Pandemic fiction: Fall books include stories of the virus

NEW YORK (AP) — Near the end of 2020, the pandemic had lasted long enough for author Jodi Picoult to try something that seemed unthinkable for novelists in its early stages — turn it into fiction.

“At the beginning of the pandemic, I couldn’t even read, much less write. I didn't have the focus,” says Picoult, who last November began the novel “Wish You Were Here.” The fall release is set in New York and the Galapagos during the first two months of the pandemic, March-May of last year.

“I couldn't find myself in my own life; writing the book was therapeutic," she added. "I finished a draft in February, very quickly. And the whole time it was going on, I was talking to friends of mine, telling them, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work.' But I had very positive responses and feel that, unlike almost any other topic, I have written a book about this one experience that everyone on the planet has lived through."

From wars to plagues to the Sept. 11 attacks, the literary response to historic tragedies has been a process of absorbing trauma — often beginning with poetry and nonfiction and, after months or years, expanding to narrative fiction. The pandemic has now lasted into a second fall season for publishing, and a growing number of authors, among them Picoult, Louise Erdrich, Gary Shteyngart and Hilma Wolitzer, have worked it into their latest books.

Shtyengart's “Our Country Friends" features eight friends who gather in a remote house as the virus spreads, a storyline for which he drew upon Chekhov and other Russian writers, and upon Boccaccio's 14th century classic “The Decameron.” Amitava Kumar's “A Time Outside This Time” tells of an Indian-American author working at an artists retreat and trying to make sense of President Donald Trump, 24-hour media and an...