Grief

The backdrop of the novel, the first summer of the coronavirus pandemic, highlights the far-reaching feeling of national grief, loss, and despair. While the grief is collective and shared by every person who has experienced the pandemic, the grief expressed in the novel is also intensely personal because the protagonist fears for his own family and the reality of his grief is singular and isolating. When he searches for people to help him carry the burden of his grief like his siblings, he finds himself alone and carrying the load by himself. His brother “won’t look up from his video game even when I put my hand over the screen…to try to knock his heart awake” (23). When the boy cannot find support in his mother because she is also struggling to bear the grief of the pandemic, he turns to his sister who is...