The End of Men

This book came out in 2021, after the author (allegedly) had been working on it for several years.

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Of course, she couldn’t have known (allegedly) that the year it was published that something very near to what she wrote would actually happen.

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As you may have guessed, the event in the book that brings "The End of Men" is a flu-like virus that kills 90% of people with a Y chromosome.

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With an excellent premise like that, you’d think the author would run with it. But she doesn’t - she plays it very safe. Too safe.

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On the plus side, it turns out that male terrorists are as petrified as the rest of the population. And happily, terrorists are men most of the time. The surveillance that we’re maintaining at a minimal level is finding that terror cells are breaking up and fleeing. We think a few hundred have left London, and about 110 have disappeared from Birmingham. I can only imagine they’re unlikely to still be alive which brings me no sadness whatsoever.        

Beyond the above quote, the author didn’t bang on at all about how life in general would instantly improve, how the Earth would begin to heal herself from all the plundering and pollution, how laws would change for the better, and how relations between nations would improve. Instead, most of the novel spoke a lot about how sad everyone was because they'd lost a beloved male or two.

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I’ve always been good at drafting press statements. The carefully constructed neutrality I convey lends itself to press statements that are unobjectionable. Whenever my daughter asks me what my job is like, I say that my job isn’t just boring, my job is to be boring. Or at least it was, until the world imploded. We’re doing what we can and it’s not enough, of course it’s not, but I can say without any blight on my conscience that we’re doing what could be expected in extraordinary circumstances. This is like a biblical flood or an extinction. This is not normal.    

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I think if that event really did happen, there would be A LOT of rejoicing going on. Yes, people would deeply mourn the men and boys in their lives that might have died, but keeping food distribution, healthcare, and education going properly would suddenly take up most of people’s focus. I think people would step into jobs willingly to keep society moving and for personal enrichment.

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What happens in the book instead is that the women who take power pull an Animal Farm. They institute the draft and assign arbitrary careers (!?), and the woman who invents the vaccine chooses to stamp her name on every vial so that she becomes a billionaire.

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Is that really what would happen if most of the men died and women began running things? I don’t think so. Not at all. This dumb book is not recommended.