Mike Chen started thinking about the end of the world way back in 2011. His second book, A Beginning At the End, follows three unlikely characters who fall into friendships after a devastating plague has changed the way civilization works: a single father trying to do best by his daughter, an seemingly indistinct young woman hiding a secret from her pre-collapse past, and another young woman still struggling with her abusive childhood. The fact that a significant portion of the world's population has died and that governments and societies have had to re-form around this new reality only sets a stage and creates some tension for otherwise quite contemporary literary characters. While this is Chen's second book to be published, he actually wrote it before his last book (Here and Now and Then), and one can tell the difference between the tighter, more emotionally concrete writing of Here and Now and Then and this offering.
Still, the most interesting thing that Chen offers in A Beginning at the End seems to be a voice in a new chorus of "post apocalypse" literature. While many post-apocalyptical novels of the past century have painted dire and disturbing visions of a future where human civilization has "failed," Chen's future seems to be one where humans simply re-group. Life goes on, as the saying goes. The optimistic tone of the title indeed permeates the entire book - death and destruction have been wrought, but that doesn't mean an end of humanity, not in a literal sense or even a metaphorical sense. Instead, the characters of Chen's not-so-distant or unforeseeable future are simply rebuilding, maintaining that from the past that seems beneficial and letting go of what brought them down in the first place. This is true on the individual level (trying to avoid spoilers here), and surprisingly on the government level too. One of the most surprising and interesting aspects of this book is that Chen has developed a future where, miraculously, humans have learned from at least a few of their mistakes and are working towards balance and compromise.
Certainly not utopian, but far from dystopian, Mike Chen's second novel A Beginning At the End delivers exactly what its title promises: a realistic, if on the optimistic side of things, future in which endings only, and always, lead to new beginnings.
If you like this book, also check out:
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
Gamechanger by L.X. Beckett
Bannerless and The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn
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