What Just Happened

Notes on a Long Year

By: Charles Finch

Narrated by: Charles Finch

A BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • With unwavering humanity and light-footed humor, this intimate account of the interminable year of 2020 offers commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice, the U.S. presidential election, and more, all with a miraculous dose of groundedness in head-spinning times.

"This book is so funny and so true. Charles Finch unpacks a year of plague, fear, shameless venality, and dizzying stupidity with an irrepressible wit and surgically precise cultural observations. I didn't know how badly I needed exactly this. Maybe you do too?" —Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box

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 endless year with delightful commentary on current events, and the things that distract him from current events: Murakami’s novels, reality television, the Beatles.

What Just Happened 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.

As only the author can…

I had a feeling this pandemic diary would be best appreciated in the voice of its author, and I was right. It was great to hear Finch’s humor, frustration, tenderness, anger. The book itself is alive with the vividness of his/our year of Covid, but this audiobook really made for a rare reading experience.

Excellent Read

While the reality is still hard to relive, this is an excellent description of what is what like during the pandemic as we all tried to navigate the health issues, the political craziness and the social injustices. This book is an important piece of history.

Can this be the same Charles Finch?

Can this be the same Charles Finch who writes the Charles Lennox mysteries? Hard to believe! This was a well-done essay about the year just passed. Parts were a bit repetitive and all the weed smoking -- why so many references to that? But it was a good reflection on 2020. I still can't believe it's the same guy, but my research tells me that it is. Who knew?

My sentiments exactly!

When Charles Finch started the recollection, he started on the exact day I decided to stay in for the duration. He brought forth the dread and loneliness felt by all of us but also the slowing down of everything…the look of a city when no one is around. His timeline made more sense in retrospect then while it was happening…thanks CF.

Interesting…

A year in the life of a dying nation… broken… selfish… and arrogant. No longer unified as one but fractured and disinteresting blaming the other. Charles Lennox does a good job at presenting what he didn’t set as his goal but accomplished it anyway.