21 DAYS IN QUARANTINE

A novelette explores racism and police brutality in a Covid-19 world.

In what Clovis dubs an “experimental narrative” and “a new genre of crime fiction,” a woman seemingly imagines her family living in her dollhouse. In the real world, she spends weeks in Covid-19 quarantine, listening to the “screaming silence” of the empty streets outside. All is apparently well inside the dollhouse, where, as a young girl, the woman enjoys a dinner with her family and later dances with Daddy to a Nat King Cole tune. But happy memories of Daddy, who once owned a successful barbershop, soon give way to somber times. He loses the business and winds up in debt. More ominous scenes follow, including Daddy’s receiving phone calls from an unknown, sinister-voiced individual, culminating in a shocking death. Clovis styles her book as “a diary of moments,” consisting of brief entries that collectively form a stream-of-consciousness narrative. As in her previous work, she clearly and openly discusses topical issues. In this book, she writes about police brutality in America, citing the cases of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd as well as the Black Lives Matter protests around the country. All the while, the Covid-19 pandemic is an overwhelming force isolating everyone—even the dolls in the dollhouse, who wear masks and practice social distancing at a restaurant. Clovis lyrically describes the pandemic’s less conspicuous outcomes, such as masks’ hiding people’s expressions and the “howling” sirens of emergency vehicles puncturing the silence of deserted streets. Her prose, as always, is indelible: “The black in nothingness provides evidence of the things not seen and heard. It is the emptiness when no one speaks at dinner. It is the obscure vacancy in the face staring at the blankness in his eyes. It is the sound of death creeping through the Black community streets during Coronavirus.”

A concisely written, potent assessment of an undeniably troubled nation.