Fourteen Days
As seen:
By Margaret Atwood, Douglas Preston, and and, Shayna Small
avg rating
1 review
Brought to you by Penguin.
A BBC, Financial Times and Cosmopolitan What to Read in 2024 pick
Set in a New York apartment building, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive novel with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of neighbours has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice – from Margaret Atwood and John Grisham to Emma Donoghue and Celeste Ng.
One week into lockdown, the tenants of a run-down apartment building in Manhattan have begun to gather on the rooftop each evening and tell stories. With each passing night, more and more neighbours gather, bringing chairs and milk crates and overturned pails. Gradually the tenants – some of whom have barely spoken to each other before now – become real neighbours.
A dazzling, heartwarming and ultimately surprising narrative, Fourteen Days is an ode to the power of storytelling and human connection.
Includes writing from: Charlie Jane Anders, Margaret Atwood, Jennine Capo Crucet, Pat Cummings, Joseph Cassara, Angie Cruz, 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, Doug Preston, Alice Randall, Caroline 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, DeShawn Charles Winslow, Meg Wolitzer
© ed. Margaret Atwood 2023 (P)2023 Penguin Audio
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Whitley Bay Book Group discussed Fourteen Days in May 2025.
Fourteen Days is a collaborative novel by 36 authors within an overarching narrative framework– if you want to find out who wrote what, there’s an index at the end. During the early Covid-19 lockdown, the inhabitants of a Manhattan apartment building meet every evening on the roof of their building, and tell stories, some of them stories they had been ashamed of or afraid to tell before.
Most of us liked the idea and were looking forward to reading this book, but as with any collection of stories by a range of authors, they are of variable quality, with some being really good, and some incomprehensible. However, most of us felt the book as a whole didn’t hang together in a coherent way, and we were ultimately disappointed in it. We haven’t read much Covid fiction, with some of us preferring to leave Covid behind, and some wanting a deeper reflection on the characters’ experiences of that time.
We had a good discussion about the ending though (no spoilers), and whether and when we saw it coming. We felt the ending was successful and interesting.
We awarded the book either 2 or 3 stars, with an average of 2.5.
