"Written before the current pandemic, this is a powerful, thought-provoking blast of speculative fiction, where a virus that only kills men hits the world."
An exquisitely unsettling and fabulous blast of speculative fiction awaits in this provocative, hard-hitting debut novel. An unknown virus that only kills men hits Glasgow in 2025, as it spreads, confusion, lies, and heartbreak follows. As Christina Sweeney-Baird explains in her author’s note, she wrote The End of Men before Covid 19 affected the world. While the current pandemic remained tucked away in my thoughts as I read, this is very much a work of fiction and the focus lies with a female lead society coping with life during and after a pandemic. This is told on a world scale over five years and is set as a gathering of memories, as though this event has already come to pass and you are reading a piercing slice of history. This novel contains a huge number of characters, and I felt as though I was observing them at a distance. Having said that, some characters return throughout the book, and I formed more of a bond, felt more of a connection with them. Short chapters, headed by the day after the outbreak and name of the character ensured my focus remained sharp and on point. There are bubbles of humour to be found along the way, as well as the more obvious emotions. Yes this is so very close to what is happening right now, but it is different enough to make this novel more readable as a result. Joining our LoveReading Star Book collection, The End of Men is a powerful, thought-provoking read that is both epic in scale and intimate in memories.
The LoveReading LitFest invited Christina to the festival to talk about The End of Men.
The digitally native, all year round, online literature and books festival, with new content released every week is a free-for-all-users festival.
What are you waiting for? Check out a preview of the event and sign up to become a member.
| Primary Genre | Science Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Extraordinarily prescient and profoundly thought-provoking, The End of Men is set in the near future and opens in a Glasgow hospital in 2025 with no-nonsense A & E consultant, Dr Amanda Maclean, facing worrying signs of a potentially lethal virus.
Extraordinarily prescient and profoundly thought-provoking, The End of Men is set in the near future and opens in a Glasgow hospital in 2025 with no-nonsense A & E consultant, Dr Amanda Maclean, facing worrying signs of a potentially lethal virus. As a number of men present with flu like symptoms that escalate to death within hours it is Amanda who identifies Patient Zero, suggests that the virus is lethal to males alone and yet is ignored by public health authorities. An explosion of cases see the virus become a global pandemic with previously inconceivable implications for every aspect of society.
Dealing with her own personal grief as a wife and mother of two sons and yet determined to be heard and actually identify the source, Amanda is an inspirational figure.... Read Full Review
Shivers ran down my spine reading this book. The storytelling is wonderful - perfectly paced, with an immediacy and emotional intensity that made me gasp ‘The End Of Men’ deserves to be the hit book of the year.
Shivers ran down my spine reading this book.
The author, Christina Sweeney-Baird, could never have known just how prophetic she was being when she wrote it, but it is astounding how much she has predicted. The world is in the grip of a viral pandemic that only affects men. Dr Amanda MacLean tried to warn the authorities, but no-one was willing to listen. Men soon realise the folly of ignoring her warnings as they begin to die. What follows are first-person accounts by women from all over the world, documenting the fall of the male-dominated patriarchal society we knew, and the rise of a female-led one.
The storytelling is wonderful - perfectly paced, with an immediacy and emotional intensity that made me gasp.... Read Full Review
Pandemic thriller in a form of diary entries. fast paced, easy to read and entertaining.
It’s hard to read this book in the middle of pandemic and review it objectively as speculative fiction, as a dystopia. It’s definitely written well and a quick read, told through thrilling and enjoyable diary entries. It’s quite hard for me to get a proper picture as the writer started and supposedly finished writing this piece well before the COVID-19 pandemic. If so, it is truly prophetic as a lot that is predicted actually happened. Maybe a few details are different and exaggerated but the main gist is the same.
On the whole, the diary entries were brief, so you didn’t get to know the characters properly. The entries were glimpses of perspectives and snaps rather than proper stories.... Read Full Review
