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The End of Men

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The End of Men

By: Christina Sweeney-Baird, DeNica Fairman
Narrated by: Rebecca Perfect, William Hope, Penelope Rawlins, Debra Michaels, Julia Locascio, Sasha Alexis, Robert Bradley, Sara Lynam, Aysha Kala, Cathleen McCarron, DeNica Fairman
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About this listen

‘A FIERCELY INTELLIGENT PAGE-TURNER’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘WRITTEN PRE-COVID – GRIPPING, SCARY AND PERSUASIVE’ IAN RANKIN

‘THE STUFF THAT CLASSICS ARE MADE OF’ A.J. FINN

‘GRIPPING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN. WHAT A DEBUT!’ SARAH PEARSE, author of The Sanatorium

‘BRILLIANT, PRESCIENT, UNPUTDOWNABLE’ JENNY COLGAN

‘AN ENGROSSING DEBUT’ STYLIST

‘HUGE IN SCOPE…AS TENSE AS THE TAUTEST THRILLER’ RED

‘THE MOST BUZZED-ABOUT FICTION FOR 2021’ SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘AN UNFLINCHINGLY PACY MUST-READ’GRAZIA

‘AN UNFORGETTABLE DEBUT’ PRIMA
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GLASGOW, 2025. Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed. This is how it begins.

The victims are all men.

Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe. Threatening families. Governments. Countries.

Can they find a cure before it’s too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world – or its salvation?

Compelling, confronting and devastating, The End of Men is the novel that everyone is talking about.
________________________________________________________

‘A POWERFUL, GRIPPING BOOK THAT HAS MADE ME FEEL A LITTLE BIT BETTER ABOUT THE WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN RIGHT NOW’ BRYONY GORDON

‘FRIGHTENINGLY PRESCIENT… A COMPELLING, MOVING AND INTELLIGENT PAGE-TURNER’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

‘A TOUR DE FORCE – A FEMINIST REIMAGINING OF SOCIETY’ GILLIAN MCALLISTER

‘COMPELLING AND HEART-BREAKING. A REMARKABLE ACHIEVEMENT’ ABI DARÉ

‘PACY, EMOTIVE, THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND ULTIMATELY A REMINDER OF THE STRENGTH OF LOVE AND HUMAN CONNECTION’ C.D. MAJOR

'A REMARKABLY PRESCIENT, WHIP-SMART, AND STRANGELY HOPEFUL NOVEL' CHARLOTTE PHILBY

‘DEVASTATING, PRESCIENT, COMPELLING AND CONFRONTING’ LAURA JANE WILLIAMS

‘GRIPPING, MOVING AND SCARILY PRESCIENT. COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN’ CHARLOTTE NORTHEDGE, AUTHOR OF THE HOUSE GUEST

‘MOVING, THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND TERRIFYINGLY PRESCIENT’ TAMMY COHEN

‘TOPICAL, TIMELY, IMAGINATIVE AND ULTIMATELY HOPEFUL’ KATIE KHAN, AUTHOR OF HOLD BACK THE STARS

'AN INCREDIBLE ACHIEVEMENT – BOTH A BREATH-TAKING FEAT OF IMAGINATION AND A WISE, STEADY EYE ON THE WORLD AS IT IS' JESSICA MOOR, AUTHOR OF THE KEEPER

©2021 Christina Sweeney-Baird (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Dystopian Hard Science Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Fiction Thought-Provoking Tear-jerking

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Critic reviews

"Fiercely intelligent page-turner...at once thoughtful and highly emotive." (Paula Hawkins)

"The stuff that classics are made of." (AJ Finn)

"Brilliant, prescient, unputdownable." (Jenny Colgan)
All stars
Most relevant  
Yea it’s alright. Feels a bit like it’s capitalising a bit soon on the pandemic. There are some bits in the plot that clearly mirror the real life experiences people have been describing over media outlets. If you can overlook that it’s a reasonable enough plot.

Performance wise everyone was good APART from the fact that Amanda the main Dr has about 12 different Scottish accents. This is not to mean she is unable to do a Scottish accent but that her voice tone and accent change in different chapters so much that it is confusing as you think it’s a different character. I think that is what a lot of people are referring to when saying the different voices are confusing.

It’s okay. Probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they had a specific interest in the genre as it’s not going to make my favourites list.

Worth a read

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Can't believe this was written before COVID, I'm a bit suspicious about that? Good story & made some interesting points. Toby's accent changed from Scouse to Yorkshire for some reason?

Interesting

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This book gripped me so much so that I finished it in one sitting!
Excellent book, fantastic characters and narration. By far the best book I’ve read / listened to so far this year, likely to be my favourite of 2021

Impossible to stop listening

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I loved this story. Had me in tears.

I couldn't bare a couple of the narrators. One of the Scottish accents made me balk it was so bad.

Overall I loved it though.

Brilliant story

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Beautiful, thoughtful, thought provoking.

Loved:
💜The intricacy of this novel is staggering, imagining the impact of men’s disappearance from society down to the last electrician.
🎧Excellent production. Having a book read by eleven separate voices felt decadent in the best possible way and made it much easier to differentiate between the many characters.
💛Small moments made a big impact. A memorable one for me involved a female character scaring off an aggressive male, a scenario that turned the usual post-apocalyptic dynamic on its head.
💚In what I can only describe as sorcery, I came away from a book about a devastating plague feeling uplifted.

Could have Loved More:

I wouldn’t change a thing,

Shall I compare thee to:

A World War Z style telling of a Children of Men style disaster with the conscience of A Handmaid’s Tale. I went too far, didn't I…

<b>Other thoughts: </b>

In an extra tidbit, the accuracy of this book in describing life under a pandemic is all the more impressive given that Christina Sweeney-Baird finished it in 2019.

Beautiful, thoughtful, thought provoking.

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Really enjoyed it and the different voices and stories, I listened to it really quickly and wish it was longer! It's the kind of book that stays with you, I've been thinking about it ever since.

Scary and relevant post covid

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loved the first half of the story, found it thought provoking, but it fell away after that and didn't go anywhere. some characters became annoying.
some questionable narration too.

mixed

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I wouldn’t have read this book if I had read into the actually story. Instead I heard about it from a book club and thought it would be interesting seeing the world from an all women’s perspective. I was not prepared therefore for what came in the first chapters of the book. This book took me on a journey, a journey not unlike my own during the last 18 months or so. I cried, laughed and ached along with the characters. Great writing, great characters but a little too close for home. However I was engrossed and couldn’t put it down. Outstanding!

Best book written after pandemic

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Enjoyed reading a fictional version of life on recent times. There was a lot of similarity, but also a different outcomes. Quite scary to read what might have been.

Interesting read in current climate

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My main problem with the story is that there are far too many characters and threads, many of which are left incomplete.

Too much of the book is devoted to irrelevant intricacies that could be mentioned in passing by a main character, without the need to create a new one.

Most of the narrators do a good job, but a couple attempt regional accents that are so bad as to be distracting from the story; and there are a few mispronounciations and strange pauses.

A great idea let down by mediocre execution

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