The Brooklyn Rail

A charitable project for the Authors Guild Foundation, most of the stories in this collection are single entries by well-known writers whose diversity is described as “a thumb in the eye of … literary balkanization.” While this diversity is honorable, it also creates an uneven reading experience. Each story appears without a byline, but attributions appear in the back of the book. Although the introduction claims it’s not a “classic frame narrative,” comparisons can be made to the Decameron. Told over fourteen days from March 31 through April 13, 2020, these are tales told by New Yorkers seemingly unable (or unwilling) to escape the city during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Douglas Preston wrote the frame narrative and connective text between the stories. Preston’s writing is adequate but his characterization of “the super”—a queer thirty-something white woman struggling with the loss of her father—isn’t always convincing. She’s our guide through the text, and I wanted to trust her character more than I could. Her language veers between extremes, and while perhaps that’s meant as part of her characterization, it doesn’t always work. She describes the building as “a decaying crapshack” and a few lines later shifts to: “Little did I know the magical allure that a half-eaten pen and blank paper would have on me.” It’s jarring and made me question other details of her narrative. The building at 2 Rivington Street is described as “should have been torn down long ago” and located next to an abandoned lot. It’s “dark, cold, and drafty; the hallways have weird smells; and there are cracked and broken windows everywhere.” While it may seem like nitpicking, none of these details are possible on Rivington Street in 2020. Again, this is about trust—as I read, I wasn’t sure I trusted this writer to write about my neighborhood. Thankfully, the text (mostly) redeems itself by the end, despite a bit of a bumpy ride through the stories told by those who show up on the building’s roof.

As the city goes into lockdown, the super finds a key to the roof and goes there for respite. Tenants soon break the lock and join her. They begin telling stories, and as the stories spin out, the variety of writers helps to show the diversity of tenants. Maria Hinojosa writes a compelling story about merengue and the crash of flight 587. Celeste Ng writes about a Chinese grandmother who places curses for family members. Angie Cruz writes about losses of social distancing: “Don’t you all miss it? The dancing, the getting up close to someone, the music so loud you can’t hear your mind, and the vibrations of the speakers inside your heart.” Out of the many stories, there are also highlights from Mira Jacob and Diana Gabaldon writing beautifully about loss and grief. Tess Gerritsen’s visiting ER Doctor describes the agonizing deaths she’s witnessing: “They suffocate to death. The ICU is like a roomful of people being waterboarded, except all you can hear is the sighing of the ventilators. But you can feel the silent, end-of-life terror.” More highlights include Luis Alberto Urrea’s “Alicia and the Angel of Hunger” with its longing and uplift, Charlie Jane Anders’s strange fairy tale about the nature of truth, Pat Cummings’s very NYC theater tale, Tommy Orange’s chilling revenge story, Roxana Robinson’s story of a tenant appraising art while the owner lies dying—chilling and sad. Nelly Rosario’s compelling “Rivington Rosary” is one of the only NYC-based tales—focused on a Dominican-American family who’ve been evicted and end up on the roof.

The stories are about birth, life, love, death, violence, and loss—all the mess of living—and they serve the tellers in building community. As the “Lady with the Rings” says, “We’re castaways … a bunch of strangers washed up from the wrecked world. And now we’re stuck with each other on a deserted island, whether we like it or not.” As another tenant says, “Out of trauma comes the potential for connection.” The super says, “I was glad for the stories.… It was good to have a break from the fear.” And, in one of the more New York exchanges in the text, the tenant known as Prospero says “…what’s happening on this rooftop is an assertion of our humanity against the terror and banality of a virus.” And in response, the Lady with the Rings responds “Oh, hush.”

In between storytelling sessions, the super keeps a tally of COVID statistics. It’s hard to read the super’s observation of possible losses “imagine: fifty thousand dead,” without feeling a sharp reminder of the totality of loss. By day fourteen, many questions are answered but I’m still working through my response: grief, anger, and not a little betrayal. To echo Epicurus whose words show up on a rooftop mural painted by the tenants, “Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent.”