In “Catch 2020 – The Covid Deliria of Brian Jackson”, Aiden Walsh presents an intimate look into ordinary lives unsettled and reshaped by extraordinary times. Set against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and the social upheavals that accompanied it, the novel captures not the sweeping headlines of history, but the smaller disturbances that ripple through individuals’ lives when the fabric of normal life is torn.
The central character, Brian Jackson, is a man whose life has entered what should be a comfortable twilight. Retired, recently widowed, and living a quiet existence, Brian embodies a kind of generational everyman—well-meaning, decent, but unprepared for the seismic shifts occurring around him. As he and his family is forced to navigate lockdowns, social distancing, political protests, and personal reckonings, Walsh offers a humane portrait of a character who is at once sympathetic and profoundly ordinary. Brian’s struggles are rarely dramatic in the conventional sense; rather, they are the struggles of a man attempting, sometimes clumsily, to understand a world that has altered beyond recognition.
One of the novel’s finest achievements is its rendering of the Covid-19 pandemic not as spectacle but as a creeping, shapeless anxiety. Walsh avoids melodrama; he captures instead the stifling atmosphere of uncertainty, the peculiar banality of fear. Empty streets, delayed online deliveries, the careful choreography of outdoor social visits—these are the textures of the world we all inhabited five years ago, and Walsh takes us back to. There is a superb acuity in Walsh’s portrayal of how historic events, even cataclysmic ones, seep into life through the dull rituals of the everyday.
The narrative’s structure reflects the disjointedness of the historical time it portrays. Rather than adhering to a tight plot, the novel unfolds as a series of episodes, vignettes, and recollections. Some chapters plunge back into Brian’s university days, drawing a line from youthful idealism and social naiveté to the more subdued, compromised wisdom of middle age. Others remain firmly rooted in the chaotic present of the pandemic. This fragmentary construction mirrors the dislocation and changes that many experienced during the pandemic.
In addition to its central focus on Brian, Catch 2020 introduces a compelling cast of secondary characters. Particularly memorable is Shirley Brathwaite, Brian’s old friend from university days. Shirley is sharp-witted and opinionated—a woman whose experiences as a Black professional in Britain expose the limitations of Brian’s liberal self-image. Their reunion, mediated through the awkward rituals of pandemic etiquette, becomes one of the novel’s most affecting sub-plots.
Beyond its characters, Catch 2020 succeeds as a historical document, a chronicle of a particular moment in time. Walsh captures the contradictions and absurdities of pandemic Britain with a wry, unflinching eye. From the surreal spectacle of empty supermarket shelves to the surreal politeness of suburban walkers crossing the street to avoid breathing the same air, every detail is rendered with a dry wit. There is humour here, but it is the rueful humour of recognition, of having lived through days that already seem almost fantastical.
Moreover, the novel does not shy away from engaging with the broader political and social currents of 2020. The protests following the murder of George Floyd are depicted not as abstract news events, but as living, breathing phenomena that complicate and destabilize the characters’ worldviews. Walsh shows how the pandemic and the protests became intertwined, how the threat of death by disease blurred into the threat of death by injustice, and how individuals, even those with the best of intentions, found themselves in a world stripped of its old certainties.
If there is a flaw in the novel, it lies perhaps in its very fidelity to its chosen mode. The episodic structure, while deeply effective in evoking the suspended, fragmented reality of pandemic life, may test the patience of readers who seek a more conventionally satisfying narrative. There are moments where the narrative drifts, where the accumulation of small scenes risks becoming static. Yet one might argue that this, too, is an intentional reflection of the time it portrays: a time of drift, of suspended animation, of waiting without a clear end.
Ultimately, Catch 2020 is a book of quiet power. It is a novel that refuses easy drama in favour of something more difficult and more lasting: a slow, searching exploration of how ordinary people live through extraordinary crises. It understands that history does not always announce itself with grandeur, but often steals in quietly, alters our habits, exposes our vulnerabilities, and leaves us changed in ways we barely comprehend.
In its depiction of one man’s experience with a world in upheaval, Catch 2020 offers a genuinely human look into pandemic Britain, unsentimental but profoundly empathetic. And in focusing on this one transformative moment in time, Walsh has created a document that only only captures something essential about the strange year it portrays, but also about the nature of all human experience in times of dramatic societal upheaval.
You can get your copy of “Catch 2020 – The Covid Deliria of Brian Jackson” here!
