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The End of Men

Written by: Christina Sweeney-Baird
Narrated by: Cathleen McCarron, Aysha Kala, Denica Fairman, Penelope Rawlins, Debra Michaels, Julia Locascio, Sasha Alexis, Robert Bradley, Sara Lynam, Rebecca Perfect, William Hope
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Publisher's Summary

"The End of Men is a fiercely intelligent page-turner, an eerily prescient novel, at once thoughtful and highly emotive." (Paula Hawkins, number-one internationally best-selling author of The Girl on the Train)

Set in a world where a virus stalks our male population, The End of Men is an electrifying and unforgettable debut from a remarkable new talent that asks: What would our world truly look like without men?

Only men carry the virus. Only women can save us all.

The year is 2025, and a mysterious virus has broken out in Scotland - a lethal illness that seems to affect only men. When Dr. Amanda MacLean reports this phenomenon, she is dismissed as hysterical. By the time her warning is heeded, it is too late. The virus becomes a global pandemic - and a political one. The victims are all men. The world becomes alien - a women's world.

What follows is the immersive account of the women who have been left to deal with the virus' consequences, told through first-person narratives. Dr. MacLean; Catherine, a social historian determined to document the human stories behind the "male plague"; intelligence analyst Dawn, tasked with helping the government forge a new society; and Elizabeth, one of many scientists desperately working to develop a vaccine. Through these women and others, we see the uncountable ways the absence of men has changed society, from the personal - the loss of husbands and sons - to the political - the changes in the workforce, fertility, and the meaning of family.

In The End of Men, Christina Sweeney-Baird turns the unimaginable into the unforgettable.

©2021 Christina Sweeney-Baird (P)2021 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Science Fiction Books of the Year

“[A] chilling dystopian debut thriller...Sweeney-Baird’s look inside the heads of these and other shocked, desperate characters and her portrait of a bizarre new world are both thought- and fear-provoking. Readers will either wolf this down or elect to stay miles away from it, but controversy moves titles off the shelf. A top choice.” (Booklist, starred review)

"Philosophically sweeping and emotionally intimate.... [The] personal politics and gender dynamics are spot-on, and readers will feel connected to the main characters’ struggles and resilience. Sweeney-Baird is a writer to watch.” (Publishers Weekly)

"So much speculative fiction amounts to nothing more than just that: idle what-iffing, spitballed at the reader with little conviction and even less imagination. But The End of Men, like only a very few novels published since The Handmaid's Tale - think Naomi Alderman's The Power, think Children of Men by P D James - builds an alternate reality so persuasive, so confident, that it soon evolves from intriguing fiction to you-are-there docudrama, as vivid as Max Brooks' World War Z. Part parable, part thriller, and altogether provocative, this is the stuff that classics are made of." (AJ Finn, New York Times best-selling author of The Woman in the Window)

What listeners say about The End of Men

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Pandemic response distractingly incorrect

Performances were great and it eventually got moving but some items of the story had me doing a double take. Even before covid, it was obvious that this was not how a pandemic would be experienced, especially at the outset. 5,000 dead in the UK and a professor of virology in Toronto is just learning about it offhand from the nytimes?! Something like this, originating in the UK, would induce instant global freak out. Don't want to be too harsh, though. Once most of the men were dead, the story got "better" (tee hee), but I found the depiction of the pandemic's early days incredulous.

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  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
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Was a real struggle to finish

This book seemed to be poorly researched in terms of the science and in terms of how previous pandemics have evolved. There were lots of internal inconsistencies in terms of the narrative. There was also little diversity of perspectives, and by the end of the book most of the characters we hear from are clearly the same person. The book does raise some interesting ideas but these are never fully developed. The performances were at times distracting and over the top.

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