![]() ![]() ![]() Catherine and Amanda, who lose the men and boys in their lives early, remain central as they reconstruct their lives. Survivors, i.e., women, experience what survivors today have been experiencing-loss, isolation, fear, guilt, physical damage, financial crises, and, occasionally, good fortune. Although women may be carriers, only males (of all ages) get sick, almost always fatally. And so the Plague spreads, day by numbered day within eight sections designating stages from OUTBREAK to PANIC to ADAPTATION to REMEMBRANCE. By Day 5, “the Plague,” though still limited to Scotland, “is all anybody can talk about” in London. She contacts recently independent Scotland's public health officials, who dismiss her concerns. After a second man dies there two days later and more fall ill, attending physician Amanda, a wife and mother of two sons herself, senses approaching disaster. Five days later, on “Day 1,” a man dies for no clear reason in a Glasgow hospital. The novels opens in London on a deceptively breezy note as Catherine, a social anthropologist with a happy marriage and adorable 3-year-old son, avoids fertility treatment because she’s ambivalent about having a second child. ![]() ![]() Beginning in 2025, a Great Male Plague spreads around the world. ![]()
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