This is a mostly female led story set in the aftermath of a world plague that has killed off 99% of the male population. An extremely clever story and very well written but I had rather a hard time with it and the book took me far longer to read than it should have done. This is by no means a reflection on the writer's talent and is most definitely one of those cases of 'It's not you, it's me'. It turns out that reading about a world illness while you've been living through one for half a year kind of messes with your reading mojo a bit. I will certainly be revisiting this book in the future as I have greatly enjoyed the author's other novels, particularly The Shining Girls.

Turns out it's not particularly enjoyable to read about a fictional global pandemic when you as a reader are in the midst of one.

The pandemic in Afterland is one which only affects men, and we find out that Cole has lost her husband to it, had some kind of altercation with her sister, Billie, as a result of the pandemic... and has a 12 year old son who has somehow survived unscathed by whatever this disease is. To protect Miles, Cole has him pretend to be a girl (Mila), and they go on the run to try and survive agains the odds.

This premise was great but I found the story to plod along very slowly - not something you'd expect in a book with that plot description. The flashbacks were a bit confusing, and I found myself not really rooting for any of the characters. I'm struggling to gel with a lot of books at the moment (real life pandemic reading slump!) so I'd encourage others to pick this up if it sounds at all appealing.

3.75 stars for Afterland.

This is a book about a pandemic, hits close to home in a way after all that we as a world have been through this year.

In the setting of Afterland a virus has taken hold, however the twist on this is that it only affects the male population. There is an extremely high mortality rate so those boys/men that appear to be immune are sought after because otherwise how would they be able to keep on reproducing.

There are three main characters in this tale. Cole, Miles (her son) and Billie (her sister).

Throughout the book there is a real cat and mouse chase, hints of conspiracies, trafficking and danger lurking around every corner.

Thousands of miles from home, Cole gets Miles to pose as a girl as they try to escape the confines of government enforced facilities. After thinking Billie would help them, things quickly take a turn for the worse and the stakes seems to increase tenfold.

There is a quote in the book that stood out for me:

“You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t.”

And it's true. I felt like actually Afterland has put our current situation now into perspective, things could be a lot worse.

Now the premise of this novel is fantastic all be it a bit close to home right now.

The reason I find myself marking it down is because of the length of it. There were times when I found myself almost zoning out, becoming bored within certain chapters.

I think it could have been shortened in places to make the pace faster and to give it more edge.

Over all a good, though provoking read.

An outstanding, imaginative dystopian novel.
There are a lot of dystopian novels being published lately and now that a pandemic is sweeping the world this trend will probably continue. The current pandemic gives us all a better understanding of how nations, individuals behave when there is a global crisis as we now have first hand experience of seeing both the best and worst sides of humanity.
You can’t fail to project the events in this novel to the present crisis. There are parallels which make it hard to believe that she wrote it before Covid swept the globe. Her words are prophetic and more relevant than she could have known when she put pen to paper. Like Ali Smiths Seasonal Quartet this book feels very much about now.

Afterland is an absorbing dystopian novel where a virus is wiping out the male population. The novel centres on Cole with her son Miles who are on the run from her sister Billie and also the State. Billie who sees Miles as a cash cow and has got mixed up with a rather disreputable criminal gang. The State who want to control and experiment on the few remaining males to try to find a vaccine for the virus. What ensues is a road trip across America with the story told from the perspective of each of the main characters. Cole and Miles hook up with a religious cult to help them reach their destination.

If, in these troubling times, you are up for a dystopian novel, then Beukes’s tale should be high up on your list.

This was on the whole a good read but I did struggle at times to get into the story and found my concentration wavering. A mother, Cole and her son Miles who is disguised as a girl Mila are on the run, the world is in the grip of a pandemic (a bit close to home !!) that has wiped out 99% of men, leaving Miles/ Mila in a precarious position as he is a precious commodity. The story is a good one and very topical at the moment but I just couldn’t seem to connect with the characters, maybe it just wasn’t the right time for me to read the book and I am sure many others will enjoy this more.
So for me a three star read that was interesting but just didn’t have the wow factor I was expecting.
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK - Michael Joseph for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I think it's probably impossible to talk about this book – a book with a 2020 publication date that is about a global pandemic – without reflecting heavily on the current real world situation. So many of the small details of this story hit so much harder than the author could have possibly imagined while writing it.

<i>“You can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months. You just can’t.”</i>

This would be a powerful quote in any context, but it stood out starkly while reading it with *gestures wildly around* all of this going on.

Early on in the book, a holiday to Disneyland features, set in the summer of 2020. I jokingly said to a friend "well, there goes the suspension of disbelief!", only to find out a few pages later that Disneyland, summer 2020... that's where these characters pick up this new virus which goes on to cause an apocalyptic global pandemic. Huh, bit on the nose.

In the world of Afterland, the virus is only deadly to men – with an astonishingly high mortality rate. I say "men", but trans issues are discussed in the book further on, so it is more accurate to say that the virus is only deadly to people AMAB. The small number of male survivors are mostly taken to facilities, along with their female family members, for protection and testing. South African mother Cole is one of these family members, kept under lock and key by the government along with her son, Miles.

Thousands of miles from home (side note: a foreigner's narration of America makes for a brutally different one than you'd be likely to get from an American protagonist's perspective), they hatch an escape plan to get back to Johannesburg.

Some of the aforementioned small, world-building details that it turns out are painfully accurate include hand sanitiser selling out everywhere; scientific advice changing rapidly and older advice seeming quaintly naive in hindsight; and the pinpoint accuracy of the types of conspiracy theories that pop up (the virus being manufactured in a lab – a North Korean lab in the book vs the Chinese lab of coronavirus conspiracies; the virus being caused by vaping vs coronavirus's 5G masts, etc).

A scene that stood out to me as particularly poignant was a visit to Ancient Puebloan cliff dwellings, which sees Cole reflect on a fallen civilisation while the world of the early 2020s is changing and crumbling around them.

I do feel like trauma could have been explored in far greater detail. The majority of the story is set in 2023 so only 3 years after the virus begins to properly take hold in the world and kill off almost half of the global population, and although it's touched upon, it struck me as a little unrealistic for so many of the characters to be so... ok. There is mourning, sure, but there's little collective trauma.

I found this book engaging, and the fast pace of it kept my nose fully in it. I think it will be very interesting to come back to and reread in a few years though, when it's (hopefully) a story less relevant to actual life.

3.5 stars, rounded up.

And one final note, one that I'm not sure has a point but I wanted to touch upon – reproductive politics features heavily in the story, after all there are very few men surviving and procreation has been outlawed until the virus has been studied and conquered. I couldn't help but think about the fact that were the story about a virus that has killed off most of the female population, rape would have featured in the book fairly heavily.

As the name suggests, this is a post apocalypse novel, the disaster having been a virus that has killed all men. With an all woman society struggling to maintain civilization a mother struggles to preserve the freedom and identity of her young son who has a precious gift: he is immune to virus that has killed his father and nearly all of the male population. Pursued by strangers and those near to her who wish to profit from the golden boy, she is desperate to escape to what she hopes will be sanctuary. There follows a road trip through a dystopian America which is fraught with all manner of dangers both extraordinary and banal. This is colorful vision of a world without men, well written and with a constantly evolving narrative which grips the readers interest.

I was worried about picking up a book centred on a pandemic, I mean the timing is interesting isn’t it. But two things quickly became clear:

1. The pandemic here is different - it only kills men
2. The whole thing feels completely tongue-in-cheek and is impossible to take seriously

Cole and her son Miles escape a camp in California set up to protect and exploit some of the few remaining males - semen is gold. We’re not yet clear on the details but it seems that during the escape Cole may have killed her sister, Billie.

Young Miles become Mila (i.e. he takes on the identity of a girl) as they make a Wacky Races style run for Canada, or maybe somewhere else if that won’t work. The early scenes are actually pretty good aided by flashbacks that allow up a glimpse of their previous lives and how the pandemic got a hold. And now we learn that Billie is alive (barely) and in hot pursuit.

Early on, my issue was that I found the exchanges between Cole and Miles/Mila irritating: the attempts at humour in their banter failed to hit the mark for me and the whole mood of the dialogue just felt off. I battled on, but when I came to a section where the pair became part of a travelling circus of saviour nuns I began to skim and soon after that I gave up at around two-thirds of my way through the book.

In truth, I’m not sure what audience this book is aimed at – young adults perhaps? And maybe I'm just struggling to see the funny side of a pandemic at the moment (my bad if that's the case!). Either way, this story definitely wasn’t what I was expecting and though I had a decent go at working through it I’d actually been tempted to set it aside from quite early on. Sorry, this one really wasn’t my cup of tea.

I was wanting more from this book than I got after reading Lauren's other novels and I'm sorry to say that this really bored me and I couldn't finish it (got half way then didn't want to return.

I'll give it 3 stars because I didn't finish it, but I suspect I would have given it 2 if I went the course!

I wanted to love this book, it sounded exactly like the type of book I would like to read. Set in a world where a virus has swept the globe, causing men to then all develop cancer, with the exception of a very few.

This story follows Cole and her son Miles on the run from her sister who wants to sell Miles to a rich buyer for his sperm.

It just wasn't very exciting or gripping. The parts I did like (about how the virus came about, how it's changed the world) were too few and I felt too distant from the characters to really get inolved in the story. Too many attempts at humour which didn't often work, and I just struggled to really get through this one.

I really enjoy Lauren Beukes novel 'The Shining Girls' and I think I was hoping for something like that. This novel is a very different animal in that the premise is a world where most men have died due to a virus and the consequences for a mother and her son. Great premise and what coincidental/prophetic timing! I enjoyed the novel to a point but, for me, I felt the pace was off - there didn't really seem any point where I thought the protagonists were going to be in real danger. So, for those looking or an end of the world scenario, Handmaids Tale type of novel - enjoy!

A slow burn story about a mother and son on the run, Lauren Beukes’ dystopian thriller 'Afterland' contains some of the most impressive prose I’ve come across. It is a feminist critique of patriarchal society written from the least likely angle: by killing all the men.

This is the second pandemic novel I've read this year and, while I don’t want to do the author a disservice by framing it as a commentary on current events, I will say that what once might have read as a surreal, Palahniukian story about humanity at its most extreme, instead reads as frighteningly plausible.

Beukes has created a thought-provoking alternative future of anarchist communes, cult-like religious movements and the collapse of ‘penis-centric’ industry. The government has responded to the oncovirus with training programs for women and heavy-handed legislation to protect the remaining male population, including a ban on procreation.

While this makes for an engaging read it's Beukes’ character writing that I find remarkable. 'Afterland' alternates between the perspectives of Cole, her son Miles and her sister Billie, each having a distinct internal dialogue that feels like a study in character psychology. I’m no stranger to multiple POVs in fiction but never have I seen it executed so well. Cole’s often humorous thoughts are haunted by the ghost of her dead husband, Miles’ chapters are littered with pubescent confusion and pop culture references, while Billie is a concussed egotist, feverish and angry.

“See you later, alligator. Waiter-hater-masturbator-violator-sister-traitor. Perpetrator.”

In addition to expertly creating three distinct voices, Beukes’ writing is beautiful, intimate and claustrophobic, ranging from flowing, descriptive prose to stark, economic imagery.

“Another moan. Animal self-pity. Clumps of hair. Sharp bits against her fingertips. She brings her hand to her face to look. Little black pits in the blood on her fingers, which is shockingly red. Gravel. Not bone shards. Not a broken skull. Not that bad. But not good either.”

When I read Beukes' 'Zoo City' back in 2011 it opened my eyes to the potential of speculative fiction and influenced the type of sci-fi and fantasy I would later be interested in. With ‘Afterland’, Beukes has again raised the bar of my expectations. It’s the kind of book that will have even the most modest book club arguing over gender, politics and human rights.

So a plague or pandemic has wiped out 99% of all men so the men in America are being protected or is that imprisoned, which ever Cole escapes with her 12 year old son Miles, believing she'd killed her sister in the process and see no other option but to hightail it out of there as fast as possible.. So an explosive start and action packed thriller all the way through.
A world full of women and a hand full of men bit like the wars the jobs are all taken by females and there are no complaints and no other choice the men are otherwise engaged and as we know jobs are not gender specific anymore. There is a ban on pregnancies until they can sort out the cause of the pandemic and save the planet ( well humanrace to be more precise), giving birth is still gender specific obviously. So having stated the obvious what is it about this thriller that gets it 5 stars???. The action, the twists, the great characters be they gansters or Nuns they all added to this experience for humour and tension. Miles is disguised as a girl which is easy at his age but a little problematic when his voice begins to break. Can Cole get him back to her homeland of South Africa or will they be stuck in the USA forever.
I definitely feel this is deserving of 5 stars and think you will see why when you read it.

Given its premise, Afterland felt as though it should be a difficult read during a pandemic. But… it wasn’t. This is partly due to Beukes’s writing – she balances three distinct first-person narrators to carry along this what-happened-next tale, plotting the route of a family disparately on the run while flashing back to how they got there. You’ll probably have a favourite voice (I did), but all three are compelling. But it’s also that the effect of the virus in the novel is not SARS-ish at all.

The story revolves around Cole and her son Miles, struggling to survive in a post-pandemic society after a virus has wiped out all but a small percentage of the world’s men through cancer. Those men and boys that have survived are both hated (how dare they survive) and wanted (for study and for reproduction). I really love how Beukes relates societal changes during a biological disaster happening both slowly and quickly – she absolutely nails the feeling of everything and nothing changing. Ostensibly Cole and Miles are on the run from a government facility in America, trying to return to their homeland of South Africa after being stranded in the US by the virus. But they’re also on the run from Cole’s sister, Billie – a psychopathic, out-for-herself low-level criminal. It’s… complicated.

Afterland has drawn obvious comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale and Children of Men, but it’s lazy to call it simply a dystopian novel. It’s more explorative than that and for me, actually, conjured the adult ghost of Jean Ure’s Come Lucky April, the second book in her Plague trilogy, set 100 years after the plague, in a society that is female-run and has deemed men useless, so castrates them – just one society in a country where dozens of civilisations with their own rules have appeared. That book challenges that society’s rules and ideas with the introduction of a man. Afterland is an expanded take on this challenge. The various militia, religions, clubs and cults that have sprung up illustrate just some of the multitude of responses to a world without men – a combination of celebration and grief. So much grief, of course, with the future on hold while the present is figured out (babies are not allowed). And it’s a classic action thriller. At the centre of it are a mother and child on the run, and the people chasing them; there is no page not strung with threat and worry. And it’s a family drama – a coming-of-age at a really bad time to be doing that.

It explores, because it must, the idea that a world run by women might be better. It speaks to my own societal conditioning that in all the run-ins with police and hard-line government officials, for the first third of the book I found myself jolted slightly by the reminder that they’re women. Billie and her colleagues are as ruthless as any male gang (it’s an interesting touch, too, that the two women narrators both have gender-neutral names).
The loss of biological males, also means a fringe queerness has sprung up: women who – because they miss men – are toying with transsexual identity or queer relationships. Miles, a 12-year-old boy, goes incognito as Mila and, just as he’s dealing with all the uncertainties of puberty, finds himself in moving evangelist nunnery, essentially, trying to identify with the women there. I couldn’t help but think of both Sister Act and Nuns on the Run here – but while those disguises are played for laughs, Beukes, I think quite sensitively examines what an ostensibly non-trans lad might psychologically experience in this situation, in a world where his Aunt wants his sperm; wanting to be a girl because by god it would be SO much easier to be a girl in this scenario.

The novel skims across identity politics – it’s testament to the scope of what Beukes manages to cover, the world she has built, while maintaining a taut thriller – that what she does do is highlight the sheer range of identity and sexuality in the world. The loss of men hasn’t automatically meant trans people are welcomed, which is sadly realistic, but she takes a tour from religious denial; to women pretending to be pregnant where a black market has sprung up around pregnancy; to a fetish club, where the fetish is men.

There’s a lot going on. In fact sometimes I almost wished some of the information had been stripped out – there was just so much to take in; so much being thrown at these few characters that occasionally I had a 'what NOW?!' reaction – but then I’m sure somewhere out there people are writing reviews (or, heaven forfend, comments to the author) asking why Beukes didn’t cover X, Y and Z.

It’s a ride, this book, and it’ll make you think. And you’ll enjoy much of that thinking. I know I did.

Only we all can imagine how the world will change. Throughout this book, we have a global man plague which has wiped out most of the men. 
This is a very edgy and unique novel and it has been strange reading this as we ease from quarantine ourselves. 
This is my first read by this author, but I absolutely cannot wait to read more. I have loved the edgy and quirky writing style used for this one. 
The plot is completely unique to anything I've read previously and I have to be honest, I have been completely captivated by this book. 
I love that the author decided to create a dystopian world where males were wiped out and females had the power. This really makes the book unique. 
The author has included fascinating religious information throughout that is obviously well researched and planned to fit. 
This book is harrowing, terrifying and genius all thrown into one.
Public review to follow on blog tour

Interesting book, seems quite appropriate for these strange times, although thankfully even more extreme.I have always liked dystopian type books, although as we seem to be living in a dystopian time of our own they seem less made up than usual.I did think the idea behind the book was good, and the characters were believable.Not a bad book,well worth a read if you enjoy this genre.

Afterland is well written.
A global pandemic has taken over the world (very apt!) and wiped out most of the men.

Cole and her son miles are on the run and she has to keep him safe.

The book was quite fast paced which I like and not difficult to read.

Afterland tells of a time when women rule the world, men and boys become a rare breed after cancer quickly ravages their bodies.
A pandemic sweeps the world - where a mum (Cole) takes her son on the run - Miles is disguised as Mia, Billie (Cole's sister) aims to capture Miles and give him to her very wealthy boss - the aim - to see why he has survived when so many other males have died and to use him to procreate (this is outlawed).
This book has some very strong language and violence (it didn't put me off) but in fact, added to the authenticity of the story.

Afterland was a very enjoyable read.

Lauren Beukes couldn’t possibly have known how the world would look in 2020 when she wrote Afterland and the phrase “unprecedented global pandemic”, just as any review of her 5th novel couldn’t fail to mention Covid-19. Although, with the amount of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic novels published each year, someone was bound to get close. Not that Beukes’ global pandemic is anything like our real world crisis; only men are affected here in what has become known as “the Manfall”. However, some of the aftermath and human reactions to how Beukes world changed as a result are a little too close to the bone.

Afterland is the story of Cole and her 12-year old son Miles. Miles is one of the last human males alive. It is also the story of Billie, Cole’s younger sister. The plot alternates between their points of view as they travel across America. It is, indeed, a post-apocalyptic road trip and almost reads as cinematic at times. We begin with Cole and Miles, who must now be dressed as a young girl and called Mila to escape detection, heading off looking for a way to get back to South Africa. All Cole wants is to protect her son and get them both back to her home (not one Miles knows too much about). They’ve gone from a military complex in Seattle to a luxury bunker meant to keep the remaining males safe. Billie, meanwhile, wakes up after being left for dead; a head wound that is all wet and flappy, and contents of a stomach that refuse to remain there. And so a chase begins.

Billie isn’t a great sister nor a great person. She has plans for Miles and they didn’t necessarily include Cole. While the mother and (son) daughter are fleeing, Billie is tasked with finding Miles, accompanied by some gangster-types. Soon, Cole and Miles hook up with some travelling missionaries - the Sisters of All Sorrows - with names reflecting their past sins (Sister Chastity, Hope, Temperance, etc) and head to Florida. All the while, there are flashbacks and exposition on how the pandemic occurred, the relationship between Billie and Coles as children, and Cole's husband, Devon.

The later, despite being a victim of the new world, crops up from time with ghostly sage advice for Cole. Is he haunting her? Is she imagining what he would say in any particular context, or is she projecting her subconsciousness into his voice?

Afterland races along. Not a traditional page-turner, but it is so full of energy. It feels like sometimes Beukes was angry when she wrote parts of it (“rich douches of Silicon Valley”), despite all the obvious research and cultural references she’s crammed into the prose. Short sentences, lots of phrasing. Her writing is full of wit and vim. “You know the world has gone to shit when everything is reduced to acronyms”. Yep. There is an urgency in the narrative,] as there is in Cole trying to escape America and her past. The references to culture never let up either but not just in the dialogue from characters but how she describes the world that they are witness to as well - from 2D platform games to Wakanda to David Attenborough.

The writing also varies considerably from the three different povs, and then, out of nowhere, there is an interlude where Beukes style changes again as she writes up a TV interview, a magazine article and the transcript of a 1-2-1 interview. No surprise that there is this versititly if you know that Beukes is also a journalist and a comic book writer.

So what is this book really about? It certainly isn’t how great everything would be if all the men died and women took over. There are plenty of unhinged, nasty and flawed females in the story. Both Cole and Billie are complex and a million miles from the good and bad characters the reader might initially assume. Cole wants to be a good Mom but makes a series of bad choices, for example. Her love for her child is tangible. It is feminist, however. I’d argue that it is proper feminism to argue that some women can be equally as monstrous as some men. But there is an acknowledgement that women need to work harder than men to achieve the same things. There is no dumbing down of women’s bodily functions. There’s a Woman’s Railroad to help victims of domestic violence. The society that has evolved in the three years since the pandemic is no better, but no worse, than before (no typical post-apocalyptic messiahs or such-like). Cole even complains that it isn’t like pop culture - no cities to loot, no shambling zombies and no crazed militia. Of course, being science fiction, there are comments about how we live now. Asides mentioning how reliant we are on the likes of Amazon’s Alexa for example. Plus all the religion stuff too (the sex club being a safer place that the religous cult is a nice tough). How does Beukes fit so many ideas into a novel without sacrificing plot and character?

Beukes writes “you can’t imagine how much the world can change in six months”. An emoji signals that there is no hand-sanitiser left in a store. Unfortunately, while not as devastating, we can no longer think like that. There is even a reference to Black Lives Matter. However, at least we have excellent, imaginative, vital fiction such as Afterland to keep us company. Plus there’s an extra point for the librarian joke!

I read this fast, one sitting and whilst I'm a fan of this author as my previous higher ratings will show for some reason, despite speeding through it, Afterland never really hit the mark for me.

It had nothing to do with skill- Lauren Beukes has always written in a quirky, engaging style that hugely appeals to me and so it was here. But for me one of the huge bonuses of reading a Beukes novel is her particular brand of storytelling, it's never *quite* like anyone else's and her plotting and sheer creative imagination is often second to none. Afterland was a novel that yes, did have an interesting premise (men dead women rebuilding the rare male left on the planet valued above all else) but failed to deliver in the normal way. Subjectively speaking obviously.

The mother/son relationship was well drawn but the depth to the problem he was facing (having to dress and act as a girl) felt surface level only. There's a side plot with the sister that was promising but became predictable and there really wasn't a lot to provoke thought. It was kind of Stephen King apocalyptic but without the King magic.

I'm a little disappointed but you know. Even favourite authors occasionally throw out a book I'm not fond of but it's usually only one. I guess in this case it's this one.

I'll look forward to the next instead. And to end on a positive note if you like post apocalyptic tales with a strong feminist slant this may well be something you'd enjoy.