“The End of October” by Lawrence Wright – Our Earth Held Hostage

Lawrence Wright generally enjoys reflecting reality in his writings, or outright denouncing it as he did with Scientology.

In his latest novel, titled The End of October, Lawrence takes us on a global adventure alongside Henry Parsons, an epidemiologist tasked with trying to stop the spread of a deadly disease threatening the entire world, while trying to survive with his family against ever-decreasing odds.

Lawrence Wright Creates a Deadly Outbreak

Like with any major world even, it was only a matter of time before authors caught up to the current global pandemic in their writings, and I believe it's reasonable to expect the near future to be more or less saturated with this theme.

As such, the real challenge now lies in sorting the actual original ideas from the cash-grabs by authors attempting to capitalize on what they believe people want to read.

In my opinion, The End of October by Lawrence Wright belongs to the former category, and it takes us into a scenario far more extreme than what we might be facing today.

The plot begins by introducing us to Dr. Henry Parsons, a microbiologist and epidemiologist sent on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate an alarming occurrence at an internment camp in Indonesia. Forty-seven people have been pronounced dead, seemingly from a very acute hemorrhagic fever, one which can spread unbelievably fast.

More alarmingly, he learns an infected individual is making his annual Hajj to Mecca, where millions more are in danger of being infected. As Henry attempts to quarantine the holy city with the help of a Saudi Prince, his efforts might all be for naught.

In the rest of the world, the virus is already spreading fast and wreaking havoc across numerous nations, especially the United States of America. At the helm of Homeland Security is a woman waging a battle to keep the country together, all while trying to mount a response to what might actually be an act of biological warfare.

As the United States' various institutions begin to crumble, Henry's wife, Jill, is back home in Atlanta with their two children, and their odds of survival are growing weaker by the day. In the end, the question stands: what will be left of this world?

An Educated Exploration of Pandemics in The End of October

First of all, I feel like I need to address the timely publication of this novel considering its subject matter. While it is possible Wright decided to publish it now rather than later due to how topical it is, something tells me he was working on this story for at least some time now.

What exactly gives me this impression? More than anything, it's the depth of the scientific and medical accuracy we find from start to finish. In other words, I can't imagine someone cobbling this together in a month or two in order to cash in on the current state of affairs.

While in the past few years most novels dealing with viral outbreaks tend to turn into zombie or monster stories, it felt somewhat refreshing to see an author trying to tackle the subject from the most grounded and realistic perspective he could manage.

Numerous passages are dedicated to the scientific examination of the virus' behaviour, complete with many extrapolations as to the potential course of its future development.

Much of the information delivered in these segments is fairly dry and requires you to pay close attention, but in my opinion the content is educative enough to compensate for the lacklustre presentation.

As you may have expected, Wright also takes the time to shine the spotlight on the potential social and economical consequences of a truly deadly disease laying waste to the United States, and as much as I'd like to say his take on things is pessimistic, he backs it all up with facts and logic chains of deduction.

Now, please don't take this to mean this is how Wright predicts America will look like a few months from now; he's exploring a much deadlier and more impactful scenario. In essence, it's an interesting look at what might happen if the current situation was pushed to its absolute imaginable extreme (within the confines of logic, of course).

Humanity's Fight for Survival

On some level, the book does feel like a bit of a thought exercise by Wright to simulate the outbreak of a deadly disease. Nevertheless, there remains a strong focus placed on the plot as well as the characters within it.

Now, I want to get the negative element out of the way as soon as possible: I sorely wish Wright had researched Muslim culture as profoundly as he did the domain of viruses and epidemics. I couldn't help but feel some of them were almost portrayed as caricatures, largely in line with the simplified Western view many of us tend to have of them.

It's not a huge problem in and of itself, but it does feel a bit jarring to see them throwing around the word “infidel” and calling characters fundamentalists based solely on their clothing.

With this out of the way, I found the rest of the story to have been very well-written with a captivating premise which I couldn't help but want to see to its conclusion.

There are plenty of characters for us to get to know and follow: from Henry battling it out on the front lines against humanity's great invisible enemy, to his family back home and the government agents trying to keep it all together, we never run short on problems, conflicts and developments to keep our attention.

Ultimately, I would say this novel feels more or less like a thriller, one anchored by scientific realism, and perhaps unintentionally, our current global situation.

The plot does move along rather quickly, and even the moments of scientific exposition don't last too long to the point where everything comes to a grinding halt. Fiction and reality complement each other exceptionally well in this book, something I can't claim to witness very often.

The Final Verdict

Despite it's couple of minor missteps, The End of October by Lawrence Wright is both a captivating and informative novel with some very well developed and interesting theories about diseases, viruses, pandemics, and their potential effects on society.

If the idea of reading a relatively grim novel about a pandemic, during a real global pandemic doesn't deter you, then I do highly recommend this book, especially for the more scientifically-minded ones among you.

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Lawrence Wright Personal site Lawrence Wright is an American screenwriter, staff writer for The New Yorker, and an author who has the distinction of having won the Pulitzer Prize. His best-known work of writing remains to this day his 2006 book, The Looming Tower, which delved into the events that led up to 9/11.