Lawrence Wright

"At an internment camp in Indonesia, within one week, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When the microbiologist and epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi doctor and prince in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city"--

The End of October

Moffatt Clarke

Ugh. Sigh. Got a third of the way through and decided reading the news was more cheery. It seems to be a very good, well researched non-fiction read trying too hard to be a story. Abandoned.

A. D. Knapp

What a weird doubling in the mind that occurs reading this book in 2022. It feels like slightly misremembered history in some ways and "but for the grace of God, go I" in others. 

3.5 stars, roundup up to 4.

A DEADLY VIRUS. QUARANTINE. A WORLD IN LOCKDOWN. THE THRILLER THAT PREDICTED IT ALL. THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'Flies thrillingly, eerily close to reality' Guardian 'This page-turner... is riveting and spookily anticipates much that has unfolded in reality' Sunday Times A race-against-time thriller, as one man must find the origin and cure for a new killer virus that has brought the world to its knees. At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with a mysterious fever. When Dr Henry Parsons - microbiologist and epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. As international tensions rise and governments enforce unprecedented measures, Henry finds himself in a race against time to track the source and find a cure – before it’s too late . . . *** 'Eerily prescient. Too bad our leaders lack his foresight.' The New York Times 'Featuring accounts of past plagues and pandemics, descriptions of pathogens and how they work, and dark notes about global warming, the book produces deep shudders . . . A disturbing, eerily timed novel.' Kirkus Reviews 'A compelling read up to the last sentence. Wright has come up with a story worthy of Michael Crichton. In an eerily calm, matter-of-fact way, and backed by meticulous research, he imagines what the world would actually be like in the grip of a devastating new virus.' Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: 'If you have a desire to really understand what is going on in the world right now, this is a novel that you cannot afford to miss!' 'Well-written and fast-paced. Most of all utterly, scarily, believable.' 'I HAVE LEARNED SO MUCH, and actually much of what I learned has informed my understanding of our current coronavirus pandemic.' 'Very well written and researched, and an all-around fascinating story'

A page-turning thriller that warned of the risk of a global virus

Patricia Nelson

So, I read this during the COVID-19 pandemic. Right in the middle of it, as the infections in NC are still increasing. Let's start with the book - it's very well done. A pandemic hits the global community and spreads like wildfire. At the heart of the book is a CDC scientist who had worked on bioweapons in his previous career until an event made him realize his research was being used for offense and not defense, so he switched gears to work for the good guys. This book would have grabbed and held my attention even if we were not living through a version of it. This book would be great for book club discussions, as there is a lot to talk about. I would recommend it!
I do want to add my thoughts on reading this book in the current state of the world. We have an author who did research, and found out what might happen with a novel virus that is unleashed in the world, whether intentionally or not. It was shocking that so many things in the storyline have been eerily similar if not exactly what has played out in 2020. If an author was able to figure out what would happen, I am so frustrated and angry that the US government didn't do more in advance of this thing and responding to it. Because if an author had access to all this information, the government does too. Someone somewhere told the people in charge what was coming and what was possible and they didn't react immediately. They still aren't. It's shameful.

courtney garrison

This novel turned out to be fantastic, easily a 4 star read. A virus has turned up and Henry and his team along with the world can not stop it. You seen him go to country after country trying find a way to form a vaccine all while finding a way home to his wife and children in Atlanta. 

The writing does go in depth medically about the history of viruses and diseases. If your not familiar with any of it, it can go over your ahead as a lot of it was explained and some not. 

I listened to the audiobook in two days because I was so wrapped up in the second half. the world falling apart and people turning on one another that I wanted to know what had caused the virus. And the ending was mind blowing to say the least.

Overall I gave this one four stars. The author you can tell easily put a lot of research into the history of viruses and deadly diseases. Also watching Henry try to save the world and his family was heart wrenching. The author know how to pull your heart strings. 
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Trigger Warnings - 
Animal Death, Parental Death, Autopsy(very descriptive), Dead Bodies(very descriptive), Parental Death, Finding Human Remains, Child Sexual Assault(very brief, skippable) Death, 
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I’m not really sure how to put a label on this one but a pregnant woman is lying there dying and she can barely move her eyes trying to signal Henry. Henry cuts the baby out to save it and it’s very descriptive. 
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All of these are very descriptive as this book centers around a virus decimating the planet. There is a lot of scenes talking about dead bodies or found dead bodies, so skip if that’s not something you can handle.

Jennifer

Reading a book about the pandemic is a strange encounter. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't. Lawrence Wright's The End of October kind of worked for me. It's a fast paced story with a high degree of scientific accuracy (I feel like the things mentioned in the book is quite believable), so kudos to that! I think the scientific details and the geopolitical tensions go hand in hand making this a page turner.

On the flipside, while I enjoyed reading this I don't feel like coming back to think about this in the near future. I was more invested in the plot rather than the individual characters and I just want to move on worrying about the pandemic stuff. But if you could put up with descriptions of a pandemic during a pandemic, this is a fast paced & scientifically accurate thriller that's hard to beat.

N.B. This book contains following triggering content: illnesses / diseases (pandemic), death, loss of loved ones, corpse, insects, and isolation

(3.5 stars out of 5)

Luna

this couldn’t be any worse.

tw: lots of people dying from enthocentrism, nationalism, and islamaphobia; mentions of sexual assault (possibly against a child bc i dont know how old these ppl are, & also normalizing it in a marriage and as a way to prevent genocide apparently), animals being tortured and killed, drug use around kids, stealing a baby ,… every other chapter being jill saying how much her husband loves it when she takes advantage of him and projects her desire onto him (even when it means millions of people cough cough muslims will die), the only character that is explicitly said to not be having sex wants to commit genocide …probably a lot more that i blocked out because i was so bored and annoyed

Jeremy Anderberg

When an early review copy of The End of October hit my doorstep in early January, my initial response was a big dose of innocent excitement for a new Lawrence Wright book. I had previously read The Looming Tower and Going Clear and was pumped to check out his attempt at apocalypse-by-pandemic, which was set to be released to the pubic on April 28. I had some other reading on my plate, so it found a spot at the back of the bookshelf, and my mind, to be picked up again a few months down the road.

Then on March 11, when the reality of COVID-19 hit the nation like a ton of bricks, The End of October rushed back into my consciousness. As wary as I was of reading a pandemic apocalypse novel in the midst of one, I couldn’t help it, and by March 15, it was on my “Books Read” list.

In The End of October, epidemiologist Henry Parsons is investigating a mysterious illness that originated in Indonesia and then spread to the rest of the world via the annual Hajj in Mecca. The sickness is quickly pegged as stemming from a novel coronavirus (a now-familiar term), and from there, it’s off to the races to quell the spread as much as possible.

Wright does some decent work in conveying the everyday psychological disruptions of a pandemic and the plot gets very apocalyptic, very quickly. What the book was most accurate about — which I only know because of the experience of living through the last few months — was how the virus would turn political. The response, the vaccine even, was filtered through the political cogs that never stopped turning.

The characters in Wright’s novel aren’t as fleshed out as I hoped they’d be, but overall it’s a good book. It was uncanny and eerie, to say the least, to read what turned out to be a prophetic novel (which was years in the making!) published smack dab in the middle of an actual pandemic. Maybe wait a year — unless you’re a bit of a masochist — but give it a shot.

AnjB

Not for all. Certainly be brave and in for a lot of depressing moments before you pick this up.

Casie Blevins

Possibly one of the most difficult books that I have ever read. Eerily prescient and terrifyingly real, this one will stick with me for a long time.
I picked it up because I wanted to read a book entitled The End of October at the end of October. Corny, but I love the end of the world genre. Little did I know how its contents so closely mimicked our own circumstances. If only we had been a little less lucky, if Covid-19 had been as bad as Kongoli, we could be living the events of this novel instead of reading it safely in our homes, wrapped snuggly in our blankets, freaked out but more or less contented. I shudder at the possibility. 
Yet, it niggles at me. Here I am at the end of October and heading straight into flu season...

Christian Beck

It’s an enjoyable read. It’s well-researched and fast-paced. It’s interesting to read now that we’ve actually experienced a pandemic of a novel virus. 6 months ago I’d have struggled with a lot of the virus discussion. 

There were several problems with the story. The characters are under-developed. The jumps in timeline are not elegant. The connected stories are too broad-reaching and unrelated to be believable. It felt like too much ground was covered; as if this was made to be turned into a “The Day After Tomorrow” type disaster movie.

But with its flaws, I’d still recommend it as a weekend read for someone wanting a breezy action novel. If anything, it’ll make you return to our present situation grateful that it feels like this pandemic is a vacation compared to what happens on this book.

Gareth Kay

Eerily prescient, well researched thriller

Lexi Kilmartin

Sara Piteira 

Patrick

At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will have staggering repercussions. Halfway across the globe, the deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security scrambles to mount a response to the rapidly spreading pandemic leapfrogging around the world, which she believes may be the result of an act of biowarfare. And a rogue experimenter in man-made diseases is preparing his own terrifying solution. As already-fraying global relations begin to snap, the virus slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions and decimating the population. With his own wife and children facing diminishing odds of survival, Henry travels from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to his home base at the CDC in Atlanta, searching for a cure and for the origins of this seemingly unknowable disease.

Alli Sweeney

Kevin. j Mercil 

Paul G

Kathy Rodger 

Jennifer Rittall

At an internment camp in Indonesia, within one week, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When the microbiologist and epidemiologist Henry Parsons travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi doctor and prince in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city. Matilda Nachinsky, deputy director of U. S. Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic. Henry's wife Jill and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta and the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions--scientific, religious, governmental--and decimating the population.