The End Of Men - Christina Sweeney Baird

Fiction

Rating: 6/10

And so, we begin…

A year plus into the pandemic, here comes the wave of fictional spins on the narrative.

An extremely contagious viral plague wipes out 90% of the world’s men within days of them contracting it.  As you might imagine this creates some interesting implications in terms of gender dynamics and influence. 

There is a wide swathe of narrators in this book of differing ethnic, economic, gender and religious backgrounds, making their appearances with varying degrees of regularity.  An ambitious undertaking for an author that proves brilliant if it succeeds, and when it doesn’t, as it didn’t here, all the characters blur into each other.

The part of the story I did enjoy were the behind the frontline’s scenes.  The emergency room doctor, the scientists chasing a vaccine, the leaders forced to reimagine a world post pandemic and urge citizens to follow into that unknown. I had no problem believing the utter horror of the ER doc having to choose not to treat patients due to shortages of staff and supplies.

Footnote: I make every attempt to suspend by disbelief when I read, but here I found myself asking; is it this author’s belief that the only way for women to lead the world to kill off all the men?