WHAT YOU SHOULD WORRY ABOUT

An LA woman on the brink of her 40s confronts familial, professional, and romantic upheavals when she winds up alone in New York during the pandemic.

Lured to New York from California by the prospect of having her TV treatment picked up, Layla Moody—originally from Queens, now marooned by herself in her mother’s Forest Hills apartment—learns in early 2020 that Covid-19 has shut down the city that never sleeps, along with any chance of video production. Fresh from facing industry slings and arrows at Sundance, where her hopes were fed by meeting an acclaimed feminist director, Layla is also smarting because her boyfriend, Nathan, has ghosted her and started seeing another woman. She hasn’t been back to the East Coast in the seven years since her father’s death; her mother, always distant, lives in Florida and rarely offers sound advice beyond telling her to get out of New York and reminding her to make brisket using a bottle of ketchup. The writing is fast and funny while Layla faces dilemmas like being frozen out by her best friend from college, who’s quarantining with her husband and daughter, and fast and furious when a chance encounter with an old boyfriend brings back memories of a momentous decision. All this feels like a pale setup for the book’s last third, in which Layla chooses, against the advice of friends and family, to spend her summer on Fire Island in a share house she once frequented, Mermaid LeGoon, run by a man known as Tequila Ted. Although Layla’s life "Before Corona" and "Alone in the Time of Corona" (as the first two sections are called) is vivid and relevant, the characters on Fire Island are more so. The book reads well but might have been stronger with a single setting and more backstory.

Smart and vivid, this novel will appeal to readers who understand nothing works for everyone, but everyone still wants love.