The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic
a collection of short stories from The New York Times (2020)
This was definitely an interesting idea put forth by The New York Times. These stories were written during the height of the pandemic, but that doesn't mean that COVID-19 was the main conflict. In fact, in most of these stories, COVID-19 took a back seat to the plot, and each story focused more so on how the pandemic affected the characters and settings.
I struggled between 3 stars and 4 stars for this one – it's tough to rate a whole collection of short stories with just one number. The quality of the stories varied – some of them were really entertaining and thought-provoking, some were just average, and some of them didn't grab my attention at all. But I'll highlight my top ten favorites (in no particular order):
- “Recognition” by Victor LaValle
- “The Rock” by Leïla Slimani
- “Outside” by Etgar Keret
- “Keepsakes” by Andrew O'Hagan
- “The Girl With The Big Red Suitcase” by Rachel Kushner (probably my favorite)
- “If Wishes Was Horses” by David Mitchell
- “The Perfect Travel Buddy” by Paolo Giordano
- “The Cellar” by Dina Nayeri
- “Origin Story” by Matthew Baker
- “Barcelona: Open City” by John Wray
These particular stories were great, and made the whole collection worth reading. Would recommend to anyone who wants to read a variety of 1-2 short stories at a time to fill up some gaps in the day.