Just to offer one example, 1931′s The Floating Admiral was a collaborative novel written by the members of The Detection Club, a dining institution of mystery writers. The book, featuring such luminaries as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers and edited by GK Chesterton, featured a chapter from each writer and they all lobbed in solutions which were collected at the end.
Fourteen Days, a product of The Author’s Guild, is a similar undertaking, although closer to a short story anthology, told within the framework of New York Covid-19 shut-ins. These “castaways ... washed up from a wrecked world” meet every evening on the roof of the rundown Fernsby Arms on the city’s lower east side to swap tales and have more than a few drinks. The sizeable cast of contributors – edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston – features big names such as John Grisham, Celeste Ng, Scott Turow and Emma Donoghue.
Narrated by the building’s new superintendent, who unlocks the roof door and then surreptitiously records the stories told, writing them out so they can be mysteriously found in storage at the property clerk division of the NYPD later on, this volume attests, rather overtly, to the power of storytelling and our need for human connection.
Strangers becoming neighbours via yarn exchange may sound saccharine but this is a rewarding collection
The stories are of an almost uniformly high standard and half the fun is trying to guess who’s writing what, with the credits helpfully provided at the end. While the usually unimpeachable Donoghue’s contribution could use a bit more fleshing out, sections such as James Shapiro’s explanation of how Shakespeare owes his prominence to another pandemic and Atwood’s deliciously weird Spider Woman Exterminator are very entertaining.
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Stronger by Nicola Hanney: An unputdownable memoir about escaping coercive control
Gliff by Ali Smith: Part allegory, part dystopian fiction, altogether thrilling
Shattered by Hanif Kureishi: Darkly funny insights into the indignities and anguish caused by sudden incapacitation
Many entries, such as Hampton Sides’ story about Elijah Vick, a Memphis guitar player who always wanted to swim across the Mississippi and then very nearly loses an arm to a prehistoric alligator when he does so, or Dave Eggers’s Storyteller, where things start to go violently off the deep end and reveal a hitherto unseen side to our narrator, warrant books on their own.
Strangers becoming neighbours via yarn exchange may sound saccharine but this is a rewarding collection despite its slightly superfluous twist and, as a bonus, you’ll be able to truthfully boast that you’ve read all these authors at your next dinner party.
