told over the two-week period. Allegedly, the narrative of FOURTEEN DAYS came from an unclaimed manuscript found in a storage facility in Brooklyn which was retrieved and published on February 6, 2024. Our Super learned how to do this job by watching her father who had the same role when she was a child at a building in Queens. She now laments how the Pandemic has kept her from her father who she has been unable to reach to check up on.
The previous Super kept a book referred to as the Fernsby Bible, named for the building and containing information on each tenant along with the nicknames he gave them. It is here where she quickly identifies the first six people who begin to gather on the rooftop at night. We have Vinegar, Eurovision, the Lady with the Rings, the Therapist, Florida, and Hello Kitty. They get somewhat acquainted with each other and begin to share different stories. Soon, their group will grow considerably as more and more tenants learn about the nightly rooftop ritual.
Eurovision supplies the music and they entertain each other with various tales that are all interesting. No need to look for a message, as some are just simply good stories, but they all work wonders in connecting people who were otherwise disconnected and only brought together due to this unfortunate global health crisis. Many of the stories were incredibly moving or ironic based on what was going on in their world. Several tales involved the dead or dying. Whitney, the Museum Librarian, for instance, provided a chilling tale about encountering a ghost while visiting the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.
One day, they find someone has put some unpleasant bit of graffitti by the mural that sits atop their building. Slowly, different artistic and creative residents reclaim this piece by adding statements or literary sayings to return the true art that was originally intended. Each evening, the residents make it a routine to break up the story-telling group when the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral ring at 7P.M.
Not everyone appreciates each story that is told, some are true stories while others are pure fiction. It is here where Eurovision nicely reminds them of the purpose of their sessions by quoting the great Oscar Wilde to all: "Lying is telling of beautiful untrue things --- the proper aim of Art." The stories include classical references like when local professor Prospero shares how William Shakespeare kept his writing alive during the time of the Black Death. The stories and characters become surreal, like when the mysterious stand-up comic Morty Gund appears to share a story from his own life and then seemingly vanishes like he had leapt from the very rooftop.
It will be purely up to the reader to try and determine which author contributed what piece of the story, as no names are attached to the Fourteen Days. All in all, thirty-six top flight writers lend their talents to this brilliant exercise and the end results are truly something special. This is the best fictional piece I have read yet in regards to the Pandemic and it is extremely touching and memorable. I only hope that it is never made into a film, because that would ruin it. FOURTEEN DAYS belongs exclusively to the readers.
Reviewed by Ray Palen for Book Reporter
The concept for FOURTEEN DAYS is a brilliant one as created by Editors Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston and on behalf of the Authors Guild Foundation. This is not a serial novel nor does it follow the rules of classic frame narrative as seen in such works as the Decameron or The Canterbury Tales. Rather, the fourteen days depicted in this story contain a series of novellas strung together by the various authors to portray different stories being shared by the residents of an apartment building in the Lower East Side where the residents meet nightly at 7PM on the rooftop to cheer medical personnel and swap stories. It is a novel about the very essence of story-telling and celebrates the written word in an incredibly unique way.
If there is a narrator to this story, it would be the Romanian female super of the building, who keeps a record of the various stories told over the two-week period. Allegedly, the narrative of FOURTEEN DAYS came from an unclaimed manuscript found in a storage facility in Brooklyn which was retrieved and published on February 6, 2024. Our Super learned how to do this job by watching her father who had the same role when she was a child at a building in Queens. She now laments how the Pandemic has kept her from her father who she has been unable to reach to check up on.
The previous Super kept a book referred to as the Fernsby Bible, named for the building and containing information on each tenant along with the nicknames he gave them. It is here where she quickly identifies the first six people who begin to gather on the rooftop at night. We have Vinegar, Eurovision, the Lady with the Rings, the Therapist, Florida, and Hello Kitty. They get somewhat acquainted with each other and begin to share different stories. Soon, their group will grow considerably as more and more tenants learn about the nightly rooftop ritual.
Eurovision supplies the music and they entertain each other with various tales that are all interesting. No need to look for a message, as some are just simply good stories, but they all work wonders in connecting people who were otherwise disconnected and only brought together due to this unfortunate global health crisis. Many of the stories were incredibly moving or ironic based on what was going on in their world. Several tales involved the dead or dying. Whitney, the Museum Librarian, for instance, provided a chilling tale about encountering a ghost while visiting the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas.
One day, they find someone has put some unpleasant bit of graffitti by the mural that sits atop their building. Slowly, different artistic and creative residents reclaim this piece by adding statements or literary sayings to return the true art that was originally intended. Each evening, the residents make it a routine to break up the story-telling group when the bells of St. Patrick's Cathedral ring at 7P.M.
Not everyone appreciates each story that is told, some are true stories while others are pure fiction. It is here where Eurovision nicely reminds them of the purpose of their sessions by quoting the great Oscar Wilde to all: "Lying is telling of beautiful untrue things --- the proper aim of Art." The stories include classical references like when local professor Prospero shares how William Shakespeare kept his writing alive during the time of the Black Death. The stories and characters become surreal, like when the mysterious stand-up comic Morty Gund appears to share a story from his own life and then seemingly vanishes like he had leapt from the very rooftop.
It will be purely up to the reader to try and determine which author contributed what piece of the story, as no names are attached to the Fourteen Days. All in all, thirty-six top flight writers lend their talents to this brilliant exercise and the end results are truly something special. This is the best fictional piece I have read yet in regards to the Pandemic and it is extremely touching and memorable. I only hope that it is never made into a film, because that would ruin it. FOURTEEN DAYS belongs exclusively to the readers.
Reviewed by Ray Palen for Book Reporter
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