Fiona Farrell
Description
What is the point of inventing stories when reality eclipses imagination? A little way off in the future, during a time of plague and profound social
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collapse, a group of friends escapes to a house in the country where they entertain themselves by playing music, eating, drinking and telling stories about their lives. There are tales of thieves and pirates, deaths and a surprise birth, a freak wave and many other stories of misadventure resulting in unexpected felicity. <i>The Deck </i>borrows the motifs of Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century masterpiece, <i>The Decameron</i>, in which another small group gathered to avoid contagion and passed the time telling stories. But what is the role of fiction, this novel asks, as civilisation falters?
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