Containment, and Other Stories

[steepholm]

Here's a game, if you'd like to play.

A week or two back on Facebook, someone speculated that Ian McEwan was probably even now writing a novel based on the Covid-19 lockdown, and asked for suggestions as to what it would be called. There were some good replies, but the best in my opinion was Containment. In fact, if McEwan doesn't write a book called that now, I'll be disappointed.

So, here's the game: what are other writers going to call their putative Covid-19 books? The writers don't have be alive, but they should have the current events in mind, just as if they were (i.e. you can't put King Lear down for Shakespeare). The titles can be entirely made up, or they can play on ones that actually exist: for example, Virginia Woolf's A Room on One's Own.

Have at it - feel free to coruscate!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Instead of Cymbeline, Shakespeare would write Quarantine.

[steepholm]

Excellent!

[machiavellijr]

Jane Austen's 'Sense and Social Distancing'?
Evelyn Waugh's 'Brideshead Unvisited'

[steepholm]

Very good! I especially like the Waugh.

[lamentables]

Henry VI: apart 1m
Henry VI: apart 2m
Henry VI: apart 3m

[slemslempike]

Excellent!

[steepholm]

LOL.

[colorwheel]

Howl's Staying-in-Place Castle.

[jadelennox]

Heh, you beat me. I was going for Archer's Goon (is going to thump the entire Sykes family right on the ear if he can't be somewhere, anywhere, that Catriona isn't playing music and Quentin isn't whingeing and Awful isn't yelling and Venturus isn't beings so bloody Venturus all the time).

[steepholm]

Ha! Too true.

On a similar theme, how about The Homebound Warders?

[steepholm]

Of course!

[sovay]

the best in my opinion was Containment. In fact, if McEwan doesn't write a book called that now, I'll be disappointed.

Seriously.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Always Staying Home.

[jadelennox]

you win. here, have an entire internet.

[steepholm]

I would read it! (After all, I have plenty of time.)

[jadelennox]

I assume Diane Duane would finally write the alternate perspective series entry, The Lone Power.

[steepholm]

Indeed!

[ethelmay]

Maurice Sendak, Inside Under Here, about blanket forts.

[steepholm]

Very good!

[calimac]

Here's another one:

[steepholm]

That’s very good.