I’ve just read an absolutely riveting book: The Premonition: a pandemic story, by Michael Lewis
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I heard an interview on the Freakonomics Podcast while cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. I have an old laptop next to the stove, that functions as my kitchen radio. We used to have a proper radio in the kitchen always tuned to our local NPR station, but now we’re out of usual NPR listening range. Instead I have a greasy old laptop just to the left side of the stove, balanced on an old pizza pan resting precariously on speakers. I use it to catch up with the podcasts of my favorite NPR programs while I’m cooking.
I was listening to a recent episode, from Nov 23, 2022, featuring an interview with author Michael Lewis. The interview was primarily a discussion about Lewis’s book Moneyball, first published in 2003. Towards the end of the interview, host Steven Dubner asks Lewis about writing in general and I was intrigued by Lewis’s answers. He said his greatest agony is in the planning stages, deciding how to structure a story and whether it’s even worth writing the book. Once he has a plan in mind he enjoys the writing.
Inspired, I went looking at my shelves, pretty sure I had some Michael Lewis books. He was on my radar after I’d read The Undoing Project a few years back, which I’d enjoyed thoroughly, so I jumped at the chance to pick up more books when I saw them at Churchmouse Books, open on Saturday mornings, selling books for the price of a donation. Yes! I had a nice copy of The Premonition.
Wow! What a writer. From beginning to end I was hooked, always with that question: what will happen next? I could not put it down. When I had to step away, I thought about it continually. I read in bed until bleeriness shut me down. When I woke I reached for my glasses and book and picked right up again.
I read it while I ate my breakfast, and then sat at my kitchen table, reading with the winter light shining in. I could do nothing else until I’d finished it. When I reached the end, I kept going, through the acknowledgements to the blank end papers, and then just sat.
It’s the story about people trying to prevent needless deaths from a pandemic they saw coming, and it is absolutely riveting.
The blurb on the back of the book, by John Williams of The New York Times Book Review, says “I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it.” I agree.
Michael Lewis knows how to tell a story.