Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz
McClelland and Stewart, August 2020
Audiobook [15 hr] read by 16 narrators plus the author

There's nothing quite like reading a pandemic novel set in late 2020 during an actual pandemic in 2020. It's even about a coronavirus. Saleema Nawaz wrote and revised this story between 2013 and 2019, based on research. It's eerily prescient. One big difference between the fictional virus and COVID-19 is that, in the book, children are the most likely to die of the illness.

The narrative switches between multiple characters, interspersed with news reports and online forums. One of the main characters is a writer named Owen. A decade earlier, he was stuck for ideas for his next novel. His wife wanted kids and he didn't.

        Even with his office door closed at the top of the landing, he could hear her washing dishes. there was recrimination in the sound, in the almost indistinguishable clatter of plate on plate. The water running into the sink might as well be a bucket of tears.
[...]
        He could already see how it would go. For her, the future was children. But children would be the end of their relationship, the end of his writing, the end of his days alone. Children were like a plague upon the earth eating up everybody's time and freedom. And then, he knew what was going to happen in the novel.

In 2020, there's renewed interest in Owen's plague novel and it jumps back onto the bestseller list. Other characters include Owen's publisher,  a New York City police officer and his sister, members of a popular music group, several university professors, and a family that spends five years touring the world on their boat.

It's a propulsive and hopeful tale that kept me enthralled.

Giller chances: MEDIUM-LOW - A smart page-turner that deserves to be on the bestseller list, but not the Giller list.

NOTE: I've transcribed passages from the audiobook. The printed text may be different.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.