The End of October - Lawrence Wright 2.5/5

[Nicole D.]

Wow this author was L.U.C.K.Y. He wrote a book about a Pandemic which was published April 28 and everybody is reading it. It's not great.

Turns out he's probably brilliant, but it feels lucky. He's a pretty accomplished Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction author, thus I'm guessing the his writing about the pandemic was pretty informed.

I almost stopped listening after the 2nd paragraph in the book which included this little bit - "Hans Somebody. Dutch. Tall, arrogant, well-fed. An untrimmed fringe of grey-blonde hair spilled over his collar, the lint on his shoulders sparkling in the projected light of the PowerPoint." Ahhhh yes ... the magical PowerPoint light sparkles.

The Pandemic starts in Indonesia and from there it goes a lot like February through May 2020 on planet Earth. The spread, the race for a cure, the shutdown of the global economy, quarantines, terrible presidential leadership, critical supplies in short supply - I mean, I don't need to tell you, you are living it. It's accelerated though, the mortality and infection rates are much higher than we have now.

All of this part was pretty realistic and well done. Felt like reading a James Rollins novel (though not as fast paced) - not literary brilliance, but entertaining enough. Then our main character (who works for the CDC) ends up in Saudi Arabia, and for me things sort of go awry.

There was too much going on - I suppose an existential crisis was to be expected in this circumstance but it was a tinge annoying. Since Saudi was involved there was a religious aspect (Muslim views and racism). Military, Russia, other diseases, things going on at home, precocious children, etc. I don't want to spoil any specifics, but it was over the top - like every idea this guy ever had for fiction needed to be incorporated.

Then there were just some flat out strange decisions. For example - There was a power outage for a number of days, (might have even been weeks) and the power came back on so despite the pandemic restaurants opened THAT DAY and a character was in a restaurant enjoying a Caprese salad by lunch time. Really? Where has that Mozzarella been stored during the power outage?

Perhaps if we weren't "living" this right now I might not have noticed that, but since we are in quarantine and we know how slowly things are opening that seems like a careless mistake. Where was the editor?

This could have been a taut, gripping thriller. Instead it was all over the map (literally and figuratively). But who cares about editing, right? I mean, the books got sold.

Audio was narrated by Mark Bramhall who I will typically refuse to listen to but I didn't notice it until I already had the book. He and his godawful accents were, as anticipated, godawful.

[Joanne]

Nicole D. wrote: "Wow this author was L.U.C.K.Y. He wrote a book about a Pandemic which was published April 28 and everybody is reading it. It's not great."


🤣
- Oh Nicole, I got a laugh from that, thank you!