‘The End of October’ is the Perfect Book for our Time
Why a book about a pandemic is perfect reading in the summer of 2020
Back in the spring, in what now seems like the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote about reading Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel set in the aftermath of a civilization-destroying plague and reading it felt fitting as nations around the world shut down. It turns out that Station Eleven — as excellent as it is — isn’t the only book that fits perfectly with our time. Enter Lawrence Wright’s The End of October.
A novel about a literal pandemic sweeping through the United States, The End of October feels at once both eerily prescient and scarily close to home. The story and characters are all well-researched, lending even more credibility to the premise. I hadn’t heard of this book before my wife recommended it to me, but now that I’ve finished it, I can’t think of anything else.
This book is a thriller, with high-stakes and a constant sense of tension. This separates it from Mandel’s work, which is often slower and more reflective. In The End of October, the characters barely have time to breathe. The bulk of the story follows Henry Parsons, a CDC official who is one of the first to discover a new kind of influenza with devastating lethality. But through the course of the novel’s 380 pages, we’ll also see what happens to his family and the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Parsons first discovers the virus in Indonesia, but it quickly spreads to Saudi Arabia, and from there to the rest of the globe. As Parsons works with his colleagues to try to find a cure, we’re treated to a fictional account that feels pretty close to reality. However, there is one saving grace: the virus in The End of October is far deadlier than COVID-19, killing the majority of the people it infects.
I don’t want to get much deeper into the plot (most of what I’ve shared here is surface-level). But I will say that there is both plenty that mirrors our current situation and plenty that goes far beyond it in The End of October. The book’s title itself feels like a warning to our current situation, since it speaks to the probability of a second wave of infections in late fall that every pandemic seems to bring.
Wright’s prose is straightforward, precise, and detailed. I found that style perfect for a novel like this one. It won’t win any awards for beautiful prose, but the level of detail in this book would be difficult to convey in any other fashion. Wright will often go on a tangent about the history of some disease or vaccination effort, asides that are enjoyable to read and add a lot to the credibility of his story.
I also enjoyed how the characters in the novel function almost on the periphery of larger events happening around them. Parsons, for example, works hard to find a cure but often finds himself unable to communicate with his colleagues due to his immediate circumstances. So while he’s brilliant and well-connected, he often finds himself powerless to stop the virus. His family functions in a similar way as they try to navigate day-to-day life under the threat of the pandemic.
The book also spends a few chapters following a national security official named Tildy Nichinsky to similar effect. She’s also brilliant and influential in her sphere, but she’s only one person working against overwhelming odds. No matter how hard she works, she can’t accomplish everything by herself. International tensions and the spread of the disease stand in her way, often at the same time.
These examples lend another thread connecting Wright’s fictional version 2020 to the reality of today. It’s so easy to feel isolated against COVID-19. Even the highest-ranking officials are often limited in terms of what they can do. For us, sitting in our homes, the feeling of sitting on the edge of global events can be pretty powerful.
It’s also worth pointing out that this isn’t a terribly uplifting book. I won’t spoil the ending, but the general tone of the novel is one of disaster. This comes again in contrast to Station Eleven, which had many quieter moments filled with optimism and hope. There are plenty of good people trying to save the world in The End of October, but their efforts always feel like an uphill climb.
So, in closing, why is this book so fitting for our current time? Why turn to a novel that’s about death and despair, when so much of that is already around us? I can only answer for myself, but it’s comforting to read a book about a disaster that’s so much worse than the one we’re currently in. It’s also comforting to read one so calmly-delivered, one that follows the efforts of people trying to save those around them.
NPR‘s Scott Detrow seemed to feel the same way in his review of The End of October, published back in May. He noted that the pandemic made reading books like this all the more enjoyable, a sentiment that I wholeheartedly agree with. Of course, so much of this may just come down to personal preference, but I know I’ve seen this opinion voiced from a few others as well.
If you really want to escape the current moment with your entertainment choices, maybe fantasy or science fiction would be a safer bet. I know I’ve done that several times. But if you want to dive into the current moment, there’s no book I can recommend more than The End of October (but you should read Station Eleven, too).
The views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer or any other person or organization.
