This is the first pandemic related novel that I have read. I’m sure there will be many more. Most of it takes place over four days in March of 2020. Since the pandemic is still going on, the final outcome is not yet over. But it is an interesting detail that throughout the book, Nelson includes the number of cases and number of deaths worldwide and the number of cases and deaths in the United States as of that particular date. The novel ends on July 25, 2020 with 145,860 people dead in the U.S. when “baseball resumed” in the Oakland Coliseum—although there were no people in the stands and all the support franchises were missing. There are now 664,000 deaths in the U.S. and the virus is still going strong.
It is interesting that both Nelson and his character are unsure of what to do—how to react to the pandemic. Back in March of 2020 it was all new in terms of how to confront the disease, whether it was going to be short term and over in six months or long term and be with us for a long time. Some of the characters don’t seem to care—and that’s still true. The protagonist is immune-compromised which makes his condition uncertain. He is also recently separated from his wife, who has been cheating on him, and he has lost his job as a security guard because the building and business that he worked for has laid him off. And just to add a bit more complexity, the protagonist is offered a job guarding the computers that store BitCoin transactions.
The world is portrayed as gray, as a world after the apocalypse—stores closed, streets empty of cars and people. All that adds to the fact that the protagonist works the night shift.
The story is written from the first person point of view as would suit the loner existence. The protagonist seems gray and flat, like a paper doll. There’s a doctor that has some character and a friendly, old security guard that added a touch of color. But it is a sad scenario and maybe that fits the world right now.
Writing about the pandemic while it is going on was a bold challenge. We still don’t know where it is going to go, and some subjects need time to develop so you can look back on them and say, “Oh, that’s what was going on.” Nelson certainly writes well, and he tells an interesting tale.