When pandemic art imitates life
‘Songs for the End of the World’ was written a few years ago, but its timing couldn’t be better
As a rule, writers generally hope for their work to hit a sweet spot in the zeitgeist, for their new book to arrive at a time when it has a chance to participate in conversations beyond the book pages.
One can imagine, though, that this timeliness is something of a mixed blessing for Montreal writer Saleema Nawaz. When she began writing her new novel “Songs for the End of the World,” the idea of a novel coronavirus pandemic that devastates the United States beginning in the summer of 2020 was strictly fictional.
But here we are.
In recognition of the novel’s timeliness, publisher McClelland & Stewart released digital versions of “Songs for the End of the World” this month, four months ahead of its planned August release (the paperback edition will be released as scheduled). As the publisher explained in a statement, “People have always turned to stories to help them make sense of the chaos of life,” adding that they believe the novel “contains a message that people will find comforting.”
In the novel, as in reality, that comfort is hard-won.
Moving between characters, including a thirty-something NYPD beat cop, the leaders of a rock band, and an aging novelist (whose novel about a pandemic makes him an unlikely and reluctant talking head), “Songs for the End of the World” shifts back and forth in time, from the late 1990s through the months of the pandemic, drawing together connections between the characters, and, through them, universal connections and themes. This isn’t merely a novel
about a plague; this is a novel about family and parenthood, about loss and regret, about momentary connection and lingering solitude.
Much will be made — deservedly — of how prescient the novel seems. Nawaz, who spent seven years on the book, captures the personal and societal movements through a pandemic with an almost shocking accuracy (as we can now all attest), from the frustration of quarantine to the shortages of badly needed medical supplies, from fringe right-wing groups fomenting dissent to front-line workers — the police, medical personnel — risking their lives for duty and community. That we can now relate so directly is not just a matter of timing, but of Nawaz’s skill, research and foresight.
Undoubtedly, much of the decision to publish “Songs for the End of the World” early was financial in nature, but the book itself is far from a craven cash-in. Given the strengths of the book, and Nawaz’s gifts as a writer, “Songs for the End of the World” was always going to be a great novel, no matter when it was published. Appearing now, however, it also serves as a pool of warm light in the darkness.
Robert J. Wiersema’s latest book is “Seven Crow Stories.”