Book feels all too real
Do you really want to read about a pandemic?
The End of October Lawrence Wright
Knopf
“Typically, with a pandemic, you have two or three big waves of contagion before it settles down and becomes the normal flu you get every year. So if this one is like the 1918 flu, the really big wave will hit in October. But of course, we don’t know what this one will do.”
That is a quote from The
End of October, a new novel by Lawrence Wright. I’ve had it since January. But as the book sat there, the world around it changed to the point that much of its content has merged with the news.
The fiction writers saw it coming, that’s for sure. For years, writers such as Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven) and Ling Ma (Severance) have created brilliantly imagined post-pandemic worlds.
The thriller angle on the killervirus-gone-out-of-control was pioneered by Michael Crichton in 1969 with The Andromeda Strain, and pursued more recently by Scott Z. Burns, who wrote the screenplay for the 2011 film Contagion.
But now that reality has caught up with fiction, there are some questions to ask yourself before picking up The End of October. Is terrifying yourself with the details of how a pandemic spreads going to be a good kind of scary? If the whole thing goes completely off the rails into global terrorism, biological warfare, moral depravity and the end of civilization, is that an informative thought experiment or too close to the nerve?
While the truth-is-strangerthan fiction aspects of Wright’s thriller plot may not work as well in 2020 as they might have at a more innocent time, his skill as a writer shines through.
Wright, a staff writer for
The New Yorker, is best known for books such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Looming Tower, a deep look at al-qaida and 9/11 and Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief.
The most captivating parts of his novel are his explanations of science. Viruses, he explains, work because they are covered with spikes that function “like a pirate boarding party,” fastening on to a cell “like a grappling hook” to get inside and replicate themselves thousands of times.
Alas, you’re not sure where the research ends and the dark fantasy begins. I actually spent time Googling a character, an evil Soviet scientist named Dr. Nikolai Ustinov, to see if he might be real. Fortunately, I found only the actor Peter Ustinov.
The emotional core of the book has to do with the extended separation of a family due to travel shutdown. When they are back together with no reunion scene, I felt a bit cheated.
And the crazy backstory of the main character, Dr. Henry Parsons, flattens, rather than deepens, his character. If you’re a fan of the Dan Brown/michael Crichton school of thriller, you might be more tolerant of that than I am. In that case, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s a definite maybe.
The Washington Post
Under Pressure:
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This informative book outlines the different kinds of stress we can all feel in life, particularly kids. Filled with explanations, examples, sidebars and coping mechanisms, this powerful and helpful guide is filled with entertaining illustrations and clear text. For children aged 10 and up, this in-depth subject offers the perfect chance to open up further dialogue.