Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for a digital ARC in exchange for a review.

It's interesting seeing the COVID-19 pandemic start to filter into book releases when it still feels so recent. The idea of representing neighbours from different walks of life coming together to share their stories by calling upon different authors to write them is ingenious; the subtle shifts in writing style as you go through the book help to hold on to your interest. Some definitely work more than others, but that's always going to be the case when you have this many people involved in a project. I thought it was the right choice to not reveal who had written each section from the beginning or in chapter headings; having this information at the back means that, especially if reading a physical copy, you can choose to find this out before reading, but I preferred entering each new chapter blind. I wasn't a huge fan of the ending, however; it felt a little on the nose and clumsily done.

This didn't gel as one book that well and the stories were more anecdotes and personal experiences than crafted stories. I wish the authors had been listed in order of their stories rather than alphabetical as that would have enabled readers to find and possibly buy backlist from them more easily. I saw the ending by accident and read back a bit and saw the twist, which I found quite creepy so I did abandon it I'm afraid.

Fourteen days is a compilation of short stories from an incredible compendium of authors glued together by Margret Atwood.

As the Covid lockdown hits in NYC, the residents of a decrepit apartment block realise that there is fresh air and companionship to be found on the roof of their building each evening. After the daily clanging of pots and pans to thanks medics, the residents set into a (socially distanced) rhythm of each telling stories of their life.

Fourteen Days is a mixed bag of short stories. I enjoyed the ‘glue’ that harnessed each of the oral untold stories to their neighbours by way of the building Superintendent. However, this ambitious project has so many authors involved that short stories are so short (and therefore plentiful) that they don’t hugely engage or work together to make a coherent whole. It feels like a case of too many cooks …

Much of the narrative is enjoyable and kudos to Attwood and colleagues for weaving it together but the sum of the parts is a little flat.

Thanks to Netgalley and yeh publisher for an advanced copy.

I love short stories and especially linked ones like you find in Fourteen Days, I also like the writing of a lot of the authors in this collection.
I also found it interesting as I'd been in America just as the pandemic started and recognised a lot of the background to the tales.
As ever not all the short stories were for me but as a collection they really worked, especially towards the end of the 14 days quarantine

This read too much like an ‘experimental’ anthology than a fully fledged collaborative novel. Many of the stories within it felt perfunctory and the ending rather hackneyed.

I had high hopes for this book. When I read the blurb I was so excited to pick it up. There are so many writers in this collaboration that I love - from Margaret Attwood and Celeste Ng and many others!
Unfortunately, the book itself did not live up to my expectations. While I enjoyed it, it did not give me the "Wow" factor that I was expecting. I was expecting this to be a 5 star read, but it actually only rates 3 stars for me.

Some of the stories were very basic - they didn't seem to have any particular point to them - I'm thinking in particular the story about the Lobster Rolls - maybe it just went completely over my head, but I really did not get it.
Some of the stories were very strange - in particular the story about the spider-girl! Very creepy but again I didn't really understand! If the point of this story was to creep the reader out, then it succeeded with me, but there didn't seem to be any "Story" there - just a weird character.

The ending of this book was completely predictable. I think I guessed what the ending would be very early on - it was obvious when no-one could really say how or why they were all living there - some of these people were extremely wealthy but somehow stuck in a dilapidated apartment block?

Overall this was a good read, but not as good as I had hoped. It was a bit of a let down for me because I was so excited by the premise.

I loved the idea of this one, a collaborative story.

I was a little disappointed to be honest. I’m not saying it was bad, it just wasn’t for me.

Some stories I loved, others not so much. But I think that was a given with how many different authors work was in there.

If you like short stories and anthologies this one will definitely be up your street. But for me, the format just didn’t work to my taste.

This is a clever idea brilliantly executed with a real twist. Over the course of fourteen days, a group of tenants from a New York building gather on the roof to applaud the emergency services during the early days of the Covid outbreak. As time passes they each bring a chair, a drink or whatever and tell socially distanced stories.

The whole is framed by the building "Super" who talks us through each day and has named the tenants - lady with the rings, Eurovision, Vinegar etc which allows us to form pictures of them. They start off fairly cold to each other but through the stories become closer. The stories vary from straightforward to downright weird but never boring.

I especially enjoyed the stories with the curse and the one by the Caretaker. We don’t know who writes each story till the end of the book and there are some incredibly stellar names here. I’ll reread a few of these now I know who the different writers are but I’d recommend reading it ‘blind’ to begin with.

An entertaining way to pass a few hours.

I was given a copy of this book by NetGalley

Interesting premise and a hugely enjoyable read. Some of these authors were known to me, but others I hadn't read before so it definitely gave me an introduction to new to me authors with extensive back catalogues. Each storyteller had a unique voice and story to tell. Fourteen Days reminds us that there's more that binds us than separates us.

"The truth is, in normal times, we wouldn't give each other the time of day. We've got almost nothing in common, do we?"

It's one week into the COVID-19 lockdown in New York City when the new superintendent of a rundown Lower East Side apartment block begins spending her time on the rooftop. It's not long before other residents begin to join her. Initially, they all ignore each other, sitting the recommended six feet apart. Then, some of them begin to talk, sharing stories, both those of others and their own. Tales of love, life, death and everything in between abound.

As the days pass, and the number of cases and deaths ramps up, residents of different ages, backgrounds and walks of life start revealing more about how they've experienced life and how they view the world. All the while, the super sits and secretly records their conversations on her phone, while being reticent to reveal her own story.

With a mammoth 36 famous writers specialising in various genres taking part in this collaborative novel (including greats like Margaret Atwood, Celeste Ng, Tess Gerritson, John Grisham and RL Stine), I loved the concept of this book. Unfortunately, I like the IDEA more than the book itself. Some of the residents' stories are moving and interesting and others not so much. It feels like a collection of short stories that have a building in common.

I did love the 'twist' or reveal. I thought it was cleverly done and didn't pick up on the foreshadowing until much later in the novel. I wish there would have been a bit more in-depth character exploration with the super, which may have tied the narratives together coherently. It's not incoherent just slightly disconnected in some places.

A really interesting concept.

I really enjoyed this book. Set across 14 days at the start of the pandemic, it follows the residents of a New York high rise who are locked down and go up onto the roof at night to share stories from a safe social distance. The characters were varied and the stories ranged from touching to absolutely crazy. The over arching feeling of the book was community - the very thing we lost through the pandemic. All of these people from different walks of life with many different stories all sharing the need to not be alone. When human contact was taken away it was the one thing we all wanted and it's the same of the people living in this story. I loved the gimmick that it was all written by different authors and I have to say that worked pretty well (although there were a couple of chapters I found harder going than others). Overall I really enjoyed it and would recommend. Thanks to all of the authors, Chat to & Windus and NetGalley for the ARC.

It’s an interesting premise but, to be honest, I didn’t feel that it worked. Partly, it’s difficult to get into writing about COVID, but there was also too much choppiness between the different stories. It was hard to get motivated to continue.

Sorry I didn’t enjoy this one, it got quite monotonous with the structure. Also wasnt keen on the ending. I’m sure lots will love this as a short story collection rather than read as a novel

I was not about the subject of this book because I hated the Covid lockdowns in the U.K.
This is an interesting and absorbing story with memorable characters and it is fascinating how the story follows through with different authors writing each chapter.
I was surprised at the end when I found out who wrote each chapter.

This could be described as a book of short stories but the interweaving of tales against the backdrop of disaster and the interaction between the group make this book even more profound as their inner fears and anxieties surface during the time of isolation.

What an admirable feat it is to marshal 36 writers and put together a collaborative novel that reads beautifully, about a time that most of us would rather forget.

Inspired by Boccaccio's Decameron (a 14th Century book of stories about people who were escaping the Black Death by sheltering in a luxury villa outside Florence). Fourteen Days is edited by Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston, and written by both editors and a team of esteemed and best-selling writers (among them Emma Donoghue, Celeste Ng, RL Stine, John Grisham and Meg Wolitzer).

The book is set in New York, in a Lower East Side tenement at the height of the Covid pandemic in 2020, when the virus was spreading rapidly throughout New York, and its hospitals, healthcare workers and mortuaries were struggling to cope with the influx of sick patients and dead.

The residents of the apartment building, led by the building's superintendent, meet nightly on the roof, initially to clap healthcare workers and then to share cocktails and stories, light and dark.

As with any collection of short stories (yes this is a collaborative novel and reads as such but really it is a number of short stories stitched together skilfully to make a novel), some are more interesting than others, and the pace is uneven at times, but it is always colourful, interesting, beautifully written and surprising. I gasped a little at the ending and I loved finding out afterwards which writer had written each chapter. This is one that I think would work brilliantly on audio with a cast of characters. Very enjoyable. 3.5-4/5 stars

*Many thanks to the authors, the publisher Chatto & Windus for the arc via Netgalley. As always, this is an honest review.

On the surface, this is a bunch of short stories from a bunch of authors, grouped within a framework involving a bunch of characters telling a variety of stories, and a bit of an overview of those characters. And it is that, so of course as with any collection of short stories (especially a collection by a range of authors), I liked some of the stories more than others. The reader is not told until the end of the book which author provided which story, and while there were a couple whose authors I was able to identify with some certainty, there were others that very much surprised me - and one or two by authors I've not yet read that left me really wanting to grab their books because I loved the writing so much.

But this is so much more than a collection of short stories. It's a meditation on the power of storytelling, and it's extremely cleverly-constructed, with clues/foreshadowing all the way through, with links - not immediately apparent - between stories (sometimes stories by different authors), and the overall framework is far more than it initially appears. A day or so after finishing it, I went back and read it again, mainly to try to clearly create the framework in my head, but in re-reading, I discovered so much that I'd missed on first reading.

I have far more that I could say if I weren't trying to avoid spoilers (not usually something a reviewer needs to worry much about when it's a book of short stories!)

This would make a fabulous bookclub book for the right type of bookclub.

Surprisingly entertaining, very thought-provoking, and highly recommended!

Original premise. Superb writing. I guess as would be common with most people and the authors are so varied that I connected more with some parts than others. Brilliant concept and well executed

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book.

Really interesting concept and very well executed! Some of the stories weren’t for me but overall an enjoyable read.

This brilliant collaboration between writers will keep you turning pages. Smart, thrilling and pithy. This may be your read of the year!