Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel

by The Authors Guild, Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston

Overview

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!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780358616382
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/06/2024
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	59,098
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in more than forty-five countries, is the author of over fifty books, including fiction, poetry, critical essays, and graphic novels. In addition to The Handmaid’s Tale, now an award-winning television series, her works include Cat’s Eye, short-listed for the 1989 Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; The MaddAddam Trilogy; The Heart Goes Last; Hag-Seed; The Testaments, which won the Booker Prize and was long-listed for the Giller Prize; and the poetry collection Dearly. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Franz Kafka International Literary Prize, the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Los Angeles Times Innovator’s Award. In 2019 she was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in Great Britain for her services to literature. She lives in Toronto.

Douglas Preston has published 39 books of fiction and nonfiction, of which 32 have been New York Times bestsellers, some reaching the #1 position. Two of his novels, co-written with Lincoln Child, were chosen in a National Public Radio poll of readers as being among the 100 greatest thrillers ever written. His recent nonfiction book, The Lost City of the Monkey God, was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and National Geographic magazine. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker Magazine. He worked as an editor for the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the U.S. and Europe, and he served as president of the Authors Guild from 2019 to 2023.

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2023

This beguiling novel of the Covid-19 pandemic was coauthored by 36 members of the Authors Guild, including Atwood, Preston, John Grisham, and Celeste Ng. The loosely connected narrative portrays a group of tenants who regularly convene on the rooftop of their New York City apartment building during the lockdown to share stories with one another. It begins on Mar. 31, 2020, with the arrival of a new unnamed super, who inherits a handbook from her predecessor with a list of the current tenants identified by their nicknames. They include “Whitney,” a librarian who works at the Whitney Museum and tells a ghost story about a fallen soldier at the Alamo. There’s also “Maine,” an ER doctor who’s visiting from Maine to help with the overload of Covid cases, and who shares a story about a nun’s ability to predict patients’ time of death at the doctor’s Maine hospital. As the weeks go by, the super declines to share a story of her own until the final evening on April 13, when her revelation casts the tenants’ situation in a new light. Though the authors’ contributions aren’t identified until the end notes, the reader senses various shifts in style and voice, which can be welcome or jarring, depending on one’s taste. Still, fans of literary puzzles will find this worthwhile. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2023-11-15
A Decameron-esque storytelling collaboration with a Covid-19 premise.

Thirty-six authors contributed to this lively and predictably somewhat uneven work of fiction sponsored by and benefiting the Authors Guild Foundation, styled as an unclaimed manuscript found in New York’s lost property office. The narrative within is set on the rooftop of a Lower East Side “six-floor walk-up with the farcical name of the Fernsby Arms, a decaying crapshack tenement that should have been torn down long ago,” per the lively frame story penned by Douglas Preston in the persona of Yessenia Grigorescu, the building’s super. From a notebook left by her predecessor in the job, Yessie knows the tenants by evocative sobriquets: The Lady With the Rings, Amnesia, Eurovision, Hello Kitty, the Poet, Vinegar, and so forth. They come up to the roof at 7 p.m. to participate in the huzzah for health care workers, which was a nightly ritual during Manhattan’s lockdown, and then settle into the routine of sharing stories, each written by a different author. One is constantly flipping to the backmatter to see who wrote what; though not all authors are household names, plenty are—Emma Donoghue, Dave Eggers, Diana Gabaldon, John Grisham, Erica Jong, Tommy Orange, Scott Turow, Luis Alberto Urrea, Meg Wolitzer, and more—though it’s not always the big names who contribute the best work. Fortunately, Preston’s frame story keeps everything moving. Day One gets off to a rollicking start, with stories from Merenguero’s Daughter and The Therapist, actually Maria Hinojosa and Celeste Ng. Anchored in Dominican and Chinese culture, respectively, these stories introduce a theme of diversity that’s one of the joys of the book. There are ghost stories, a war story, many tales of betrayal and revenge, and a report on Shakespeare’s plague experience by scholar James Shapiro. Little to no information is provided about the process behind the book, how contributors were chosen, etc. Since celebrity-watching is part of the draw, that could have been fun.

A multicultural tribute to the New York lockdown experience. Many parts are moving and/or funny; others, easy to skip.

Kirkus Reviews

A Lit Hub "Most Anticipated Books of 2022" * A Hartford Courant "Highly Anticipated Book" * A Readers Digest "New Books We Can't Wait to Read" * A PBS "Monthly Book Recommendation" * A New York Times "New Book to Read" * An Amazon Editor's Pick * The Messenger's "10 Must Read Books" — -

“An immensely enjoyable product of an immensely unenjoyable time, Fourteen Days is lively, freewheeling and, with its skillfully paced denouement – the super herself’s tale – an impressive achievement.”
— The Guardian

"Paradise for avid readers.” — Los Angeles Times

“A rich melting pot of characters and genres. . . . A valuable reminder that stories can teach, console, provide a place of acceptance and perhaps even change their readers (or listeners).”  — Financial Times

"Poignant and emotionally resonant. . . . Should you wait until you’re finished to read the end notes that detail who wrote what?. . . I guarantee some of the matches—and the way the stories are thrown together—will surprise you.” — San Francisco Chronicle

"An interesting experiment in collective storytelling." — Literary Hub

"Proves that even a global pandemic can’t curb creativity . . . that the stories we leave behind are what makes us human.” — Associated Press

"These stories introduce a theme of diversity that’s one of the joys of the book. There are ghost stories, a war story, many tales of betrayal and revenge, and a report on Shakespeare’s plague experience by scholar James Shapiro. . . . A multicultural tribute to the New York lockdown experience. . . . Moving and . . . funny.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Beguiling. . . . Fans of literary puzzles will find this worthwhile.” — Publishers Weekly

“…the storytellers are splendidly diverse in race, age, gender, ethnicity, and calling….Putting a bold new twist on the plague novel, this bountiful, unpredictable, witty, and affecting tale-of-tales is made all the more intriguing by the fact that it’s a collaboration by 36 exceptional North American writers….This enthralling novel of many voices and moods dramatizes the transformation of isolation into community via stories and explores a grand spectrum of human experiences.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Reading Fourteen Days is like sitting by a campfire, with characters taking turns telling tales about their lives.”
— The Economist

"Highly entertaining." — Berkshire Edge

“The stories lead toward an overall point about how people form communities. When the group offers hospitality toward the end, it is apparent that the individual storytellers, for all their differences, have become a community. It's a sign of hope and resilience for humanity.” — Daily Kos

“The publication of Fourteen Days could not have been more timely…The power of much of the writing here is undeniable, as is the sense of personal testimony.” — The Guardian

From the Publisher