September 11 didn’t feel like ancient history by the time Martin Amis published The Last Days of Muhammad Atta in 2006 or Don DeLillo’s Falling Man came out in 2007. Yet – at least as a subject for fiction – the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020 already has that air. It’s partly because novelists were so quick to respond, from Ali Smith to Sally Rooney to Elizabeth Strout and more besides. It’s partly, too, that fictionalising those events doesn’t require the bravado Amis mustered when he sought to get inside a hijacker’s mind; we’ve all been living through Covid. Do we want to go back – again – to how it began?
Yes, say the authors of two new novels that adopt contrasting narrative approaches to that period as experienced in New York. In Day, by Michael Cunningham (author of Pulitzer-winning The Hours), a middle-aged couple is riven by everyday discord over three consecutive Aprils, from 2019 until 2021. Dan’s rock star dreams have given way to househusbandry while magazine editor Isabel finds her daily commute fuels fantasies of giving up life to work as a diner waitress. Pushed and pulled in their wake are their two children, 10-year-old Nathan and five-year-old Violet, as well as Isabel’s brother and lodger, Robbie, whose willingness to pitch in with the kids won’t stop him getting the boot when she and Dan want a bigger home.
