Jeremy Siegel: This is GBH's Morning Edition. At the height of the pandemic. A group of writers decided to do something different.
Celeste Ng: The whole thing started when I got an email, to my huge surprise, from Margaret Atwood, saying, we're thinking of doing this weird project. We're all alone right now in COVID, everyone feels isolated. We want to do something where we can work together.
Siegel: That's Celeste Ng, the bestselling author of several books, including "Little Fires Everywhere." And the idea she was being pitched was to contribute to a collaborative novel set during the early days of COVID. A group of authors working together on one book about tenants who gather on the roof of their apartment building during lockdown to get fresh air, bang pots and pans celebrating first responders, and to share their own stories.
Ng: And when I heard that idea, I thought, oh, that's such a great narrative device to pull together so many different people whose voices otherwise might never connect with each other.
Siegel: The final result is called "14 Days." Dozens of acclaimed authors contributed, including Ng, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham and Tommy Orange. But the catch, Ng told me, is: The authors are not credited until the very end of the book, so you don't know who you're reading.
Ng: It's fun to read it like a puzzle in a way, of kind of guessing who wrote what. And I was surprised in reading some of it, going, oh, that was you? It's a fun chance to sort of try on a new voice, to almost do a little ventriloquism.
Siegel: Were you aware at all of what other authors were writing when it was being written?
Ng: I wasn't. We were kept pretty separate from each other, not by design, but just I think that's, you know, that's the nature of a writer's life. You're very solitary. And so as I started hearing about more and more of the writers that had signed on, I was startled myself. I was like, oh, wow, you're writing this too? Like, R.L. Stine is going to be in this? I read your books when I was a kid. It's amazing. And so I got the final copy just pretty recently, actually, and to see how they're all woven together has been really fun for me as a reader.
Siegel: It was funny reading the book because during the pandemic and in the early ages after the initial wave of COVID, I kind of found everything involving COVID a little bit icky. I was thinking like, I don't want to read about this, I don't want to watch anything.
Ng: Oh, me too.
Siegel: But right now, with the release of this novel, it's sort of the first time I've been able to look back on COVID, or the height of the pandemic, as a particular period. What was it like being in that moment, trying to write something that's sort of representative of such a monumental moment in world history?
Ng: It's really hard. I have never been a writer who can write about the time that I'm in very comfortably. I feel like I need a lot more distance in order to see things clearly, and I think that might be why now we're seeing a lot of pandemic novels, so to speak, come out. Michael Cunningham has a new book out that takes place during the pandemic, Ann Patchett just had a book come out that also takes place during the pandemic. I'll have to look back in, you know, five, 10, 20 years and see if what I wrote says something about the pandemic. But I think it will, because whatever you create during a certain period, I think it's always inflected by the time that you're in. And so even if we were writing and we weren't quite getting it right, we weren't getting the full picture because we were in it, I think what we wrote in that book will say something about the experience of that particular moment, even if we didn't realize it was.
Siegel: The story that you wrote almost feels like a parable of sorts. When you were writing this, especially with it being during the pandemic in a time when people were really trying to figure out their own lives and the way lives work. Were you trying to write something that could sort of teach people about a certain period?
Ng: One of the things that I was very aware of at the time that I was writing the story was that there were a lot of attacks happening against Asian Americans, and in particular against Asian American elders. And so the piece that I wrote does involve an Asian American elder and her voice. And I wanted in some ways to create that character and give her a little moment in the spotlight so that we remembered that she's a part of society, that what's happening now affects everybody in different ways, depending on who they are. That was sort of the timely piece of it that I was thinking as I went into writing the piece. But I wonder if I'll look back on this book now and see it again as almost like a parable, as you were saying earlier about the pandemic, that sometimes things are so big that you couldn't do them all at once. I could not have written this book by myself, right? And yet, when everybody puts in a little bit, you can actually come up with something pretty amazing. And I hope that's one of the things we'll take from the pandemic, that even when there are really huge societal problems, one person can't solve them, but everybody maybe can do a little bit, and that might add up to something.
Siegel: Author Celeste Ng, one of several contributors to the new novel "Fourteen Days." Thank you so much for your time this morning.
Ng: Thanks so much.
Siegel: "Fourteen Days" is available now and proceeds from the sale of the novel go to support the U.S. Authors Guild Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to promotion and advocacy of writers and the freedom to read. You're listening to GBH's Morning Edition.
At the height of the pandemic, a group of writers decided to do something different.
“The whole thing started when I got an email, to my huge surprise, from Margaret Atwood, saying, we're thinking of doing this weird project,” author Celeste Ng said. “We're all alone right now in COVID, everyone feels isolated. We want to do something where we can work together.”
Ng is the bestselling author of several books, including "Little Fires Everywhere." The idea she was being pitched was to contribute to a collaborative novel set during the early days of COVID: A group of authors working together on one book about tenants who gather on the roof of their apartment building during lockdown to get fresh air, bang pots and pans celebrating first responders, and to share their own stories.
“And when I heard that idea, I thought, oh, that's such a great narrative device to pull together so many different people whose voices otherwise might never connect with each other,” she said.
The final result is "Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel." Dozens of acclaimed authors contributed, including Ng, Margaret Atwood, John Grisham and Tommy Orange.
But the catch, Ng said, is this: The authors are not credited until the very end of the book, so you don't know who you're reading.
“It's fun to read it like a puzzle in a way, of kind of guessing who wrote what,” she said. “And I was surprised in reading some of it, going, oh, that was you? It's a fun chance to sort of try on a new voice, to almost do a little ventriloquism.”
Though the book is billed as a collaborative novel, Ng said she did not know the names of all the contributors while she worked on her part.
“We were kept pretty separate from each other, not by design, but just I think that's, you know, that's the nature of a writer's life. You're very solitary,” she said. “As I started hearing about more and more of the writers that had signed on, I was startled myself. I was like, oh, wow, you're writing this too? Like, R.L. Stine is going to be in this? I read your books when I was a kid. It's amazing.”
Seeing how the final story was woven together was fun for Ng as a reader, she said.
The process of writing about COVID in real time, as the pandemic’s initial lockdowns were happening, was a novel one for her.
“I have never been a writer who can write about the time that I'm in very comfortably, I feel like I need a lot more distance in order to see things clearly,” Ng said. “I'll have to look back in, you know, five, 10, 20 years and see if what I wrote says something about the pandemic.”
Ng’s piece was inspired by seeing racist attacks on Asian Americans, particularly older adults.
“The piece that I wrote does involve an Asian-American elder and her voice,” she said. “And I wanted in some ways to create that character and give her a little moment in the spotlight so that we remembered that she's a part of society, that what's happening now affects everybody in different ways, depending on who they are.”
The story she wrote — and the process of contributing to a collaborative novel — may end up being a parable for what it was like to live through the pandemic’s beginning, she said.
“I could not have written this book by myself,” she said. “And yet, when everybody puts in a little bit, you can actually come up with something pretty amazing. And I hope that's one of the things we'll take from the pandemic, that even when there are really huge societal problems, one person can't solve them, but everybody maybe can do a little bit, and that might add up to something.”