This Will All Be Over Soon? We Can Only Hope

"This Will All Be Over Soon" by Cecily Strong (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

This is not a funny book, nor was it meant to be, despite the author being best known as a comic actress. What it is, is a memoir of loss and the attendant grief during the most painful year in recent memory.  Strong starts by telling us of the death of her beloved kid cousin Owen at the beginning of 2020 from brain cancer, only to be followed by the tsunami of the pandemic.  In her warm. yet anxious, "dear friend to dear friend" voice, not only does she recount the loss a relative, she honestly discusses the loss of normalcy.  She flees with two friends to an isolated Air BnB in upstate New York, a decision that seems more reflexive than thought out.  Within this bubble, she ruminates about her cousin, about her new boyfriend who comes down with COVID, and about adjusting to an existance without work, without most of her friends, and without the the life she had in general.  Strong's anxiety about COVID and feelings of grief are laid out bare, but not so heavily that it would making reading this book difficult.  It's not all gloom and doom (for example, she learns a lot about herself during this time, including that she's capable of growing her own vegetables), and the ending is cautious, but optimistic. 

What makes this book hard to read, though, is not the subject matter, but the style.  It's part diary, part stream of consciousness.  However, the dated entries are short and are best read a few at a time.