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* 4.5 * It seems inevitable that 2020, that ignominious year, now safely in our rearview mirror, will at least provide fertile ground for the imaginative mind. While we wait for these seminal works of literature to percolate and ripen, The Decameron Project- 29 New Stories Stories From The Pandemic provides an immediate response to these seismic events that have shaped our lives.This short story collection was commissioned by the New York Times Magazine in March 2020 and spans a period up to Jul...
This is an anthology of 29 short stories commissioned by the editors of The New York Times Magazine during the pandemic. The NYT managed to attract a lot of very famous authors, including Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange, David Mitchell, Laila Lalami, Colm Tóibín and Edwidge Danticat. The stories reference the pandemic to varying degrees but some provide glimpses of what life was like during the initial global lockdown, new ways to cope and an appreciation of familiar places and activities that are...
Inspired by Baccaccio’s 1353 compilation of stories told as the Black Death raged near Florence, the New York Times Magazine commissioned a number of notable authors to write their own short story. These very short stories were written after the first wave of the pandemic which resulted in lockdowns and travel restrictions. We have now endured marathon lockdowns, overwhelmed hospitals, exhausted health care workers, and the politicization of the virus; so some of the stories already seem a touch...
A nice, varied collection of 29 short stories, quite short in fact. As with any short story collection, some are better than others, but the BEST one, hands down, is Impatient Griselda by Margaret Atwood. Her wit and humor at its best.
(3.5) Creative responses to Covid-19, ranging from the prosaic to the fantastical. Worry over a sick baby (Liz Moore), screen time as a distraction or reward (Alejandro Zambra); sadness, loss, or just boredom. I appreciated the mix of authors, some in translation and some closer to genre fiction than lit fic.Standouts were by Victor LaValle (NYC apartment neighbors; magic realism), Colm Tóibín (lockdown prompts a man to consider his compatibility with his boyfriend), Karen Russell (time stops du...
Read in the original version when first released by the NY Times Magazine. It is an awesome collection. Highly recommended.
Disappointing messnot in the spirit at allshocking lack of nuns.
Reading about this pandemic as it’s happening has been... interesting. Many stories were set in New York and other major cities in April, and reading them from the vantage point of a suburb in December was downright bizarre. The deserted streets and desperation for human contact permeating many of these stories contrasted with my reality working retail right across a lockdown border, telling customers to pull their masks up over their noses and dealing with people who didn’t understand why their...
This was really a mixed bag. I read some of these stories in the NY Times magazine and listened to some on audio. I was hoping to like it a lot more than I did. There are some very good stories in here along with quite a few forgettable ones.
It what I needed, this strangely comforting collection of shorts stories about the pandemic. The stories are short but with an anxious, exhausted mind, they feel lengthy, like bits of memories from the last year: the bad that some of us luckily lived through, the silly that we clung to for survival, and the long stretch of loneliness, stretched so thinly you were *this* close to snapping. The quality of writing is more or less consistent—I'm more forgiving these days—and there are several stando...
Love the concept of a modern, COVID Decameron. All star cast of authors. Buuuut, it reminded me, in tone, of the environmental edition of McSweeney's last year. Maybe themed short story collections aren't for me. They all ended up blending together at some point. My favourites were the ones that played with form, like Clinical Notes by Liz Moore (literally told through the point of view of notes documenting a young family's late-night stress about baby's fever) and Systems by Charles Yu told fro...
Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for this arc, which I received in exchange for an honest review. I will post that review upon publication.Updated 11/10/204 stars Like all collections - particularly those by a compilation of distinct authors - there are some standout works here and some that fall a bit short. In some ways, it's too soon to appreciate these writings. After all, we're still very much living in the pandemic; in Southern California, especially, the life we started living in March cl...
