This book was written and set during the covid lockdown period and is a collaborative novel, which means it was written by lots of different people. A lot of big names in the world of literature, in fact, contributed, and the proceeds were to support writers losing money due to lockdown.
The premise is that a woman starts a new job as building supervisor to a New York apartment block during the covid lockdown and every evening the few remaining inhabitants (it’s a topic of much complaining that all the people who could afford it left New York for their county homes when lockdown struck) converge on the rooftop terrace every evening initially to bang pans and clap in support of key workers, but in what develops into a platform for each person to tell their story to the group.
The different stories are written by different authors (we are not told who wrote what) and vary quite a lot in how much they held my interest – some where great, others not so much. One thing that annoyed me was that the stories were supposed to be spoken to the group and some where so not the way anyone would speak when recounting a story and very much the way someone might write a novel.
From other reviews I’ve looked at, it seems the ending divided opinion, but I did like how the novel ended.
Sarah Wray Writer 