What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year, Hardcover

In March 2020, at the request of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Finch became a reluctant diarist: As California sheltered in place, he began to write daily notes about the odd ambient changes in his own life and in the lives around him. The result is What Just Happened. In a warm, candid, welcoming voice, and in the tradition of Woolf and Orwell, Finch brings us into his own world: taking long evening walks near his home in L.A., listening to music, and keeping virtual connections with friends across the country as they each experience the crisis. And drawing on his remarkable acuity as a cultural critic, he chronicles one interminable year with delightful commentary on current events, and the things that distract him from current events: Murakami's novels, reality television, the Beatles. With light-footed humor and unwavering humanity, What Just Happened offers a miraculous dose of groundedness in head-spinning times. Here is a work of empathy and insight, at once of-the-moment and timeless--a gift from one of our culture's most original thinkers.

About author(s):CHARLES FINCH is a book critic and essayist as well as the author of fifteen novels. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, and the recipient of the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in Los Angeles.