Where the pandemic is central to The Pull of the Stars, in Hamnet it is a dark presence looming over the book, just as the bubonic plague hung over England throughout Shakespeare’s life, beginning in the fourteenth century as the ‘Black Death’. But it strikes the Agnes family like lightning, depicted in ominous detail. Young Hamnet sees how sick his twin sister Judith is and asks her mother. “‘She has…,” Says Hamnet, in a hoarse whisper, “doesn’t she?” “Her hesitation makes it clear what’ that ‘means. Agnes knows the symptoms, the buboes or lumps that” strain the skin “on his daughter’s neck and arms. Hamnet is frightened by a figure who appears at the door,” tall, wrapped in black, and in the place of one face is a hideous mask with no distinctive features, pointed as the beak of a giant bird. “This turns out to be the doctor in a protective mask, who will not set foot in the house, but will deliver a message to the family. They must remain indoors until” the plague has passed. ” O’Farrell’s imaginations may be rooted in the 16th century, and his novel was completed before scientists had heard of Covid-19, but the fear and grief experienced during that plague era is very similar to ours.
The end of October, which Wright started in 2017, is based on research and interviews with scientists who have seen a pandemic coming. The novel might have landed as a warning, but now its staggering parallels to the current crisis make it seem prophetic. Wright is a prominent journalist who has written books on September 11 and Scientology, and his novel is less literary in its ambitions than that of Donoghue or O’Farrell. However, it does create a compelling narrative focused on the fictional Henry Parsons, an infectious disease specialist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, who travels to Indonesia to investigate early reports of a new disease. “It could be a coronavirus like Sars or Mers,” speculates Henry. Soon the fictitious disease, called the Kongoli flu, destroys national economies and triggers global political crises. Henry follows his trail to Saudi Arabia, where Mecca is to be quarantined during Hajj. In real life, Hajj was canceled this year, one of the few points where reality isn’t as bad as the one Henry faces.
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