Afterland: A Mad Dash Through Men-Less America

Things are bad, but they could always be worse. Imagine if the coronavirus were massively more deadly than it already is...and only killed men. That's the premise of Lauren Beukes's terrific new thriller, Afterland. It's 2023, several years after a horrific global pandemic has killed off nearly all the men on the planet. Now, the women left are rebuilding society, and as you'd expect, doing a pretty stellar job. A select few men are immune and the governments of the world are banding together to try to figure out why. There is also a moratorium on new pregnancies until scientists can learn what caused the pandemic and develop a vaccine. 

So that's the world Beukes builds as she sets her story in motion. Cole and her pre-teen son Miles, who live in South Africa, are stuck in the U.S. They've been here since the pandemic began, and are desperately trying to get back home. (Cole's husband died from the virus earlier.) But they've been under government care (control?), so scientists can study Miles, one of the lucky males who is immune to the virus. 

Through a series of events, in which Cole's rebel sister Billie inserts herself into the story with not-the-best intentions, Cole and Miles bust out and begin a mad dash across the country to try to catch a boat back to South Africa. Along the way, and with Billie hot on their heels, we see America transformed. The new men-less country still the America we know, but there of course HUGE differences, as well — and Beukes is fascinating as she imagines how this world would be both the same and different without men. But there's plenty of action, too. Will Cole and Miles make it safely across the country? Will the be co-opted by a group of cultish religious weirdos who think saying "sorry" to God will bring back the men? And just what actually is Cole's sister up to, and will she be successful? 

I read this novel during election week to take my mind off...well, what might have been if things went worse than how they wound up. It was just the thing. Afterland definitely has some echoes of Chuck Wendig's fantastic novel, Wanderers — in terms of plot, how both writer imagines their alternate America, and also in terms of "cool" factor. If you've read Beukes before, you know what I mean — she is just...cool. Her last novel Broken Monsters is one of my go-to recommendations for a scary crime novel. And Afterland is certainly a worthy successor. 

Shuggie Bain: Harrowing, Unflinching Novel about Poverty and Alcoholism

If you're feeling a little bit better these days, Douglas Stuart's harrowing, heartrending debut novel Shuggie Bain can fix that right up for you. Shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the National Book Award (ed. update: And WINNER of the Booker Prize) — a rare feat for any novel, much less a debut — Stuart's autofiction (that's autobiographical fiction) is an absolutely smashing (in every sense of that word) story about a young boy growing up in 1980s Glasgow, Scotland.

Life is hard. Poverty is crushing. But Shuggie's loyalty to his alcoholic mother is unwavering. Agnes is a fierce, beautiful, confident woman who chews up and spits out most men. But when her second husband dumps her and her three kids (Shuggie is the youngest) in public housing near a defunct coal mine, and then leaves for good, she spirals out of control and takes to the drink to ease the pain. 

So Shuggie has to figure out the world mostly on his own — he's constantly picked on at school for being a "poof." He urgently wishes for a regular life — that he could be a "normal" boy (he doesn't understand his sexuality, or why he's "different" from other boys). But he does know one thing: Life would be so much better if his mother would put down the bottle and be a mother to him. There are flashes of this — even a year-long "bout" of sobriety — but it never sticks. And it's utterly heartbreaking to read. 

This novel, with its intricate time-and-place detail and deep emotional resonance, does what all good fiction should do — walks you a mile in the shoes of these characters, and makes you feel what they're feeling, understand what they understand, and rationalize what they're rationalizing. But no matter how empathetic you are or how much you try to intellectually acknowledge alcoholism, it's still nearly impossible to understand. That's true whether you're a character in this novel who wants to date and reform Agnes, or Agnes's older children who decide they've had enough and leave her alone with Shuggie, or a reader yelling at Agnes to just. stop. drinking. 

Everyone loves an underdog story, and both Shuggie the character, and the novel he lives in, are the epitome of underdog stories. Though this novel is set in Scotland, not Ireland, I couldn't help but think how much this novel resembles Frank McCourt's memoir Angela's Ashes. And one of the things I loved about Angela's Ashes is the occasional flashes of levity amidst all the despair. In life as in fiction, even the darkest moments are seeded with humor. And that's the case in Shuggie Bain, too. I loved this book.