Having read and loved The Last by Hanna Jameson, I was really looking forward to this one. It’s a subject that feels all too familiar – a global pandemic (although mainly affecting America) – and a small cast of characters trying to live through it.

The book opens at a wedding and the start of a budding relationship when Yun and Emory meet for the first time. However, when a wedding guest simply sits down and can’t, or won’t, get up, this heralds the start of a terrifying phenomenon. Gradually, thousands of people fall victim to this mysterious illness or syndrome, simply sitting down without warning. Nobody ever recovers, and after two or three weeks, the ‘sitter’ dies.

Yun and Emory are trying to navigate this situation while at the same time trying to make their own relationship work, despite their various issues. Meanwhile, Yun’s oldest and best friend Andrew is in a failing marriage and when he meets dancer Fin, he realises that it’s time to stop the lies he has been telling everyone, including himself, his whole life.

I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy this book, but after looking forward so much to reading it, I have to admit I was slightly disappointed. The pandemic, or phenomenon is more of a backdrop to the main story here, which is the relationships between the four main characters. Unfortunately the parts about the pandemic were the most interesting to me by far. I do normally like character driven stories, but the issue here was that I found it difficult to really care about them. Yun and Emory were not particularly sympathetic, and while I don’t have to like characters to enjoy reading about them, I just found myself getting annoyed with their angsty self-absorbed outlooks. Andrew and Fin were more likeable and I did care more about them; however at least three of these four seemed bent on self-destruction and I found myself lacking patience.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the book, and it’s certainly not to say that I wouldn’t read more by Hanna Jameson, because I definitely would. But unlike The Last, the characters in this one just didn’t gel with me, so ended up feeling slightly let down. ( )

I was stunned by this book - so much depth, emotions and thoughts unfolded page after page.
While the premise seems like it will be a "what is this mystery pandemic" sci-fi story, it's really not. It's both intimate and all encompassing, metaphorical and real.
We follow 4 characters, and while it can be tricky to make it work, here it does. We get events (sometimes the same, sometimes not) seen from different eyes, a lot of emotions and inner thoughts, in a way that makes everyone believable, and their fights and self-deprecation heartbreaking as we witness their interactions from different angles. A couple of scenes made me cry from sheer emotion, even when the words Yun and Andrew wanted to say were not said - but a reader, like the other characters, knew.
And all of these very intimate stories are set in the backdrop of a pandemic where a lot of people start dropping on the floor, sitting in a catatonic manner, and never come to life again. This works so much as a metaphor about the human psyche, but also as a way to show us modern American society and why we can feel anxious or depressed if we live in a similar way.
There's some philosophy about Situationist philosopher Guy Debord and the (capitalist-driven) spectacle that I'd like to look into more later. Andrew is a philosophy teacher who talks to his students about experience vs spectacle (which is already meta in a novel), then later Fin cries as he explains to Andrew his unique interpretation of a ballet. This is just an example of the layers that are present in this novel. Everything feels purposeful even if not all is explained in the end (on purpose as well).
It's an unusual book that I enjoyed a lot and recommend.

I want to thank NetGalley and Penguin General UK for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. ( )