Quarantine Comix by Rachael Smith (Icon Books)
eProof from Net Galley
I am sure that in the next few years there will be a plethora of books using the Covid-19 Pandemic as a plot device but for me Quarantine Comix is the first I've read and I loved it.
I'd not come across the cartoons on social media over the past year and I am not sure where I saw this mentioned (my already wonky memory seems to have not enjoyed Lockdown 3) but I am glad I put a request in for the book.
While I was lucky enough to be with my husband and to keep working throughout the past year so much else of Smith's comics rang true to me. She really has captured the boredom, fear, weirdness of time as well as the wonder of nature & small things just as I experienced them. (I would just like to reassure my family who read this blog and might find the book too that Mr Norfolkbookworm & I didn't drink as much as Rachael and her housemate, nor did we drink at such odd times of day!)
Thinking on this book further, and discussing it with a friend who also got access to the early copy, I've come to the conclusion that this book had such resonance for me because like the author I was lucky that no one in my close circle appears to have caught the virus - although there were family losses from other causes that were exacerbated by Covid.
This book is all about the fears and 'what ifs' of the past year and not the actual illness itself - for that you need to read Michael Rosen's Many Different Kinds of Love.
When it comes to 'souvenirs' of this odd time I'd definitely include this book in a time capsule - it is just how I recall 2020.
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