Congratulations on the publication of THESE DAYS ARE NUMBERED by Rebecca Rosenblum publishing today with Dundurn Press!
A diary of a woman longing for community in a crowded urban area during the pandemic times, when casual intimacies are forbidden.
The novelist Rebecca Rosenblum lives in St James Town, Toronto — the most densely populated square kilometre in all of Canada. When the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns arrive, she’s cut off from colleagues, friends, family, and not allowed to go near neighbours. As the world constricts, Rebecca keeps a weird and worried diary online — a love letter both to the outside world that she misses so desperately, and the little world inside St James Town that she can see from home.
As Rebecca watches and wonders from inside her box in the sky, her entries mix an account of a tough time in a tough place, joyful goofiness, and moments of unexpected compassion.
Praise for THESE DAYS ARE NUMBERED:
“It’s shocking how much the worst days of the Covid-19 pandemic feel like ancient history. In these near-daily dispatches from the lockdown era, Rosenblum attempts to pin herself to the earth during a moment of global unmooring. In doing so, she provides an honest and very human accounting of a time that is already being erased from our collective memories.” – Nathan Whitlock, author of Lump
“In early March 2020, as the first wave of the pandemic closed in and big city life shifted in estranging ways, Rebecca Rosenblum began to chronicle the changes in herself and others in journal entries on social media. As we acquired new vocabulary, adjusted to new routines, and learned to cope with losses of all kinds, she probed personal and collective anxieties and conundrums. During walks through a deserted city, she conceived of herself as an eye, but she was also the beating heart of a community trying to find its way during a collective trauma. In compilation, this diary is a record of where we’ve been and who we’ve been under unknowable and stressful circumstances. To read These Days Are Numbered is to witness a deeply curious, compassionate, and humane mind at work.” – Christine Fischer Guy, author of The Umbrella Mender
“An intimate portrait in which moments of pandemic grief and anxiety are always matched by humour, tenderness, and curiosity.” – Saleema Nawaz, author of Songs for the End of the World
Rebecca Rosenblum is the author of the short-story collections Once and The Big Dream, and the novel So Much Love. Her work has been shortlisted for the Trillium Award and the Amazon First Novel Award. Rebecca lives with her husband, author Mark Sampson, and their two cats in Toronto.
Rebecca is represented by Samantha Haywood.