MUCH ADO ABOUT CORONA

In Manley’s novel, a young man falls into the world of Covid-19 conspiracy theories.

The story opens with 24-year-old Vincent McKnight being taken in by police and medics, who confirm him to be the wanted entity known as “the moose.” How did Vincent end up here? “The answer, of course, involved a woman,” he tells readers. “Her and this so-called pandemic.” From there, the narrative rewinds to July 2020 in the fictional town of Moosehead, Ontario. Vincent visits the local bakery to pick up bread for his grandfather, Paul, who’s been isolated in a locked-down nursing home. There, he meets a beguiling baker with German heritage named Stefanie. Stefanie, insisting Covid-19 is no worse than the flu, openly spouts conspiracy theories, claiming scientists at the WHO are being bribed and blackmailed. She demands that customers refuse to “give into the face mask non-sense.” Vincent is immediately drawn in, admitting, “I felt like calling her a covidiot but she was way too pretty.” After witnessing the toll the lockdowns have taken on his grandfather, Vincent begins to buy into Stefanie’s belief that authorities are using Covid-19 as a means of control. Strengthening these suspicions are his grandfather’s memories of himself and other Ojibwe children being abused in Canadian government camps in the 1940s and Vincent’s own encounter with Constable Justin T. Mackenzie, who tells Stefanie and Vincent that their beliefs are “bordering on murder.” Vincent starts working at Stefanie’s bakery, where he’s increasingly exposed to her and her German fiancé’s more outlandish claims; he begins delivering bread without a mandated surgical mask, instead donning a goofy moose costume that provokes a divided reaction from the townspeople. As the community fractures into anti-maskers, the fearful, and the vaccine-ready, Constable Mackenzie increases his scrutiny, turning ideological debates into a cat-and-mouse game that Stefanie frames as a fight for freedom itself. “Without freedom,” she tells Vincent, “there’s really nothing left to sacrifice.”

Manley’s Moosehead is filled with quirky delights, from Stefanie herself to Vincent’s D&D-playing companions and their creative approaches to social distancing. The author pays careful attention to the ways in which racial politics can shape small, supposedly close-knit communities. “Everybody’s white in this one-horse town,” Vincent’s friend Raj laments, reflecting on being an outsider; heartbreakingly, Vincent himself felt “too Indian” to ask girls out at school. At first, the novel seems to strive for a multifaceted portrait of the pandemic and its social effects. However, the dialogue—especially between Stefanie and Vincent—feels less like organic conversation than a recitation from social media forums from the time (an impression reinforced by resources Manley includes, such as “Websites Exposing The Truth About COVID-19”). Vincent’s journey into Stefanie’s ideology, however, is intriguing; the problem lies not in the ideas themselves but in their repetitive presentation. Readers must wade through numerous, dense, and often banal conversations about DNA fragments, WHO manipulations, and mRNA vaccine effects before reaching more exciting, character-driven scenes and plot advancements. The plot never outpaces the novel’s polemics, concluding with an anticlimactic gesture toward a sequel; it all ultimately feels much less compelling than what Stefanie’s big talk about freedom seems to promise.

Despite some intriguing ideas, this novel about competing ideologies is weighed down by its own arguments.