The Disinvited Guest

Wondering where all the pandemic fiction is? Well here’s the antidote. It’s ten years since the end of the pandemic, when it looks like another one, but even worse, is on its way. Married couple Reed and Lucy, both thirty-somethings, assemble their five closest friends, including Reed’s sister and her girlfriend, and hide out at Reed’s family cottage—WASP code for a 12-room-estate—on an island off the coast of Maine. Blueberry pancakes, innovative cocktails, Scrabble, plenty of time for artistic projects, it’s like a Ralph Lauren ad come to life. Until things fall apart. In a big way. Part of it is brought on by novelist Lucy’s growing obsession with the island’s past—in the 1840s, Irish immigrants with typhoid were quarantined here—and a diary she discovers, written by one of Reed’s ancestors, recounts those horrible days. But you needn’t go so far back to be terrified. Reed’s parents died here on Fever Island—yes, that’s the name—in the last pandemic, along with his girlfriend, whose presence Lucy senses everywhere. Goodman does a great job of blending the present and the past—each with their own rising tensions—with the past spilling over into the present. But best of all, this book offers readers a chance to reflect on the pandemic, the choices we made, the impact it had on us, and what’s left as the waters finally recede.