Songs for the End of the World

Broadcasting the photo of a possible patient zero is alarming and hopefully agreed upon as unethical. Owen has professor-equivalent status and conducts himself grossly with students throughout; the sympathy he gets, which is expressed literally, makes him come across as an author stand-in. The women characters revolve around men or babies. The few who aren’t white are introduced by their race and breast size.

Dropping in the word capitalism and having a character tell us about elite panic doesn’t realise a vision of a world seized by a pandemic of a new scale. As a novel of an ensemble cast, the pre-pandemic character building is a considerable drag. The tagline talks about hope but its impression is more of a timeline of stories of relationship entropy.