Fourteen Days by Margaret Atwood

Fourteen Days Reviews

• 
  Emily May

  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.
• 
  s.penkevich

  Wait, 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?
• 
  Sharon Orlopp

  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!
• 
  Ceecee

  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.
• 
  Emily B

  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.
• 
  Marchpane

  This looks completely bananas...
• 
  Talkincloud

  3.5 🌟 za zakończenie, którego się nie spodziewałem!
• 
  Katie Samsock

  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.
• 
  Audrey

  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).
• 
  Henk

  Do I need more pandemic novels? Not necessarily.
  Do I need more Margaret Atwood and lot’s of other great writers? Yes.
  Sign me up! 📖
• 
  Kobe

  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
• 
  Nilguen

  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.
  
  
  Find me on instagram
• 
  Petergiaquinta

  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 greatest works of literature ever written. 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 responding to. 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!
• 
  Matt

  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/
• 
  Carol

  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!
• 
  Rebecca

  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.
• 
  Marian

  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
• 
  Stephen

  this collection of short stories didnt totally do it for me enjoyed some of them
• 
  Jade Lazaro

  This book was a big WT* for me to put it nicely. I really wanted to love this book, but I just couldn't. I started to guess what happened at the end of it because I honestly felt like it needed a big wraparound plot to make up for the hodgepodge of stories wrapped in here. If you want to understand this book, don't try to memorize all the characters within the stories that the characters tell. I gave up. Basically, everyone is on this rooftop telling a random mix of stories during the pandemic. These stories... some are meaningful and others are just big random interruptions that really make no sense when you're reading them. I remember the comedian story at the time making zero sense to me when I read it, but once I got to the end of the book I kind of understood what happened to him. My biggest question is if some of these people weren't even tenants, how the heck are they relevant to the building and the story. The family that was kicked out of their home? Why the fernsby arms building? How did they meet the same fate as the others if they hadn't even met the Super yet to get a place to stay? Or were they the squatters in that creepy apartment building? I don't know. i really did not like that last story with the our "family name" and "teller" dialogue. if it weren't for my obsessive need to always finish a book before i count it as a goodreads finish, i would have skipped that entire crockpot of a story. it had waaaay too much going on to actually figure out what the actual h*** was going on. looking back on the story now, some of the other stories are just now starting to make sense to me because of the ending. Overall, I understand what the authors were trying to do with their stories and have them come to a conclusive finish. However, I think too much was trying to be accomplished with the stories within stories element and still have it make sense that it completely comes off chaotic and disorganized. I did enjoy some of the characters' narratives, yet this could
  have been a bit more organized than what it was
• 
  Mandy

  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.
• 
  Buchdoktor

  Durch den Lockdown während der Corona-Pandemie 2020 finden sich die Hausmeisterin und die Bewohner eines heruntergekommenen fünfstöckigen Mietshauses in Brooklyn ans Haus gefesselt. Der Ausstieg auf das Dach (mit Handyempfang!) scheint ihr einziger Bezug zur Außenwelt zu sein. Die Sirenen der Krankenwagen vergegenwärtigen in jeder Minute hier oben, dass im weltweiten Vergleich New York eine der höchsten Todesraten hat.
  
  Jeder Mieter bringt am Abend seine Sitzgelegenheit, Lampe und Getränk mit nach oben. Die Abstandsregel gilt auch hier oben; ein diffuses Misstrauen gegenüber einer möglichen Ansteckung durch die Nachbarn wird spürbar. Alle scheinen einzige Bewohner ihre jeweiligen Apartments zu sein und noch ist unklar, ob alle Wohnschachteln bewohnt sind. Die Hausmeisterin, die lange namenlos bleibt, hat den Job gerade neu übernommen und sieht sich der Verantwortung für das Gebäude gegenüber, für das die Vermieter sich nicht zu interessieren scheinen. Der einzige Lichtblick für die junge, kräftige Frau ist „die Bibel“ ihres Vorgängers, ein Ringbuch, in dem er jedem Mieter einen Spitznamen verpasste und zur Person einige Stichwörter notierte. Nicht alle Seiten im Buch sind beschrieben. Spitznamen und die Apartment-Nummern definieren die Personen, die sich geschützt durch die Dunkelheit während einer Spanne von 14 Tagen Geschichten erzählen. Es gibt erlebte, weitererzählte, zitierte und gelogene Geschichten, sowie Sinnieren über das Erzählen an sich. Einige Personen schreiben selbst. Durch Spitzname, Person und die Figur, von der erzählt wird, wirkt das Ganze vielschichtig. Die Geschichten sind eng verflochten und wirken keinesfalls wie Kurzgeschichten. Themen sind z. B. der Tod, Krankheit, Familie, Aberglaube, Adoption, Rache und Musik.
  
  In New York als Einwanderer-Stadt spielt fast in jeder Story Herkunft, Identität und Hautfarbe eine Rolle. Herkunft scheint ein unerschöpflicher Fundus für das Erzählen zu sein. Mich zwang die Herkunft der Figuren zum Differenzieren; es genügte nicht mehr, jemanden z. B. nur Mittelamerika oder dem amerikanischen Süden zuzuordnen. Hochinteressant fand ich die Dynamik in der Gruppe, wer sich wann zu Wort meldet oder wer sich zum Sprechen ermutigen lässt.
  
  Mit einer pfiffig gewählten Rahmenhandlung handelt es sich hier tatsächlich um einen Roman, keine Anthologie, der die Handschrift von 36 zum großen Teil weltbekannten Autoren trägt und mit vielfältigen wie überraschenden Wendungen überzeugt.
• 
  Steph Hall

  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
• 
  Rachel

  ...........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?!
• 
  Marion

  Aufarbeitung der Coronazeit, in Geschichten, die über 14 Tage auf dem Dach eines Hauses erzählt werden. Mit einer Rahmenhandlung drum herum.
  Ganz unterschiedliche Geschichten in Stil und Inhalt.
  Fand ich richtig gut.
  Eine Gemeinschaftsarbeit von mehr als 30 Autoren, was für eine erstaunliche Idee.
• 
  Buchdoktor

  Durch den Lockdown während der Corona-Pandemie 2020 finden sich die Hausmeisterin und die Bewohner eines heruntergekommenen fünfstöckigen Mietshauses in Brooklyn ans Haus gefesselt. Der Ausstieg auf das Dach (mit Handyempfang!) scheint ihr einziger Bezug zur Außenwelt zu sein. Die Sirenen der Krankenwagen vergegenwärtigen in jeder Minute hier oben, dass im weltweiten Vergleich New York eine der höchsten Todesraten hat.
  
  Jeder Mieter bringt am Abend seine Sitzgelegenheit, Lampe und Getränk mit nach oben. Die Abstandsregel gilt auch hier; ein diffuses Misstrauen gegenüber einer möglichen Ansteckung durch die Nachbarn wird spürbar. Alle scheinen einzige Bewohner ihre jeweiligen Apartments zu sein und noch ist unklar, ob alle Wohnschachteln bewohnt sind. Die Hausmeisterin, die lange namenlos bleibt, hat den Job gerade neu übernommen und sieht sich der Verantwortung für das Gebäude gegenüber, für das die Vermieter sich nicht zu interessieren scheinen. Der einzige Lichtblick für die junge, kräftige Frau ist „die Bibel“ ihres Vorgängers, ein Ringbuch, in dem er jedem Mieter einen Spitznamen verpasste und zur Person einige Stichwörter notierte. Nicht alle Seiten im Buch sind beschrieben. Spitznamen und die Apartment-Nummern definieren die Personen, die sich geschützt durch die Dunkelheit während einer Spanne von 14 Tagen Geschichten erzählen. Es gibt erlebte, weitererzählte, zitierte und gelogene Geschichten, sowie Sinnieren über das Erzählen an sich. Einige Personen schreiben selbst. Durch Spitzname, Person und die Figur, von der erzählt wird, wirkt das Ganze vielschichtig. Die Geschichten sind eng verflochten und wirken keinesfalls wie Kurzgeschichten. Themen sind z. B. der Tod, Krankheit, Familie, Aberglaube, Adoption, Rache und Musik.
  
  In New York als Einwanderer-Stadt spielt fast in jeder Story Herkunft, Identität und Hautfarbe eine Rolle. Herkunft scheint ein unerschöpflicher Fundus für das Erzählen zu sein. Mich zwang die Herkunft der Figuren zum Differenzieren; es genügte nicht mehr, jemanden z. B. nur Mittelamerika oder dem amerikanischen Süden zuzuordnen. Hochinteressant fand ich die Dynamik in der Gruppe, wer sich wann zu Wort meldet oder wer sich zum Sprechen ermutigen lässt.
  
  Mit einer pfiffig gewählten Rahmenhandlung handelt es sich hier tatsächlich um einen Roman, keine Anthologie, der die Handschrift von 36 zum großen Teil weltbekannten Autoren trägt und mit vielfältigen wie überraschenden Wendungen überzeugt.
  
• 
  Ale Caótica

  Que horror de libro
• 
  Jennifer Mangler

  There were some stories I really did not like, but overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. I haven't ever read a collaborative effort quite like this one.