Beyond the merely personal, Covid spurs a questioning of the whole commodity-driven American lifestyle. "How much material stuff can we do without?...What do I value? What do I offer of value?" Originally written as a series of essays-cum-diary entries, "Plague Year" is a vivid, personal chronicle of the first traumatic wave of the Covid pandemic in the nation's largest city. The author is a middle-aged bisexual woman living in a committed non-monogamous relationship with her male partner, artist AleXander Hirka.
Maintaining a deft balance of the personal and political, "Plague Year New York 2020" provides an engaging, thought-provoking record of that strange and disturbing time, the recent past.
Ian Young - Founder of Canada's first gay publishing company, Catalyst Press