The End of October by Lawrence Wright

From the publisher: In this riveting medical thriller–from the Pulitzer Prize winner and best-selling author–Dr. Henry Parsons, an unlikely but appealing hero, races to find the origins and cure of a mysterious new killer virus as it brings the world to its knees.

I’m stuck at home during a global pandemic and what do I choose to read? A thriller about a global pandemic. But it’s good one, so believable and so filled with facts and scenarios that have come/are coming true.

The first two thirds of the book is really great. I would say I couldn’t put it down but I did in fact have to put it down because while I wanted to keep reading it was also ramping up my anxiety in this time of Covid-19. The last third devolves into a Hollywood thriller, and I fully expect to watch the movie version of the book one day.

The main character, Henry Parsons, suffered rickets as a child and has health issues and a limp. Think of him as a young Dr. Fauci, a leading expert on emerging diseases. He has a worried wife and young children who want him to come home, but he is called to travel all over the world as the threat grows.

As I read The End of October I kept thinking of Donald Trump saying “Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.” People knew. LOTS of people knew. Lawrence Wright knew, and everyone he talked to researching this book knew. 

The End of October does feel really well researched. I don’t know when it was written, but clearly well before the Covid-19 crisis arrived, and yet so much of what happens in the book has happened in real life – right down to the TP hoarding – or COULD happen in real life.

Fortunately, the crisis in the book is much worse than the one we are currently experiencing (and let’s hope it stays that way). It’s also a bird flu, which as a birder made me very unhappy. Both domesticated and wild birds are slaughtered in the book. There are some twisty plot twists that remind you this is a book and not real life, but nothing seemed too outlandish. The end is sad but satisfying.

It’s possible I was more engaged by this book now than I would have been at a different time. Still, if you love medical thrillers, I definitely recommend The End of October.

I read an advance reader copy of The End of October. It is scheduled to be published in April 2020, and the Galesburg Public Library will have it in regular print and large print and as an ebook. Thank you to Alfred A. Knopf, Penguin Random House, and Baker & Taylor for the advance reader's edition.