If you had read The End of Men a few years ago you'd likely have laughed at the absurdity of the premise. Now in 2020, this book hits differently. It's eerily relevant and hits a mark you didn't even know needed hitting. Christina Sweeney-Baird has created a relevant, gripping and compelling read.

I came across this book on Twitter and immediately pre-ordered it, however I also requested it on Netgalley and was lucky enough to be approved for an ARC.
I must start by saying that this is hands down my favourite book this year, and most definitely top 10 ever. I read it in two days, and it only took me so long because I was trying to pace myself and not rush it. I got so absorbed by the story that I would not hear my husband talking to me. I went to bed thinking about the events taking place and woke up ready to read on and find out more.
Reading a book about a global pandemic while we are living one might seem too depressing to consider, but this book had the opposite effect. No matter how bad things are now, they are not as terrifying and as world ending as the ones in this book. It helps with perspective.
In this book a deadly virus is killing almost all the men in the world – with 97% fatality rate, while the women are asymptomatic carriers. The virus spreads quickly and lives outside hosts for a long time, thus becoming difficult to control. The book starts shortly before the outbreak of this virus in Scotland, but the situation quickly escalates and spirals out of control around the world.
The book is written like a record of different people’s experiences throughout and after the four-year pandemic, in different countries around the globe. I absolutely loved the format. I became very attached to Catherine and was heartbroken to read about her loss; Amanda who was a force of nature to be reckoned with and she is someone I would like to have as a friend; Elizabeth was like a breath of fresh air trying to keep everyone positive and others.
The author thought very carefully about the geo-political implications of such a deadly virus and she made a fantastic job explaining why certain events happened the way they did and how the world moved on. The impact of this virus on women, the immune men, the trans men and the trans women, the gay and the straight people was discussed and analysed as well. This book reads like a record and in my opinion, this makes it even more powerful.

The End Of Men

What a timely book. I was interested to read the foreword as this book was wrote prior to Coronavirus and then released into a very different world to the one it was wrote in.

I was half terrified reading this book...because we can now see how easy these things could come to pass and half relieved, as however bad the virus we are currently dealing with is...its not The Plague.

The indictment of pandemic control and the governments shambolic handling of a pandemic is particularly timely. Being an island ...everyone is aware that if flights had been stopped quicker, if the powers that be has acted quicker then it could easily have been contained.

The End Of Men shows us this and with even more deadly and life changing consequences.

I cried alot reading this book. I particularly loved Amanda and Catherine and hated Lisa Michael's with a passion I didn't know possible from what little we saw of her.

It took me a few chapters to get used to the way the story was told...it jumps between characters and situations and you often don't come back to them. At first I struggled but then I adored it...I wanted the different perspectives and if some were more interesting than others...that was also fine because the pieces made up the whole picture.

Had I read this last year...I may have said something along the lines of how it was far fetched because I am sure the government would handle a pandemic better. Unfortunately in 2020 we know that's not the case and its luck rather than judgement that has seen to it that we are seemingly containing it to some degree.

However because of the time that we are reading it in...it is hard and painful reading...it felt all too real.

The writing is exquisite...with so many strands they were wound together beautifully and I couldn't recommend this book more. It scared me, but it also made me really feel and I have been thinking of the people we have lost due to covid since I have finished it and the fractured families and the different world. It's very scary when a dystopian thriller feels very real but also very humbling. I think it's amazing how real the author made it before it was real...it shows an innate understanding of humanity and I am very impressed.

Will definitely be reading more books by this highly talent author.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a very prescient book given the times we are living through. Had me gripped from beginning to end, not only because of some of the similarities with today's situation but also because of the imagination of what could happen and how the world would evolve.

What a book to read right now! Spookily correct in some places, this one really hit home for me and kept me turning pages late into the night. Enjoyable and well thought out.

The shorter chapters were great at keeping attention and pages turning. Some of the characters were a bit underwritten causing some confusion, but altogether this was a great read.

Well, talk about winning the topicality jackpot! Sweeney-Baird talks about writing this in 2018 before Covid-19, a speculative story about the sudden eruption of a viral pandemic but here one which only affects men and which has a huge mortality rate... In a way, though, reading this when the fiction has become unnervingly close to our realities also serves to undermine the book since the sensationalism is made all the clearer.

Admittedly, the virus in the book has about a 90% mortality rate for men but even so the reactions of people are so swift and so extreme: by Day 8 people are evacuating London, by Day 14 NHS doctors are refusing to go in to work, the army are driving ambulances and food delivery trucks, at Day 25 a reputable newspaper leader is prophesying the end of the world...

This can't help but be an interesting read but to be honest not much actually happens and the mini-stories mean that we don't get attached to any of the characters. The speculation of how the 'new' world will be run by women makes some interesting predictions: China becomes a republic because there's no military to repress rebellion, military wives are conscripted into the army (why not just any women?), same-sex dating apps make millions.

Interesting, undoubtedly, but as we've found in real life, the changes brought about by pandemic may be less sensational and more micro than the grand developments in the book.

This novel is eerily, spookily prescient. Written long before the 2020 coronavirus outbreak it envisages a pandemic that only affects men. But the author gets so many things absolutely right, the flailing incompetence of the British government (sadly), the desperate scrabble for a vaccine. It so hard not to read this book through the lens of everything that is happening in the world right now and your tolerance for a fictional pandemic may depend on how strongly you have been affected by the real one. But for me despite the pain and loss in this book it felt hopeful in a strange way. Massive societal change has come out of traumatic events before (women working due to the world wars) and it felt interesting to think about how the fictional pandemic reshapes how the world works, sometimes for the better. Is it too optimistic to hope that life could mirror art?

I wasn’t sure about this book as it’s about a pandemic and I read it during a pandemic. It was way better than I expected, it had me hooked. This is a pandemic that effects men which was interesting. I really liked how it had multiple POV from different countries so we could see the different perspectives of the disease. I sometimes found it a little hard to follow with the switching points of view but once I got use to it, I really enjoyed it.
There were times when I was a little confused. The writing style was okay, I found it easy to read. The characters were okay, some I preferred over others but I liked the diversity of the characters.
Overall I liked this book but I’m not sure I chose the correct time to read the book.

I wasn't sure that I'd get on with this when I first picked it up (so to speak as it is on my Kindle) but I soon found myself pretty much gripped by this incredibly timely novel about a global pandemic.

The writer introduces us to a good cross-section of various societies who are affected by the pandemic and she slowly develops the theme into one where men are all but wiped out. From time to time I did find that I wasn't too clear exactly who was "speaking" as I felt that the characters mostly had similar voices but that is a minor niggle in an otherwise very accomplished, prescient and fascinating novel.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Interesting concept! Thought the idea was well-done and well-fleshed out. In the current climate, it was an intriguing perspective to consider.

* spoiler alert ** 4.25 stars

This is going to be a book I recommend a lot... it had me sitting down and reading it at every possible moment.
From the initial pages of discovering there was a virus that moved so fast,and killed so many.. the knock on effect.
It genuinely had me thanking my lucky stars we hadn't had things so bad.
Each chapter,headed by a different character,brought a new way to see things,be it a complication or a reason to hope.
Bookclubs are going to need extended time to talk through this one.
For me,it tailed off towards the end,but once a vaccine was found,that was to be expected.
It's definitely going to be in my books of the year.

Talk about timely! I'm not going to lie. Reading about a fictional pandemic during a pandemic is uncomfortable. So much is familiar. The news, a virus, but it's far away. The gradual realisation that it isn't going to just go away soon. Lockdown. Panic. But this virus has a fatality rate of 97% - and it only targets men, although women are carriers.
Patient zero enters a hospital in Glasgow. Two days later several men come in with high fevers which spiral out of control. Luckily the doctor on duty realises what is happening and warns the authorities - only to be ignored. And in just a few weeks the virus has spread and the world will never be the same again.
Told from the points of view of many different survivors from all over the world across the span of several years - doctors and scientists, politicians and academics, mothers and widows and wives, The End of Men is about unbearable panic and unbearable grrief, a world we understand coming to an end. What does life look like when men make up a tiny part of the population? How do different countries cope? What measures do they take to protect the boys that are left and what scars will that leave?
So timely, absolutely, and very very readable. The End of Men is terrifingly believable, gripping and thought provoking.

As a Male who was halfway through "The End Of Men" when the first reports of positive Covid 19 tests amongst my workmates were reported I did find it quite an uncomfortable read. Christina Sweeney-Baird's "Man Plague" is ,thankfully, fictitious but it's also plausible. An unknown virus tears through a Scottish hospital and while reports and attempts to get those in authority to listen fall on deaf ears it spreads rapidly throughout Scotland,England and eventually wordwide, affecting only men.
The book initially reads like a drama documentary script with the views and experiences of women worldwide as the virus spreads. This is a bit confusing as there are so many new characters introduced one after the other and I did find it a bit of a chore for the first few chapters as it jumped around all over the place. Thankfully the scene-setting was all worthwhile and the reader is taken through the history of the pandemic from the increasing death toll to a world largely run by women having to adapt to a new normal,often while still grieving.
There is plenty to ponder on here,from the political ramifications of a largely female world through sexuality, the need for re-skilling the remaining women into previously male-dominated jobs ,compulsory labour in times of need and much else.Some of it is a bit "wordy" with characters launching into speeches while having conversations but there's plenty here to think about,always a good thing in any book.
This is Christina Sweeney-Baird's debut book, that does show in places where it's a bit clunky but I doubt most readers would notice and it's an engrossing and thought-provoking read. Parts of the book are very moving and the various scenarios , outcomes and solutions that arise are quite plausible.
An excellent read and a confident and compelling debut.

Thanks to Christina Sweeney-Baird ,HarperCollins UK and Netgalley for the ARC in return for an honest review.

If I'd read The End of Men six months ago I would have described it as set in a dystopian future. Now we are living in the midst of a global pandemic, suddenly what happens in this book doesn't seem so hard to imagine. Instead of Covid-19, imagine a plague transmitted from animals to humans, and this deadly virus kills 90% of men who catch it.

The pandemic aspect of this plot is now all too easy to relate to, and this alone made it a fascinating and compelling read as I spotted parallels between the world gripped by a pandemic as imagined by the writer, and how the world has been in 2020. Thankfully Covid-19 is nowhere near as deadly as the Plague. The impact of the majority of men in the world dying is told from different points of view, from both personal and professional perspectives. This new society ran mostly by women is a fascinating concept about how the world had to adapt. The End of Men is beautifully written, unputdownable and as much an anthropology as it is a thriller.

At the beginning of the pandemic I couldn't stop thinking about fiction I had read on this subject. These gave a horrifying perspective on what it might be like to live through a disease sweeping through the world. Thank goodness that so far at least what we have endured is nothing like the horrors described in that fiction. The End of Men has an interesting premise: the pandemic hits only men, killing 90% of them. A truly horrifying prospect. I read through it very quickly, it is very readable but it has flaws.

For me the major problem is the way it is structured. It gives chronological accounts of the experiences of a number of women, The idea is that it is a social anthropological narrative written by an academic of true life experiences of the pandemic. However (mercifully) it doesn't come across as an academic text in any way whatsoever and that's fine in my view. What isn't fine is that it leads to a very disjointed account of the fictional pandemic. We are taken from country to country, woman to woman to hear about their experiences and there are just too many of them with not enough differentiation in their voices to make a coherent narrative. I gave up trying to remember who was who and this became problematic. As the characters didn't really come alive then what happened to them seemed less important. There are many tales in here which should have had me sobbing but I remained untouched by them as the people did not seem real.

There is much to be admired though. The author provides thought provoking asides such as more research being done into diseases such as endometriosis which affects only women as well as cars being modified to be more suitable to the size and shape of women. This serves as a sharp reminder of what a male dominated world we currently live in. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

The foreword by the author is really insightful, little did she know that her book would very closely mirror the pandemic that the work is currently battling.

The End of Men tells of a disease that wipes out 90% of the male population and It is told from multiple female perspectives, doctors, parents, wives and scientists.
At times it is unbelievably raw especially when we read about a woman who loses both her husband and her son. This had me thinking how many male members of my family I could potentially lose if the disease was real.
The story is very thought provoking and there are certain aspects which have the ability to make you quite cross - without divulging any of the plot - this is towards the end of the book.

Very well written and enjoyable to read.

Well, this book will break your heart. It’s story of a plague that all but wipes out the male population feels eerily familiar, and at the same time a horrifying tale of what could have been. The perspectives of the survivors portrayed in this novel are brutal, terrifying and utterly heartbreaking. But that didn’t stop me devouring this book, reading late into the night desperate that somewhere there would be a chink of hope for the characters. Well written and completely unputdownable it’s a story that will resonate with so many of us. My only slight slight pedantic issue? The reference to a matron in a Glasgow hospital numerous times - matrons don’t exist in Scottish hospitals! But that’s definitely just nitpicking.

This book hurts. It takes your heart and squeezes, scratches, tears, and bites. It is so worth all that pain. "The End of Men" is beautifully written, with the plot sucking you in from the first few words. The characters cover quite a large spectrum and, with the differing (and similar) points of view, this makes the plot far harder hitting. You'll probably need several boxes of tissues for this one and should prepare to be shaken. Gut-wrenchingly, gobsmackingly, awesomely THE book to look out for next year.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advance copy to review. This review is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

I devoured this one in two sittings.
A disease suddenly appears in a Glasgow hospital. Amanda, a doctor, sees a pattern. Nobody listens to her and it spreads like wildfire. It kills only men.
Recently the news has told us that countries led by women have dealt with the coronavirus best. I kept thinking of that when I read this book. The writer doesn't pull her punches. You get attached to people and they die. It's devastating.
The women all survive and, as women do, they get on with it. The book shows us how much better the world would be run without men to mess it up.
It's thought-provoking and strangely reassuring. The world goes on even after a pandemic.

Compelling, prescient and exciting this book was absolutely unputdownable. I am not sure its a great classic and I agree with the other review I read here - there needs to be a greater differentiation between the characters cos it does get a bit mad and confusing at times. But really its thrilling and a bit of a rollercoaster and we all now understand the issues around a pandemic (or at least those of us outside number ten do). Whats not to like?