A Light in the Darkness: Books That Came Out During COVID
Six years after the start of COVID, senior editor Michael Woodson shares five books that were released in 2020 that deserve your attention.
Last month, I talked about different books that use real and imagined pandemics in their stories, and I opened that piece with a personal anecdote about the wild experience of accidentally reading a book about a fictional pandemic at the start of our very own, very real pandemic.
Listen, 2020 was wild. It was painful and difficult and any number of other adjectives that can help illustrate a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time. But books became the answer to my endless loneliness, the refuge from that unseen, persistent threat. Reading in 2020 felt almost sacred to me. In the warmer months, I’d uncover our patio furniture and sit with a book in my lap under the shade of the large oak tree that cascades over our fence—the short distance between the back door of my home and the concrete slab at the back of our yard being the closest thing to travel I would feel for many moons. The uninterrupted focus on whatever I was reading is something I don’t take for granted now in a world that feels somehow even more rushed than pre-2020.
But this is coming from the perspective of the reader. For the writer, they may not reminisce with such nostalgia. Authors being traditionally published have no control when they’re books land in bookstores. Anything could be happening in the world that can have a direct or indirect impact on how their book performs. For books that released in 2020 and the first half of 2021, that meant they were releasing into bookstores with no foot traffic, no scheduled book tours, maybe the occasional glitchy Zoom event or Instagram live—but more often the reality was the book came out rather quietly. Publishing is already a game of hurry up and wait, and to have experienced the full breadth of drafting to manuscript, to agenting and publisher interest, to line and copy edits, to cover design, to release dates and planned media outreach, only to be thrown into a crippling economy amidst a global pandemic? Not exactly the stuff of dreams.
But those books from that time in our lives matter to me, and I want to continue to celebrate them. Here are a few books that released in 2020 that deserve your attention.
[Descriptions from book cover copy. Books are listed in entirely random order. WD uses affiliate links.]
A Star Is Bored by Byron Lane
Charlie Besson is tense and sweating as he prepares for a wild job interview. His car is idling, like his life, outside the Hollywood mansion of Kathi Kannon, star of stage and screen and People magazine’s Worst Dressed list. She's an actress in need of assistance, and he's adrift and in need of a lifeline.
Kathi is an icon, bestselling author, and award-winning movie star, most known for her role as Priestess Talara in a blockbuster sci-fi film. She’s also known in another role: Outrageous Hollywood royalty. Admittedly so. Famously so. Chaotically so, as Charlie quickly discovers.
Charlie gets the job, and his three-year odyssey is filled with late-night shopping sprees, last-minute trips to see the aurora borealis, and an initiation to that most sacred of Hollywood tribes: the personal assistant. But Kathi becomes much more than a boss, and as their friendship grows Charlie must make a choice. Will he always be on the sidelines of life, assisting the great forces that be, or can he step into his own life's leading role?
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
Conjure Women is a sweeping story that brings the world of the South before and after the Civil War vividly to life. Spanning eras and generations, it tells of the lives of three unforgettable women: Miss May Belle, a wise healing woman; her precocious and observant daughter Rue, who is reluctant to follow in her mother’s footsteps as a midwife; and their master’s daughter Varina. The secrets and bonds among these women and their community come to a head at the beginning of a war and at the birth of an accursed child, who sets the townspeople alight with fear and a spreading superstition that threatens their newly won, tenuous freedom.
Temporary by Hilary Leichter
In Temporary, a young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."
Luster by Raven Leilani
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties—sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage—with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home—though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
Sofia, Bulgaria, a landlocked city in southern Europe, stirs with hope and impending upheaval. Soviet buildings crumble, wind scatters sand from the far south, and political protesters flood the streets with song.
In this atmosphere of disquiet, an American teacher navigates a life transformed by the discovery and loss of love. As he prepares to leave the place he’s come to call home, he grapples with the intimate encounters that have marked his years abroad, each bearing uncanny reminders of his past. A queer student’s confession recalls his own first love, a stranger’s seduction devolves into paternal sadism, and a romance with another foreigner opens, and heals, old wounds. Each echo reveals startling insights about what it means to seek connection: with those we love, with the places we inhabit, and with our own fugitive selves.
In publishing, we emphasize far too much importance on the performance of a frontlist title. If it's not a sure-thing hit right out the gate, the industry chooses to forget about it. But there are simply too many books being published every single day for this to be a fair assessment of a book's ability to find its audience. So, beyond thinking about revisiting the books that came out in 2020, I hope you use this as a reminder to continue to give backlist books the love they deserve. Chasing the newest thing is fun, but it can also be tiring. The best book you haven't read yet is likely out there already. Go find it.
