The virus provides a pathogen that can be named and resisted, solutions that can be purchased and hoarded: the trolleys “full of sanitary towels” and “alcohol disinfectant”. Years from now, perhaps someone will study the psychology of living through a pandemic and the various coping mechanisms we turn to.

While they are reduced to “fearful, darting eyes”, they are also more human than ever, with their familiar prejudices and moments of dark humour, both comforted and bored by the “mundanity” of lockdown life. When they part “not knowing when or where we would meet again [which feels] like the most natural thing in the world”, their separation is more affecting than the parting of the lovers from which the novel derives its name. Our bi-monthly print and digital magazine features in-depth features, profiles, analysis, business advice and opinion. In Part II, John, Phoebe and Kwok-ying have all had to go into quarantine as they have picked up the virus. Kwok-ying tells us early on that lockdown life has become about “dealing with the dead, not the living”, but O’Sullivan proves the opposite.With nowhere to go, Kristal accepts Lisette's invitation to stay with her, until the pandemic is over.

For me, the most poignant moment of this chapter is not the descriptions of the dead man or the “hazmat suits with canisters of disinfectant”, but when John asks himself, “was his last lunch preserved uneaten in the plastic bag by his side? But for Catharine, the hardest part of coexisting with Kyle was not having her own space to process. Despite the intimacy of their lockdown relationship dynamic, the couple don’t regret their decision to move out once restrictions were lifted: “I think it’s important that we both maintain our own space when we go back to normal life.The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

His poetry and essays appear in Times Higher Education, Voice and Verse, Asian Cha and PEN Hong's Kong's recent Hong Kong 20/20. Max Made Me is a female founded and led future heritage brand, well known for it's established Personalised Letter Print range for children, luxury greeting cards and beautiful hand painted print collections for inspiring interiors.Nifty use of old school samples, tight drums and insistent basslines are the signature moves on this release. Couples will maybe get a shock to their system after they realise that person isn’t the same, because they probably won’t be exactly the same. He spends the early days of the pandemic in a 24-hour McDonald’s in Sai Kung while his wife Sue is home with their sickly baby son, Sam. It tells the story what we all here in Melbourne went through during the COVID lockdowns, back in the early days of the pandemic. I’m also certain that years from now, we will have a wide selection of novels and films set during our pandemic, one we will continue to live through until the world is vaccinated.