Lucy By The Sea by Elizabeth Strout. A transparent vehicle for the author to process her feelings about being privileged enough to leave New York City in 2020 and ride out the pandemic in a rural area. We know the narrator is one of the good liberal white people because she feels bad about George Floyd (she tells us this), but is concerned that her adult daughter wants to go to the protests (she tells us this). She tries to connect with a Trump voter but eventually it just doesn’t work out. Of course, she can’t bring herself to name Trump in the text; he’s just “the current president.” Her daughter’s parents-in-law are bad people, which we know because they’re from Florida and don’t wear masks; of course, they get COVID and nearly die. Some of the locals in Maine don’t like her, and she has thoughts about this.
Don’t get me wrong – I, too, am a fairly privileged white liberal. But this read like a novel-length parody of a New York Times opinion column, except without the irony that would make such a thing tolerable.
Pretty sure it was Dune, picked up half on impulse when the used bookstore near my college happened to have a full set on the shelf at once.