A Beginning at the End: a novel (édition 2020)

Six years after a flu epidemic wiped out 70% of the world’s population (wow, timely!) people are living behind breathing masks, marriage is now about safety not love, and a pop star’s father is obsessively trying to find her (you read that one right.) This was my second Mike Chen book and an interesting departure from the first one. I found myself most captivated by the psychological toll the flu epidemic would have taken on society, and this book focuses in on a small cast of characters as a father tries to keep custody of his daughter despite years of lies, a woman struggles for meaning in her life, and Moira, formerly Mojo, fights to find her true self. Recommended if you’re in the mood for a sci-fi read.

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: How do you start over after the end of the world?

Six years after a global pandemic wiped out most of the planet’s population, the survivors are rebuilding the country, split between self-governing cities, hippie communes and wasteland gangs.

In postapocalyptic San Francisco, former pop star Moira has created a new identity to finally escape her past—until her domineering father launches a sweeping public search to track her down. Desperate for a fresh start herself, jaded event planner Krista navigates the world on behalf of those too traumatized to go outside, determined to help everyone move on—even if they don’t want to. Rob survived the catastrophe with his daughter, Sunny, but lost his wife. When strict government rules threaten to separate parent and child, Rob needs to prove himself worthy in the city’s eyes by connecting with people again.

Krista, Moira, Rob and Sunny are brought together by circumstance, and their lives begin to twine together. But when reports of another outbreak throw the fragile society into panic, the friends are forced to finally face everything that came before—and everything they still stand to lose.

Because sometimes having one person is enough to keep the world going.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: First, read this:
“See, relations are people with the same blood. But family, that's different. Family is about who gives you hope, who gets involved. And earns the right for forgiveness. Or at least starts down the path.”
–and–
As a community, we still emphasized the importance of familial ties but finally understood that the definition of family wasn't about blood or even who or what you'd lost. It was about what gave you hope and who was willing to get involved.
You're fully in the thick of this book's ethos with those two quotes.

Post-apocalyptic Britney Spears story, full of the expected drama, and all the better for it. The book was published very early in COVID times, so it really felt too on-the-nose for me to get much distance to do more than gibber incoherently at it. Author Chen's first novel, see below for Here and Now and Then's review, was a very good, if simplistic, rendering of an extremely complex story. In this sophomore effort, he's definitely learned from the crafting of a novel for sale to the public and applied those lessons. In the manner of telling, in the effort to craft sentences, every way this book shows the growth of an artist who listens and learns.

Many are the comparisons made between this book and the superficially similar Station Eleven...post-pandemic societies with survivors doing what people always do, muddling through as best they can to get their livings, as much like they always have as possible. This story's focus isn't on a complete collapse, as Station Eleven focuses on; instead it's more like this present moment, issues and hitches and ongoing crunches; then all Hell breaks loose.

That is where Author Chen shines in his craftsmanship. All the stuff you've read until now, thinking "hmmm is this actually worth going a-dystopianing?" snaps into focus. Author Chen does not stint. Because it's not the World that's ending again; it's the world of each character's own making.

In other words, Life Goes On.

That's the post-apocalyptic novel I want to read, and the one I got here. The one where we're talking about "Post Apocalyptic Stress Disorder" or PASD. I absolutely devoured it because each story, the Britney Spears one and the fatherhood-in-dystopia one, kept me fanning pages as fast as I could.

Author Chen is, it is clear, a father, and that makes his storytelling from a father's perspective. That is very much what I want to read. And, I hope, to read his work when he becomes a grandfather...though it's not likely I'll live that long...because it's a refreshing change to find a man telling the emotional story of his parenthood against this backdrop. ( )

Hey, a pandemic novel! Man, what it must feel like to publish this right before Covid.

Not bad. I appreciated that he was trying to do something different--not the pandemic itself, not a dystopian social collapse story, but what happens down the line when people are trying to move on. It's more character focused SF than a plot or world-building one, and the characters are generally well done. ( )

This book held promise but fell somewhat short of my expectations. I understand the author was aiming for a lighthearted and uplifting tone, and I can see how some will enjoy that and may even prefer it.
There were too many coincidences that I felt were unbelievable. “Of course Rob meets this person and of course that person knows this one” and so on. Two characters fall in love and it just came across as forced and unrealistic, like a run of the mill romantic comedy. The majority of the action comes at the third act, when 3 of the characters go in pursuit of another one. There is also hints sprinkled throughout of a tragic event caused by a cult and its leader that is never explained, and seems like useless filler. ( )

Given what is going on in the world currently, the world-building hit very close to home and had some eerie parallels. And although the book is slow at times, Chen is masterful at creating authentic characters. ( )