Title: The End Of October
Rating: 4 Stars
I like Lawrence Wright. He’s a nonfiction author that dives deeply into really interesting subjects. I believe that his history of Al-Qaeda, The Looming Tower, won a Pulitzer Prize. Going Clear, his history of Scientology, is truly a bat shit crazy story that has to be read to be believed.
So, when I heard that he wrote a fiction novel about a global pandemic before the Coronavirus actually hit (The End of October was published in March 2020, so was actually finished some months before than), I was intrigued. I was a little leery because it’s not like we’re actually out of our own pandemic. My life has now been significantly unsettled by it for coming up on two years. What would it be like to read about it?
It turned out OK for me because things go seriously bad in the novel. Things get way worse than they even came close to in our timeline. That’s not to saw that this wasn’t a serious warning shot. If things had taken a few more left turns, our world could have turned out much worse.
It starts out with some unexplained death in an Indonesian camp. Our hero, the epidemiologist Henry Parsons, investigates, leaving his wife, Jill, and their two children, Helen and Teddy, back in Atlanta.
The deaths in Indonesia defy easy diagnosis. Meanwhile, the driver that took Henry to the camp embarks upon his Hajj to Mecca. There, surrounded by millions of fellow Muslims, he falls ill and dies. Despite heroic efforts at containment, some of the pilgrims break free, and thus a world wide contagion is born.
In case this is not complicated enough, there are geopolitical concerns. Saudi Arabia is on the verge of war with Iran. Russia is suspected of launching the virus in an act of bioterrorism and is preparing so-called soft attacks on American infrastructure.
The story unfolds on three main tracks. One is Henry desperately trying to get home to his family while at the same time lending his expertise to diagnose, track, treat, and ultimately prevent the disease. The second track is Jill and their two children trying to survive in a world in which civilization appears on the edge of collapse. The third track is Tildy Nichinsky, a career government bureaucrat promoted to National Security Advisor. as she tries to guide the President through the decisions required to save the country.
It is an action packed story. I read a previous review that called Wright something like the Tom Clancy of pandemics. This is actually quite accurate. Like Clancy, Wright is very strong on technical detail and can certainly tell a compelling story. He’s just not great at building complex characters. In plotting, he has trouble transitioning from one point to another, so there are some fairly large gaps in the narrative.
It is a great story. Wright spares no punches. Major characters die. Shit gets real. There is no pollyannish happy ending where everyone hugs and says well, that was a close call but we made it.
He paints a dire picture of exactly how thin our veneer of civilization is. Things don’t have to go all that bad before catastrophes quickly happen. A very real argument can be made that there are actors in the world that want to see the world burn. Some of them already hold the matches.
Although a work of fiction, there are real people characterized. Vladimir Putin is a sinister force throughout the book. Various other historical figures, especially from the field of biological research, are referenced. I’m not sure if he did it to be intentionally amusing, but I thought it was hilarious that Richard Clarke appears here. For those that need a refresher, Clarke was the dark prince Cassandra of the federal government. It was he that was frantically banging the drum about terrorism in the days before 9/11. Now, in this book, he has reassumed the role of doomsayer. Even after the shit has gone down and the US is teetering on the brink, he still sits ensconced in some elite DC restaurant, dispensing sage advice to any who will listen.
Wright did get many things right. At times it was a bit eerie. Nearly in a flash, the feeling of normality is ripped asunder. Despite all evidence, there are those that think it’s all a hoax. There are panic runs for essentials. There are frantic searches for treatments and vaccines. Government leaders grasp for easy fixes (although no one recommends injecting bleach), but generally are clueless.
Although it was taking place in a much more heightened atmosphere, based upon our now own actual experience, much of what transpired in the novel rang true.
dorkenstein 