A couple of weeks ago I asked my partner, Fabio, to pick up a book at my parents’ home on his way back from work. In normal times, I would have made the 10-minute drive and collected it myself. But we live in Milan, Italy, one of the places hit hardest by the novel coronavirus pandemic. I hadn’t seen my parents for two months, or left my apartment at all aside from going out to get groceries and do volunteer work. When Fabio, whose job was deemed essential, came home, I felt a brief flare of jealousy knowing that he’d seen my parents. It disappeared when he handed me the book. The pages of my childhood copy of The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her to Fly had turned yellow, but the story came back to me immediately. Written by Chilean author Luis Sepúlveda in 1996, this book centers around a gull chick named Lucky. The story opens with tragedy: Lucky’s mother, Kengah, is caught in an oil slick while foraging at sea. “When she came back, on the...