In Christina Sweeney-Baird's The End of Men, a virus that kills only men goes global

Christina Sweeney-Baird. Photo / Sophie Davidson

Christina Sweeney-Baird sums up her debut novel like this: "It's a lot."

It sure is. A quick summary: It's 2025 and a mysterious virus has wrapped the globe in a blanket of doom. It starts with a fever, aches and lethargy, and progresses quickly to death. It affects only men. In Glasgow, Amanda, an emergency room doctor, correctly identifies patient zero and sounds an alarm, but horrifyingly, no one in a position to make a difference takes her seriously.

Sweeney-Baird, a corporate litigation lawyer who writes in her weekends and evenings, completed The End of Men well before the Covid-19 outbreak. She wanted to explore a world without men, so created a global pandemic as a device for getting rid of them. When real life began to resemble her book, she and her editor had a serious talk about how to respond.

"We changed one thing," says Sweeney-Baird via Zoom, from her London home. "I had written the pandemic in the book to be started by a pangolin, so we changed that. I got an editorial note, 'Are you a witch?'"

It's a very clever book that deftly engages with sexism, classism, racism, mental health and consumerism while dragging the reader through a very familiar ordeal. The virus moves quickly, from Scotland to other parts of Great Britain, Europe and the United States within a month. Hospitals can't cope with the numbers of patients, schools shut, workplaces are abandoned, people hoard food and stay home.

Amanda does not receive help because of minor mental health issues from her university days – other medical professionals brand her a "lunatic". The UK health system collapses, because it is disproportionately run by males and the vast majority of doctors and administrators die. The same thing happens to the waste disposal system and the trades.

"Why exactly are we building a system in which that is the case?" asks Sweeney-Baird.

More poignant is the fertility crisis that quickly emerges and the despairing women who give birth to baby boys with a 90 per cent chance of dying from The Plague. Not to mention the wrenching pain of losing male partners and older children, nursing them until their deaths because there is no one else to help.

The women who shoulder the burden of ensuring the future of humanity are not perfect. This is not a book about a utopian future in which resources are equally shared and violence is quashed, nor is it a dystopian hellscape. "It shows what I genuinely think would happen," says Sweeney-Baird. "I have a very optimistic belief in humanity's ability to be resilient, to keep going."

Elizabeth is a junior pathologist at the US Centre for Disease Control, flies to the centre of the pandemic to help develop a vaccine. Dawn is a civil servant who battles valiantly to keep people fed and calm. Morvern, in a remote part of the Highlands, takes in refugee boys to save their lives.

But Sweeney-Baird's favourite is the woman who first recognised The Plague's danger.

"I really love Amanda," she says. "I grew up in Glasgow and lots of my friends' parents are doctors. I know quite a few of those very wry Scottish women who, when the world is going to pieces, they are exactly who you want around to figure everything out."

The End of Men, by Christina Sweeney-Baird (HarperCollins, $33) is out now.