Peter Cherches - Masks: Stories From A Pandemic BOOK

In the spring of 2020, shortly after he had started wearing a face mask outside his home, Peter Cherches began writing about masks, literally the face of COVID-19. These 16 stories, written between April and December of that year, capture the surreal experience of living through a global pandemic and all its attendant challenges—personal, political, and social. This small volume is both a mask-muffled cry and a full-throated belly laugh. Reactions are to be expected, and are no cause for concern. With Masks, Peter Cherches delivers an artful assortment of stories that transcend the long ache of a pandemic. And he does so with a deft and clear-eyed amalgam of wisdom and wit. Here, happily, is the literary equivalent of an antidote. —Robert Scotellaro, author of What Are the Chances? and Nothing Is Ever One Thing Cherches’ little masterwork of flash fiction—wry, uncanny, perceptive—takes us through dream, fabulation, memory, and unexpected encounter into our fumbling shared discove