And thank you to my mum. You’ve been on the receiving end of so many phone calls and questions. You’ve told me more times than I can count that I could be published, would be published. We’ve spent thousands of hours over my life talking, analyzing, figuring stuff out, cackling with laughter. You always said the harder you work, the luckier you get and here we are.
THE END OF MEN
CHRISTINA SWEENEY-BAIRD
DISCUSSION GUIDE
A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINA SWEENEY-BAIRD
DISCUSSION GUIDE
1. Discuss the novel’s oral history style—multiple narratives, emails, transcripts, and articles—and the way it impacted your reading experience.
2. Is there a villain in The End of Men? If so, who is it? Is there one character who you sympathize with more than others? Did the first-person points of view change your connection to the characters?
3. The End of Men was written a year before the outbreak of COVID-19, but there are many parallels between the real world and that imagined in the novel. How has the reality of COVID-19 changed your perception of the novel? What are the similarities and differences from our world today?
4. Do you believe The End of Men is a feminist novel? Is the book “anti-male”？ How does the relationship between the two sexes evolve throughout the narrative?
5. Discuss the ways that different characters cope with grief in the novel. How does grief either fuel or cripple the various characters?
6. What genre do you believe The End of Men falls into? A thriller? Dystopian? Women’s fiction? Why?
7. Do you think the novel presents an accurate portrayal at what life without men would like? What would that world look like for you? How would it be similar to or different from the world we see in the novel?
8. Compare and contrast the way that different countries confront the pandemic, both on a societal and personal level. How do you think you and your community would have reacted in this situation?
9. Some characters ultimately benefit from the pandemic and its repercussions. How do they each reconcile their good fortune? Do you think that any event, even a global pandemic, can have good effects?
10. Consider Catherine’s final postscript at the end of the novel. What do you take from it? Is the ending ultimately hopeful?
A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINA SWEENEY-BAIRD
What inspired The End of Men?
I’ve always loved speculative fiction and wanted to write something that explored a “What if?” question. I remember reading World War Z by Max Brooks when I was in my early twenties and finding it completely terrifying. It felt so real despite it being science fiction. The breadth of stories from around the world that I’ve included in The End of Men is hugely inspired by the scope of World War Z. I also read The Power in early 2018, which made me think about the different stories I could tell looking at how men and women interact in the world, and so that was also a big inspiration. I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel at the suggestion of my agent after I had finished the first draft and it became something of a North Star; I wanted the characters in The End of Men to be as compelling and emotionally engaging as those in Station Eleven, which is now one of my favorite books.
The End of Men was, of course, written well before the COVID-19 pandemic began. What has it been like for you to watch your fiction unfold in real time, and what do you think the world can learn from your novel?
It’s been completely surreal! I remember my UK agent, Felicity, sending me articles about the virus when it was first being covered in the press in January 2020 just before she sent the book out to publishers. Many early readers have commented on how realistic some bits of the book now feel, which is obviously not something I ever expected when I wrote it. I hope that after reading The End of Men people think about the importance of gender equality, and the myriad ways in which society is structurally still built around the needs of men, not women.