A good read. This was an interesting book especially as we are now living through this terrible virus, was unusual being told from so many different people but all their stories were well written .The plague started in 2025 and only effected men and as the situation worsened the only way out would be a vaccine. It was heartbreaking and difficult to read at times but was a great debut novel.

Unusual but interesting to be reading a book about a pandemic whilst in the throes of one.
I loved the storyline and writing but afraid there were too many characters for me to keep track of and I ended up just using the country where they were living. Also, I was disappointed at the amount of swearing which I regret lowered my rating
However, anyone getting past that will enjoy the journey

This was an excellent read, however do your research as I know many people will find this triggering due to the topic.

This book centers around, what we now unfortunately know, to be a very accurate depiction of a pandemic. Although written before 2020 the similarities are startling, However in this read it is only men who are affected. I really enjoyed the different perspectives and snippets of personalities, it gave us a well rounded view of the whole pandemic, from the doctor who first discovered it, the CDC, the women searching for a cure, mothers and wives.

I personally really enjoyed this read.

Set in 2025 this book is eerily similar to the current Covid pandemic we find ourselves in with the asymptotic carriers and the increase of cases building panic and hysteria. There are echoes of ‘stay home and save lives’ issued by our own government.

Conspiracy theorists fuelled by their own fear and panic are trying to rise up against the ‘Gynarchy’ and women in general and the lack of females in male dominant roles means shortages of essential items and care were bound to happen.

This book focuses on a few female protagonists as well as being interspersed with other people’s accounts of what is happening around the world and how it affects them and their families. Amanda is the main character, an A&E doctor who first discovered the virus but was brushed off as being hysterical and she’s never forgiven those who could’ve helped stop the spread.

Some may find this a tough read considering we are still currently living in a pandemic and the figures coming in from India are heartbreaking, nevertheless this is a book you need to read.

It’s hard to believe that this came out of the imagination of an author who had no idea what the works would be facing in just a few years time.

A fantastic debut novel and one I was thrilled to have been able to review.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for gifting me an e ARC in exchange for a review.

I first started reading this as the COVID pandemic was ramping up, but I had to put it aside. Now, I’ve finished reading right when our vaccines are available and perhaps our understanding of the virus we’re living with is started to be more understood. The narrative in the book is absolutely harrowing in the midst of our own crisis, especially since so many of the dead in the book are children. That difference in comparison to the Corona virus is a deal breaker indeed, and wow am I glad our virus does not target children and that the mortality is so much lower. Still, one can’t help but make comParisons while reading.

What’s amazing in this impressive debut is the depth the author has gone to in understanding/predicting reactions to a pandemic for such an array of characters and countries. I really appreciated the snap-shot of getting to know different people and their experiences (though there a downside to that too, see below). And wow, the author was so right on so many of her assumptions it’s scary!

What I loved less was the pace, I would have wanted more changes in pace, as it is I found almost lulling in its steady ticking. Had it had some more peaks of action/plot turns that would have increased by enjoyment. I felt all the different people we get to follow made me care less about them individually unfortunately, and since we didn’t get to follow the outbreak in more day-by-day detail, it felt more like a reportage than a driven narrative. I was not emotionally invested in any of the characters, sadly, and since the pace is sometimes very slow, that detracted from my experience. I get what the author wanted to do, it’s less a suspense title and more an analysis of what happens when all men are gone, both emotionally and practically, rather than a thriller. I love pandemic books, and I love speculative fiction and feminist narratives, so I am definitely the target group for this book. A shame it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

Still, it’s a very impressive blueprint for the way the world reacts to a virus and the long aftermath, albeit different from the one we’re in, and a very impressive debut. If the author had managed to get her readers more emotionally charged, or the pace up in places, it would have been a five star read.

The End of Men was written before Coronavirus turned our lives upside down but it is weirdly prescient in some ways. Set in the year 2025 ,it is about a virus (or the Plague as it is referred to in the novel) which strikes very quickly indeed with two days of infection followed by a raging fever and certain death within hours. The thing is, this virus only effects men, women are hosts but are not felled by the disease.

It is early November and Amanda, a Doctor in a busy A&E in Glasgow treats a man who was admitted a couple of hours earlier with flu. One of the junior doctors has given him paracetamol and sent bloods off for tests but his temperature is rising to dangerous levels and nothing they do brings it down. Amanda watches helplessly as this fit, young man dies in front of her. Then another man is brought into A&E with similar symptoms. And then another. Amanda realises that each of these men had visited the A&E two days earlier and were treated by the same nurse, either she is a murderer or there is something Very Bad happening indeed. She contacts Public Health Scotland and is ignored and dismissed because of prior mental health issues and she is labelled as unstable and hysterical. She contacts newspapers and they fail to realise the importance and she can only watch on helplessly as the virus takes hold, killing man after man.

Written from the perspectives of a myriad of people; Amanda, Catherine a woman living in London with her husband and son, Elizabeth a scientist from America, a female journalist for the Washington Post and Dawn who works for MI5 amongst others, this book examines the many ways in which both women and society are affected by the Plague. The voices are distinctive providing a rounded view of the early days of the pandemic, the years of the plague and how the world rebuilds.

Sweeney-Baird has created a world where men are in the minority (a lucky few either beat the virus or are immune) and women are in control. I found the exploration of this incredibly interesting to read about, especially the domino effect caused by the lack of men. Initially it is the grief of losing a husband, brother, son or father, and then it is the realisation that our armed forces, our Government, our agriculture, our waste disposal, our hospitals and police forces are all filled with a majority of men. What happens when we lose that level of skill? Women step up to fill the gaps, but some jobs need intensive training, and the few women already trained are already working long hours to try and meet demand.

And what about reproduction? The virus does not distinguish on age so newborn boys are at high-risk. How do we go about repopulating the world? These issues are both complicated and multi-layered, throwing up ethical dilemmas and societal implications. It makes for emotive reading but is never saccharine sweet. It really made my mind tick and I was intrigued by the thought processes presented in the narrative.

Reading a book about a fictional global pandemic whilst in the midst of an actual global pandemic sounds like a crazy idea, but actually, I found it strangely reassuring. To be fair, I read this at a time when things were starting to re-open, I could meet family and friends for a meal or a drink and I was one vaccine down – I’m not sure how I would’ve fared reading it a year or so ago. But also, there were things in this book which haven’t happened to us, society hasn’t broken down, we haven’t had mass shortages of food, which is a blessing. I half read/half listened to this on audiobook and I would highly recommend the latter as it allowed me to get to grips with the different characters and really helped the brilliant world-building within the pages.

This is an accomplished and extraordinary book which I really enjoyed. It is a wonderful piece of speculative fiction which takes an idea and runs with it, examining power, injustice, loss, grief, fear and hope in an eloquent and absorbing way. Recommended!

Oh my!!!
Opened a copy of ‘The End Of Men’ and started reading just a few pages at 9am while I waited for the kettle to boil....At 6.20pm I reached the final page. I couldn’t put it down.
At times I’ve unashamedly wept. A few times I snorted with an unexpected laugh or wry smile. At times I had to force myself to remember to actually breathe.
The word ‘powerful’ does not do full justice to this novel, written with eerie prescience pre-2020 by Christina Sweeney-Baird, although I really think she should change her first name to Cassandra...

Published by those wonderful people at @harpercollinsuk and available in good bookshops from 29th April 2021.

(@njb1966 on Instagram)

“In the process of compiling the stories, I have asked myself about the recording of history. For the first time in the history of the world, women are fully in control of the way our stories are told.” - Catherine Lawrence, Anthropologist, September 2032.

My thanks to HarperCollins Fiction/The Borough Press for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The End of Men’ by Christina Sweeney-Baird in exchange for an honest review.

Glasgow, 2025 and Dr Amanda Maclean is working in A&E and is called to treat a young man with flu-like symptoms. Within three hours he is dead. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is only the beginning. All the victims are men.

It isn’t long until the disease has spread to all corners of the globe and with a high mortality rate the race is on to find a cure and/or an effective vaccine. Can the human race survive with so few men left alive?

This was an interesting book to read and listen to during a global pandemic. In places quite a harrowing read though the high mortality rate is thankfully not reflected in our real life pandemic. Yet it is a cautionary tale.

This is Christina Sweeney-Baird’s debut novel. In her Author’s Note she advises that she wrote it from September 2018 and completed in June, 2019, some months before news of the real life pandemic occurred. She writes of the surreal situation that she found herself in during its editing: “testing my imaginary world against the real one. I gauge the distance between what I have written and what is happening. As a writer of speculative fiction, this is not something I ever expected.”

‘The End of Men’ is presented as “Stories of the Great Male Plague’ compiled by Catherine Lawrence. So there is a number of points of view, including doctors, academics, government officials, survivors, and the grieving as well as reports and articles. This gives it the feel of a work of nonfiction.

I felt that Christina Sweeney-Baird approached her topic with sensitivity, stressing the loss experienced by so many and the ripple effect upon the world caused by such a catastrophic disease.

Christina Sweeney-Baird will be an author to watch.

I was not in the right head space for this. I DNF’d at 40%. Tried picking it up again and ended up putting it down again. It’s well written and the concept should be my jam, but I can’t help feeling that any book that looks at a virus that affects a specific group is somewhat mean spirited right now. It’s probably me but reluctantly I’m parking this one indefinitely. It’s going to be a long time before this is what I want in dystopian fiction.

The End of Men was a magnificent book. Warning though, I was reading the book with tears streaming down my face.

The End of Men is written from the point of view of many different characters, and it is all the more powerful for it.

The book begins in London with Catherine five days before the pandemic hit with Catherine trying to decide if she is going to dress up for Halloween.

Her timeline was tough for me because Theodore reminded me of my own son, not least in his love of Halloween.

“Halloween has suddenly flipped from being a thing he had a remote understanding of last year to bring the most exciting event imaginable (until Christmas).”

I loved the way Catherine’s relationship with her husband Anthony was described.

“We’ve been together over half our lifetimes now. You don’t become two halves of a whole overnight.”

The only flaw in their otherwise perfect relationship is that Anthony wants to try IVF in pursuit of a second child, but Catherine isn’t so sure.

“If I could guarantee that a round of IVF would give me a baby, the new member of the family we’ve wanted for so long I would do it in a heartbeat. But that’s not a promise anyone can make me.”

We first meet Amanda when she inadvertently discovers patient zero in Glasgow A and E.

“His body went from being normal to near dead in under an hour.”

When Amanda realises that there appears to be a disease which only effects men she calls her oncologist husband and tells him she will divorce him if he doesn’t go home from work and pick up their sons on the way home.

Her emails to Health Protection Scotland remain unacknowledged.

Some of Amanda’s timeline made for hard reading for me as a healthcare worker who has worked through the current pandemic it sometimes felt as though she had plucked experiences right out of my head. Although with a toddler I had no choice but to go near him as he couldn’t understand.

“My sons are alive because I somehow kept this awful disease out of this home and away from them. But they are starving for my care and affection and I cannot give it to them. I don’t hug them. I don’t cook their food. I don’t go near them if I can possibly help it. I cannot be too careful when their lives are at stake.”

The funeral service for one of the men and the burial in a garden were two bits where I had to take a moment before I could carry on reading.

The End of Men was unnerving at times in terms of how close it came to the advice from government and the growing death toll on the news.

I cannot stress enough how excellent this book is.

“Will my gorgeous baby boy die? Will my husband die? Will everyone catch it? Will there be a cure? What is this never ends? What if this is the end of the world as we know it?”

The End of Men is the story of a near-future pandemic in which there is a flu-like virus which is fast-spreading and deadly – but only to men. By the end of the pandemic, only one in ten men has survived. The novel follows a number of different characters in brief chapters where they recount their experiences of the pandemic and how their lives have changed.

The End of Men is unlucky in being published at a time when we are all armchair experts on what actually happens in a pandemic. There’s an explanatory note from Sweeney-Baird explaining that she wrote it before the real one struck, although there might have been some last-minute edits – there’s a single reference to “social distancing” which sits oddly given the disease she describes.

The disease is first identified by a Glasgow A&E consultant Amanda MacLean, but not recognised by the authorities. I found myself wondering why, if the virus spreads so (two days for incubation and then another two days for death) it took the authorities so long to get on the case. Amanda goes on singlehandedly to pursue the truth of how Patient Zero was infected, because without that, she knows there can be no vaccine (of course we all know differently).

There were some other things I found hard to believe, one being the swathes of medical staff, including Amanda, who refuse to go into work. That’s not to say it never happens, but in the context of the novel it is shown as normal, rather than exceptional, and jars with the evidence of recent pandemics. (We know a number of healthcare professionals have lost their lives to COVID-19.)

The stories of loss and grief – husbands, sons, fathers, aren’t as moving as they might have been because the narrative flits between characters. The losses feel abstract to the reader. It’s the imagined aftermath of the pandemic that is more interesting, but again, the net is cast wide rather than deep.

There are a couple of references to what is happening abroad, including political upheaval in China, on the basis that a society previously dominated by a male military would be unable to repress women campaigning for democracy.

Sweeney-Baird seems pretty down on Scotland. In this future it is independent but its public bodies are either incompetent or isolated from bigger international alliances, while the English/Welsh government is focused and purposeful in reallocating work to the surviving women. I’m sure many of us contrasting the performance of the Johnson and Sturgeon governments over the last year would happily take the Holyrood approach.

Women are reallocated to suitable work in a conscription system. She talks at one point of a shortage of electricians but doesn’t really think through how the world would change with a significant loss of men. In the West, at least, men dominate in roles like tech, engineering and construction. Women could do these jobs, but it would take time. What would happen to, say, the internet, transport infrastructure, housing in the meantime? Would the lights go out? Would everyone pull together or be torn apart?

She does reference how the world, over time, comes to be more female friendly, using examples that sound like they’ve been cribbed from Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women – the size of phones, the diagnosis of heart attacks, the rate of car accidents.

It’s in the area of sex and relationships that I was most incredulous. The response to the shortage of men made me think of Virginia Nicholson’s Singled Out – which described how young British women, particularly the middle classes, were left after the First World War with the knowledge that most of their male peers had been wiped out. Then, there were both social taboos and technological limitations that meant most women wouldn’t have children alone, or openly form relationships with women (although, of course, many did), or even marry outside their class.

In The End of Men, everyone is terribly stoical and reasonable (for that reason it also made me think of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach)! Some women find female partners through dating apps, while the surviving men are surprisingly reluctant to exploit their new found scarcity. Many remain faithful to their wives. Childless women are willing to wait obediently for the state to grant them an allocation of sperm for IVF. Sweeney-Baird doesn’t seem to take on board that a shortage of men is not the same as a shortage of sperm.

I’m sure plenty of men would be willing to take matters into their own hands, so to speak, and that women desperate for a child would be inseminated through private arrangements, either artificial or traditional. (Perhaps when the resulting children grew up, there would have to be an app, like the one in Iceland, so the next generation could check whether they were related to their potential dates).

The End of Men is very readable but the number of narrators means their stories are not developed. Many of them are giving an account after the event which means the sense of immediacy and drama are lost. Despite the fact that they are drawn from across the world and the narrative incorporates letters, journals and magazine articles, they all have the voice of a middle-class Western woman, which is probably why the characters of Amanda and Catherine, a London-based anthropologist, are the most successful.

What I did enjoy about The End of Men is that it got me thinking about some of the issues that would be thrown up by a shortage of men and boys, and asking some questions, even if I didn’t agree with the author’s answers.
*
I received a copy of The End of Men from the publisher via Netgalley.

This fantastic and eerily truthful book had me reading late into the night. Interesting, exciting and deep. Overall a great and frightening book.

Astounding.
I am staggered that this book was written in 2018 and 2019, and the further I read, the more I am amazed at the parallels between the book and the Covid 19 pandemic that ensued in 2020. This has feels of Lockdown by Peter May in that respect, and yet this book tackles a different angle, that of wiping out an entire gender- hence, the title The End of Men.
This has deep undertones though, of how the strength of the human spirit enables us to live in extraordinary times and through immeasurable trauma and grief. I lost my eldest sister in April 2020 (not Covid related) and this has helped to remind me of the strength we have, and to call on it when we need to.
The narrators for the audiobook were all fantastic and played their roles perfectly. Clearly defined and totally engaging.

Reading this whilst in the middle of a pandemic isn’t the best idea but the similarities between the book and real life were scary. Brilliantly written and gave so many different perspectives on the people left behind.

Thanks to NetGalley and The Publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found this book entertaining, but for probably all the wrong reasons. The author explains that this book was conceived and written between 2018-2019, pre the COVID-19 pandemic. I think its important to keep this in mind when reading this book. For the most part it is quite light easy reading and due to the timing of its publication, I feel there were bits that were unintentionally funny - the many references to Skype (who uses that anymore) and Sweden's handling to the Pandemic...

I like the fact that the story was told from multiple points of views however they all sounded the same in my head, so don't think they were written with enough distinction and found myself having to go back to find out who the narrator was.

The explanation of the science was terrible but considering in real life its the experts doing that, I think you should be able to gloss over that and just read the book for what it is. I think the book does a good job about making you think about how sticking to gender roles could have a devastating effect on our societal structures if 90% of the male population were wiped out and that we shouldn't wait until then to empower women.

Considering what the world is going though this book didn't add to the doom and gloom but was actually a nice respite from it all.

This started out oddly for me - the first narrator we encounter was entirely unconvincing as an academic, the voice was all wrong. Next we went on to a Scottish doctor who was among my favourite narrators of the novel.

Ultimately, I wasn't that interested as we met more and more characters.

I've seen comparisons to The Power and while I think they're fitting I think it's more because they both share a disjointed narrative structure that ultimately, doesn't quite come together, rather than similar female centric narratives.

I wanted to like this more than I did and I'm sure it will find an avid readership.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Highly thought-provoking read, especially given the current Covid-19 pandemic.

I was hooked from the start, and although I felt the middle lost its pace a little bit, it held my attention to the final word. The book follows a number of characters and the chapters are written from each of their perspectives. This may be a little overwhelming for some, especially as a few of them are only heard of once or twice and then disappear until nearer the end of the book when you've practically forgotten about them!

Overall, it's an interesting look at the world if we lost our men to a disease. I am still thinking, and talking to friends about it, days after finishing, It will stay with you a while.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book.

Written pre-covid and set through the different stages of a global pandemic (not unsimilar to the one we find ourselves living through) 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘯 is a powerful and pacey debut that will have you gripped from the very beginning.

Told through multiple perspectives of women from all over the world, in different positions within society, this novel explores what life would be like in the absence of men - the effect it would have on the world, with disruptions to male dominated workforces like the army and the affect on fertility and family life, being standout asks. It was completely unnerving but utterly compelling. I was (and still am) in awe of the storytelling - I just couldn't put it down!

Reading about an imaginative yet now believable deadly flu in the middle of real pandemic was an interesting experience that's for sure and I'm not going to lie it's scary how, through her writing, Christina has managed to shadow certain aspects of our very real pandemic life: the panic, the actions that are taken such as isolation - right down to the exhaustingly different way of life we've found ourselves adjusting to. All written BEFORE any of us had even heard of covid 19!

With an expertly crafted plot, an eye for detail and such strong character development, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘌𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘦𝘯 will leave you with much to ponder. It's an outstanding and timely debut that will get a lot of attention I'm sure and rightfully so, it's brilliant!

The End of Men was already on my kindle (courtesy of the publisher and Netgalley) when I heard an interview with the author on Radio 4. In that interview Christina Sweeney-Baird mentioned that she had made references to The Power when submitting her manuscript. I was disappointed. I didn’t want another book about the male-female reversal of fortunes and about power corrupting women in the same way as it would men. I didn’t want another book where the pronoun he/him would be replaced with she/her. I almost didn’t read The End of Men.
I am so glad that I put aside my reservations and dug into it! Apart from the common denominator of men becoming vulnerable and women holding the balance of survival (and ensuing power) in their hands, The End of Men is nothing like Power. It is incomparably better, in my opinion.
There is subtlety and many different layers of emotions here as Sweeny-Baird explores a world where the male population becomes decimated (literally to the tenth of its original number) and women have to take over the reins. No cheap gloating, primitive vengeance or abuse of power ever enters the page. When the virus attacks their men, women go through what any human being of any gender would: initial disbelief transforms into an instinct of preservation and protectiveness, loss brings on immeasurable grief, the disintegration of the world inspires action, resourcefulness, survival and regeneration. Many women (and one man) narrate/are the protagonists in this book and each of them tells her (or his) own unique story of metamorphosis. The story of Amanda (the doctor who first discovered the virus and identified Patient Zero) and Catherine (the anthropologist who after an unsuccessful attempt at escaping and saving her loved ones, begins to research and record the events and their impact on individual lives) are the two leading threads. But there are many more characters, each with their own reactions to the challenge of the pandemic. There are personal, deeply intimate stories, but also wider events on a larger, geo-political scale tacked in this book. The book reads in places like a factual account – a dramatized real -life occurrence.
The End of Men rings true. Although it is a work of fiction, it touches on the subject of pandemic that changes the world and the traditional male-female roles beyond recognition. As we have all just gone through a life- and society-transforming pandemic, it is easy to believe in this tale and the possibilities it contemplates. But it isn’t just about the pandemic. After WWII in which many men died, women had to take charge of their families, communities, and the future of the world. Women took on new “masculine” careers. This sort of a challenge to the established traditional values of our society is not new. Sweeney-Baird treats it with great sensitivity and insight.

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for allowing me access to an eArc in exchange for an honest review.

This book starts in Glasgow 2025 when a patient is admitted to a&e with symptoms not like anything else. Dr Maclean reports her findings, and quickly realises that the victims of The Plague are all men.

How does the world change when 90% of men die?

This book is almost like a study of what would need to happen in the event that men cease to exist. This is told from multiple international perspectives over the course of a few years following the outbreak.

This book was written in 2018, so it is interesting to see some of the parallels in our current situation be played out on the page. Of course, the book's pandemic is a lot more fatal and is an extreme version of our current reality.

I'm giving this book a 3.5 stars