Stay Safe by Michael Lacoy is set in the make-believe town of Beauville, New Hampshire, and features characters who fit into any number of pandemic archetypes. You’ll recognize them and associate them with people and behaviors experienced after the world was turned upside down in the spring of 2020.
The story begins with Cole Perrot, wearing a Pq32 respirator face mask and N16z face shield, as he drives his reluctant young daughter (also masked and shielded) to the clinic to get ‘vaccinated’ against the SPAARZ virus. The ‘vaccine” has been approved for the 12-year-old, and Cole can’t wait, even if Rosa isn’t so sure.
Only his son has refused, pushing back against his father’s (and much of the world’s) easy embrace of government mandates and media narratives and the Karen-like behavior that came with it.
Cole Perrot—a frustrated college administrator who spends most of his time on social media—ferociously loathes his next-door neighbor, Tyce Creamer, an internet celebrity and the very embodiment of “toxic masculinity.” Unfortunately for Cole, his wife Oona feels differently about Tyce, as do Cole’s teenage son and young daughter. Sensing a threat to his progressive values, not to mention his hold over his family, Cole secretly declares war on his “redneck” neighbor. What follows is a series of events that are by turns shocking, hilarious, absurd, and perfectly of our present moment.
Set amid a global flu pandemic, the novel chronicles the unraveling of both a man and a country in a time of heightened fear and deep social division. Mixing comedy, tragedy, and blistering satire, Stay Safe amuses and terrifies in equal measure.
It’s all in there, along with a cast of what I can only call Pandemic Era Archetypes.
Stay Safe offers a light-hearted opportunity to revisit the madness as an observer of players whose lives are forever impacted by the decisions they make during this unusual time in New Hampshire and the world.
And at 275 pages, it was a breeze to get through.
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