Andover Bookstore To Host Author Charles Finch For Saturday Discussion

ANDOVER, MA — Andover Bookstore will welcome award-winning author Charles Finch Saturday to talk about his 2021 book "What Just Happened: Notes on a Long Year."

Finch, a book critic, essayist and author of 15 novels, will appear at the bookstore, located at 74 Main St., at 1 p.m. The event is free and coffee will be provided.

In the book, Finch, a graduate of Andover's Phillips Academy and Yale, writes about his life during the early days of the pandemic in addition to commenting on other happenings in 2020, like the protests for racial justice and the U.S. Presidential election.

The book was named one of the Books of the Year by the Boston Globe.

As Drew Hart wrote on The Arts Fuse:

"Finch's book is comprised of diary-like entries, filed nearly daily, set in his current hometown, Los Angeles. Diving headlong into the pandemic's beginning, much as it barged in itself, he proceeds through the months of this time, using the crisis as a backdrop for musings on all sorts. The results are at once cathartic, frightening, exasperating, and often hilarious."

Sarah Klock, store manager at Andover Bookstore said the book event promises to be an important discussion about our lives during the pandemic.

"What just happened couldn't be a better title for how so many of us are feeling about the past few years. Let's talk about it," Klock wrote in the bookstore's recent newsletter.

Finch is a regular contributor to the The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. He received the 2017 Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.

Additionally, Finch wrote several mystery novels in the Charles Lenox series. One of them, "A Beautiful Blue Death," was nominated for an Agatha Award and named one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2007.