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A review by mandyherbet
Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel by Douglas Preston, Margaret Atwood, The Authors Guild
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.5
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 every 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.
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.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Pandemic/Epidemic