IT'S COME TO THIS

In this memoir, a New Yorker offers reflections on the year of Covid-19, complete with a look at former President Donald Trump and his administration.

From Covid-19’s first appearance on the West Coast in the beginning of 2020 to the insurrection at the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Pedersen tracks the local, national, and global progression and consequences of the virus that would change everything during a year of stress, craziness, and an ever increasing death toll. It is hard to imagine anyone being able to make readers laugh—or at least chuckle—with such a narrative. But the author, who has written five plays and 18 books, composes paragraphs rich in sarcasm and irony. Although she is an unabashed progressive, even her beloved New Yorkers and their leaders do not always escape her sharp commentary. It is not long before Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio become “Guv Dad” and “Mayor Mom,” trying to get their millions of kids to behave and stay safe: “Mayor Mom wanted to talk things out and employ more ‘social distancing ambassadors’ for a socially distanced group hug. Guv Dad was having none of it.” “Daft Uncle Donald” was always ready to exacerbate the parental discord with some new revelation: “We’d have very few cases if testing stopped.” Acerbic wit notwithstanding, Pedersen’s edgy memoir is an exhaustive, chronologically organized, and annotated compendium of the multitude of crises that roiled the country—the pandemic, the scarcity of Covid-19 tests, the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests, historic hurricanes, an explosion of wildfires, and the dangerous miracle cures that were instantly debunked. Remember Trump pondering injecting disinfectants into the human body? The book is both political and personal—a newsreel of 2020 that viscerally and angrily captures the tragedy, confusion, and communal anxiety of the year from an author who lived in one of the country’s first virus epicenters. At one point, Pedersen describes early June as New York City entered Phase 1 of the reopening: “Finally, we all had toilet paper, but the FDA announced a shortage of the antidepressant Zoloft and its generic equivalents.”

Familiar pandemic terrain revisited with a cathartic burst of articulate, biting political commentary.