Public gatherings are still banned, and those who can afford VR-enabled “hoodies” are content to socialize in virtual-reality spaces-much in the same way we’re currently connecting via Zoom calls and Houseparty get-togethers. Instead, the novel jumps ahead to 12 years after the outbreak started, showing us a pandemic-altered world through the eyes of a sheltered 24-year-old named Rosemary Laws. If Pinsker was only interested in capturing our cultural malaise, Song for a New Day would have little insight to offer readers right now. When people say to me, ‘I read your book and it gave me hope,’ that is the highest compliment. When, days later, she finds out her bandmate has died, a baffled friend remarks, “Who dies of the flu? I thought that was old people and babies.” As lockdowns and social-distancing are enacted, Luce and her roommates create a list on their kitchen dry-erase board titled, “Don’t Forget Normal.” They catalog things like “pride parades, school assemblies, outdoor movies, outdoor concerts, baseball games, crowded trains, roller derby bouts.” The list takes over the whole wall, creating a mural that one roommate turns into an interactive online exhibit. One unnerving passage has the central character, rock musician Luce Cannon, trying to convince her sick bandmate to go to the hospital, before anyone has fully grasped the gravity of the disease.
Pinsker masterfully avoids clichés of medical thrillers and movies like Contagion, instead opting to present a gradual eating away of society’s sense of stability. In Pinsker’s book, a fictional disease known simply as “the Pox” doesn’t lead to some apocalyptic sci-fi scenario.
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