Book Review: The End Of October by Lawrence Wright

 

The End of October By Lawrence Wright
Hardcover, 400 pages
Published April 2020 by Knopf Publishing Group

“At best, Henry had only slowed an inevitable, history-shaping pandemic. Governments would fall. Economies would collapse. Wars would arise. Why did we think that our own modern era was immune to the assault of humanity’s most cunning and relentless enemy, the microbe?”

This novel is a really singular kind of experience, and one that I am surprised is not getting more traction not only in the science fiction community but in mainstream society. Science Fiction’s track record of prediction is hit or miss. For every time a John Brunner novel like Shockwave Rider that predicts the internet there is as many 2001 Pan Am flight to the moon base predictions that seem silly now. 2020 as a year will go down in history as a shit show for lockdowns, race riots, and dysfunctional man-child presidents but the year was great for Science Fiction and Horror novels at the very least.

Within that amazing output, there were a variety of novels released during this year that left the author having to explain that they couldn’t have known what was coming. Sarah Pinsker’s A Song for New Day pre-dated the pandemic by a year but its heartbreak at the loss of live music dripped off the pages. Josh Malerman’s sequel to the sensation of Bird Box was a horror novel that seemed like a purposeful analogy for the mask debate. Paul Tremblay released his pandemic novel Survivor Song and had to explain over and over that the book was researched and written when he could not possibly have known.

In a similar vein, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned Playwright, screenwriter and novelist Lawrence Wright has been thinking, researching, and planning this pandemic novel for a decade before it was released. I am sure he knew it would come someday but who could have guessed that the real thing would beat the book by a month.

Lawrence Wright went from an author unleashing a novel meant to be a Silent Spring style warning to watching it come to life on cable news. I can see why many already tired of Pandemic living might not want to read a book that is about a deadly-er virus one that started for Wright as a writing prompt from director Ridley Scott. Something like “Hey Lawrence you know that super bleak novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy? I was wondering how did they end up there?”

This novel went from warning to a game where the reader is seeing what Wright got right or wrong. In fairness to any author speculating about the future, it is a hard game. There is a lot of stuff that you will be shaking your head at how close the novel is to reality, some things where I thought Wright was being optimistic. Honestly, this is an unintended entertaining aspect of this novel. As much as that might annoy Wright.  

“If you paid any attention to the role of disease in human affairs, you’d know the danger we’re in. We got smug after all of the victories over infection in the twentieth century, but nature is not a stable force. It evolves, it changes, and it never becomes complacent. We don’t have the time or resources now to do anything other than fight this disease. Every nation on earth has to be involved whether you think of them as friends or enemies. If we’re going to save civilization, we have to fight together and not against each other.”

Wright is a unique person to write this novel, his training as a journalist led him to write the book the Looming Tower. This was an exhaustive history of the root causes of the 9/11 attacks. This gave Wright the experience and contacts in government to spend years researching a pandemic. I know I have said lots and lots of words before actually diving into this novel properly.

As a novel and a story leaving aside for a moment the reality, we lived through in the last year the End of October IS a good novel. The story follows a few characters invented but also has real-life figures like a science fiction fan Richard Clarke (former War on Terror chief for GW Bush and Obama) who I assume Wright knows and approved of being used. Without saying their names, a familiar Vice President heads up a Corona Virus task force. Probably the most unbelievable thing was the President being portrayed as even slightly thinking about the situation but whatever.

“What leadership? Tildy thought. The president had been almost entirely absent in the debate about how to deal with the contagion, except to blame the opposing party for ignoring public health needs before he took office.”

So yes Wright saw how callous and selfish Trump would be in reality but he certainly didn’t have him suggesting people drink bleach or have Hermain Cain dying because he went to his rally. So I still think the novel is to positive on the presidential front.

Our main point of view is CDC expert Henry Parsons, who leaves home in Atlanta for a short overseas trip with his car in short-term parking. He tracks the start of this disease from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia. I found Henry’s Journey to be epic and heartbreaking. His struggle to get home and be useful as society falls apart drove this novel forward. The disease in this book is a deadly influenza and followed the exact surge timing we saw in historical 1918 and 2020. The death toll was higher, but this novel also plays with the international conflicts with Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as nasty actions taken by Putin that make matters far worse.  

If there is a problem that most readers will have is that Wright digresses from the story often to work through and explain the working of the disease, the geopolitical situations. Some of this probably seemed more important a few years back when the history of 1918 was not being used as historical background on the news every night.  It was fine with me and a smart reader can skim those moments and get to the character stuff. That is if you feel you have gotten too much pandemic info in real life.

“Those laboratory animals have done us no harm. They are tortured and murdered in the name of science. I know, I used to do it myself to my great shame. Is the benefit to humanity worth the sacrifice of so many animals lives? I say, No.”

The vegan animal liberationist in me raised an eyebrow at this. Henry was an interesting character, a vegetarian ex-vivisector who struggles through most of the novel just to survive. At times we know more about the fate of Henry’s family than he does and that also makes the journey a painful march at times, but of course, the storyteller in me enjoyed every page of this stuff.

It is hard for me to talk about the character’s journey which ended up being my favorite aspect without giving away the final act. Also, towards the end, the origins of the disease take on a plausible climate change connection that is something I briefly explored in my climate horror novel Ring of Fire. So, a tip of the hat to Lawrence Wright on that.

“Both sides had entered the war already weakened by the disease, and just as in 1918, armies propagated the contagion. Hospitals, already overfilled by flu victims, we're unable to treat more than a fraction of the wounded. And yet the war raged on, pulling both countries and their neighbors back into the pre-industrial world. Little was left of modernity except for weapons.”

Once the world as we know it ends the reality behind this fictional pandemic unfolds in an interesting answer to the mysteries. Henry’s journey to get home is one I can’t spoil but there were moments of anguish, heartbreak, and range of feels. I felt all of them as the book closed and that is probably the best thing I can say for this novel.

There are many reasons to read this book. The fun game of seeing what Lawrence got correct is a good reason. A better reason is to lose yourself in a novel that can remind you how much worse it could be. The best reason is it is an effectively told story even if the warning came a little late.