pithypants reviewed The End of October by Lawrence Wright
Review of 'The End of October' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
It might not be the smartest thing to read about a global pandemic while living through a global pandemic, but hear me out. It was kind of like watching a movie set in Washington DC while living in Washington DC... fun to both look for familiar/recognizable landmarks and to notice the differences. One of the differences is that the coronavirus in this novel (and yes, it's a novel coronavirus) has a higher mortality rate, so it made what we're living through seem Not So Bad.
This thriller feels like the love child of Michael Crichton and Neal Stephenson in that it's fast-moving, rooted in science, spans the globe and has multiple plot lines marching forward simultaneously. I most enjoyed the first third of the book, which set-up the pandemic and seemed realistic. After that – once the virus goes global – it became a bit less believable and over the …
It might not be the smartest thing to read about a global pandemic while living through a global pandemic, but hear me out. It was kind of like watching a movie set in Washington DC while living in Washington DC... fun to both look for familiar/recognizable landmarks and to notice the differences. One of the differences is that the coronavirus in this novel (and yes, it's a novel coronavirus) has a higher mortality rate, so it made what we're living through seem Not So Bad.
This thriller feels like the love child of Michael Crichton and Neal Stephenson in that it's fast-moving, rooted in science, spans the globe and has multiple plot lines marching forward simultaneously. I most enjoyed the first third of the book, which set-up the pandemic and seemed realistic. After that – once the virus goes global – it became a bit less believable and over the top as it morphed into one man's version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles (except: boats, camels, submarines, and prop planes) to get home to his family.
And in the final 20% it was just confusing. It felt like the author was bored by the characters and relationships and just wanted to cut to the chase and finish the Big Point of The Story so he truncated some pretty important plotlines. Without providing enough detail to spoil anything: I'm still confused on how some people died, how others were reunited, and the general timeline since what I thought spanned months or even years actually took place in less than two weeks.
So yes - a fun thriller (if you can call a pandemic fun), but with so many of the flaws common to the genre. If the author had executed the whole book as well as he did the first 30%, I'd be raving.