I don’t have a lot of time this month, which is a shame because as every blogger knows, November is the month of all the blogging events, and I do really like taking part. This is all a preamble to explain why I’ve just read a short story for Margaret Atwood Reading Month hosted by Buried in Print rather than finally getting to the MaddAddam trilogy!

Fourteen Days (2024) is a collaborative novel by thirty-six Canadian and American authors, edited by Atwood and Douglas Preston. Its subtitle is A Literary Project of the Authors Guild of America, and the preface from the Guild explains that part of the advance for this work supported writers during the covid pandemic. It is set during that time, the premise being that the residents of a Lower East Side tenement building gather on the roof for a fortnight to tell each other stories.

If I had more time I would have read the whole book and tried to guess which story was Atwood’s, but instead I looked at the back to see which she wrote and just read that. So if you want to read Fourteen Days and don’t want to know, look away now!

Atwood’s story takes place on Day 10, and displays her usual mix of commentary, humour, learning and irreverence. A woman who none of the residents have seen before joins them on the roof and explains she works as an exterminator of bed bugs and attends free classes at NYU. Recently she learned about Arachne:

“This was supposed to be a terrible punishment, which made me laugh when I heard about it, because I myself used to be a spider. Given the choice between a girl and a spider, who wouldn’t opt for the spider? A female spider, needless to say. Girls are always being predated by male humans, but with spiders it’s the other way round.”

She wants to learn about humankind and so is focusing on philosophy and mythology classes. This has resulted in her reflecting on the difference between humans and spiders and she takes exception to the negativity often associated with spiders.

Atwood has a lot of fun with wordplay in this story, and the spider-woman’s voice is distinct and engaging. I’m sure it’s inevitable that each reader will enjoy some of the stories in Fourteen Days more than others, but this part of Day 10 has definitely encouraged me to get to the rest when time allows!

“From my philosophy classes I’ve learned that humans can fret a lot about things that can never be known, such as the ultimate meaning of life. I personally feel that the ultimate meaning of life is eggs, but I may be very old fashioned.”