Pandemic lockdowns and restrictions provided a time for quiet, stillness and contemplation for some people; surely the perfect environment for a creative person to thrive in. So writers, for the most part, had time to write. Yet it must have been a challenging decision to include any mention of Covid at all, let alone allow it to form the basis of their plots. Not to mention, after contemplating whether to include the pandemic in their novels, the next question must have been would we, as readers, want to read about it?
Do we not read as a form of escapism? Do we not read to put aside our concerns, worries and stresses in order to be transported to other worlds in which we live other people’s lives? Regardless of whether their lives are more miserable or more luxurious, what is so inviting about fiction is that it is not our world. So, how does Covid fit into this? How can we sit down at the end of the day, after our real world filled with stresses caused by Covid, and read about Covid?
There have surely been countless other times throughout history when writers painstakingly considered whether they should include the events of that time in their fiction writing or instead bypass the events, either by not mentioning them or pretending they did not happen at all. However, unless set in mythical and fantastical worlds where there is very little connection to our 21st century societies, setting a novel in the year 2020 and beyond and pretending Covid did not happen would feel disjointed and make me feel uncomfortable. As if the fear and suffering we went through collectively as a human race was somehow insignificant and easily wiped. In any case, what would our world without Covid even look like?
Following is a short list of fiction books which confront, or at the very least, mention the pandemic:
Summer by Ali Smith: given the concept behind Smith’s ‘Seasonal Quartet’, four books following the four seasons and written to capture current events, there was no way around the subject: Covid had to be confronted otherwise it would not have been a true reflection of the time.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich: originally started before the pandemic, Erdrich decided to incorporate the current affairs of 2020 into the plot of this book and tackled the painful events taking place in America at that time, including Covid lockdowns.
Wish You Were Here by Jodie Picoult: quoted as saying she does not think of this book as a novel about Covid, but as a “novel about surviving”, Picoult tackled the global lockdown restrictions head on.
Undoubtedly, as restrictions ease and we inevitably come to terms with living with the virus, Covid will continue to appear in our fiction books. Some might offer a reflection on the time when the world stood still, on what kind of people we became with minimal human contact outside of our households, on how the virus brought out the very best and the very worst in us as humans. Others might focus on what the world might become following these frightful two years; I think fiction will focus on our inability to control the unknown, but above all, human resilience.
Francesca Rothery
@bookswithfrancesca
Writer
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